Drives for NAS

JHeaton

JHeaton

JHeaton

Soldato
Joined
19 Dec 2009
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Lancashire
Currently looking at putting a NAS unit together with a Microserver and FreeNAS and my first choice for drives was automatically the 3TB WD Reds as they get great reviews, have a three year warranty and are supposedly designed to be constantly on. However, at £125 each, this is pretty painful when you need to get four of them! These 3TB Toshiba drives are currently on offer, which would give a saving of £156 at purchase, but would I see a long-term saving by buying these instead? Are they going to be reliable enough for a home NAS server, or is there a big enough benefit to paying the extra for the WD drives and the extra warranty? I'd rather not be forking out for new drives in a few years' time if I can avoid it. :p

Cheers. :)
 
I don't know enough about other drives to really comment beyond this. I had two WD greens in raid 1 for years, absolutely fine no probs. I now have 2x3tb reds and they are great. Quiet, fast and designed for purpose. The reds are really good.

Thats my 2cents
 
Personally I think it's a waste of money and wouldn't buy them myself. "Normal" drives should last way longer than 3 years anyway.
 
What is the probability that 1 in 4 of the Toshiba drives will die after year 2 and before year 3 (i.e. while the WD Red warranty would've still been in place)? The Toshibas being 7200 RPM may be hotter and noisier than the Reds (which are remarkably cool and quiet). Also, in my opinion, the Reds are the most fit for purpose, they were designed and tested for using in a NAS. I'm not saying other drives don't work, just that I'm very happy with my Reds.

They are pricey though!
 
Thanks for the responses. Still doing some research, but can't really find out too much about the Toshiba drives for some reason.

^ I'm not sure. I don't think there's an easy way to try to predict that. :p
 
I'm on the look-out for another high capacity storage drive and from the research and reading I've been doing everyone is raving about the ' HUA5C3030ALA640 ' 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000.
About the same price as the REDs but with 5-years warranty, better spec and a proven track record for super reliability :-)
Keeping my eye out for a good deal on one of these but it could take a while as these 'Server' grade drives are in high demand and sell-out very quickly :-(
 
If you can get a server grade drive for the same price as a red then do it. They are designed for servers so should do you well. Make sure it is on the compatability list for your nas though (doesn't mean it won't work if not, just hasn't been confirmed to work error free).
 
I have just plonked down on 6 of the Toshiba drives you mentioned, I am slowly replacing my 2TB RAID-6 array with them (I give them each a few days to settle in and get any early deaths out of the way), but so far no issues.

I had 6 Seagate Greens in before these, and suprisingly, these seem to be running at lower temperatures; so... take from that what you will.
 
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