NAS Drives

john_s

john_s

john_s

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What are the NAS drives of choice at the moment?

I’ve built a new homelab server and one of its functions is going to be to be a NAS, probably with 5 or 6 drives, running RAID Z2 (aware RAID isn’t a backup, this is just part of my overall backup solution...).

Do I “need” NAS drives, or will standard drives suffice? Are NAS drives paying extra just for a “NAS” badge? :D

That said, I’m currently considering shucking some WD My Books, as they seem rather advantageously priced!

Any thoughts welcome...
 
I'm running a shucked 14TB WD drive in my home server, seems a good way to get cheap storage. If you are careful with picks or credit cards you can get the drive out without damaging the casing. Just be careful to remember which corners the rubber supports came out of if you ever want to put it back together as they all seem to be unique.
 
I am running Seagate SkyHawk
Heads up do not start with: they are not for nas they are for surveillance
24/7 operation and not SMR
 
bremen1874 said:
I'd be more concerned about avoiding SMR drives than anything else.
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Agreed, there are marketing claims as to which drive is best, although there are a few which are a little better, the first and foremost is avoiding SMR.

john_s said:
Do I “need” NAS drives.
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No. For the most part, going for cheap CMR drives in ZRAID/RAID is the best option imo. Until you start getting up into the SAS drives they may aswell all be the same, and going into Server hardware gets expensive fast.

I personally have some Toshiba N300's in my NAS which are doing well. Although I'm probably going to shuck some drives when I go up to the 10 TB disks.
 
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doug_1986 said:
Seagate EXOS drives seem to be the drives of choice at the min in servers. I have a set of 8 and they're fab.

The large Seagate Expansion desktop drives have EXOS's in them. I'm waiting for the 16tb units to hit £200 and I'll pick up a bunch to shuck.

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/products/external-hard-drives/expansion-external-drives/
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Yup shucking good for the money.

My NAS drives were 12TB WD datacentre drives shucked from their 12TB Xbox external drive but I'd go for the Seagates currently.
 
I'd argue that if you're running ZFS then you should be running ECC. So if you're going to spend that kind of money on a system, why settle for desktop drives? If you're not running ECC then there's nothing that ZFS is going to give you that normal RAID won't.

There are differences between NAS drives and desktop drives otherwise why would businesses buy them? Also the manufacturer's guarantee about what happens if the drive fails during its lifetime.

So if you're building to a limited budget then just get desktop drives. If you want to secure your data against loss keep multiple copies on multiple systems in multiple locations. Depending on how valuable it is. :)
 
doug_1986 said:
Seagate EXOS drives seem to be the drives of choice at the min in servers. I have a set of 8 and they're fab.

The large Seagate Expansion desktop drives have EXOS's in them. I'm waiting for the 16tb units to hit £200 and I'll pick up a bunch to shuck.

https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/products/external-hard-drives/expansion-external-drives/
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Reviews suggest the Seagate Exos are very loud which is an important consideration for a NAS drive.

WD Elements/My Book 10TB+ drives contain helium white label drives, which appear to be re-badged high quality data-center drives. I shucked a 14TB drive for my NAS over a year ago, had no problems with it and it's very quiet.
 
DeliciousStorage said:
Reviews suggest the Seagate Exos are very loud which is an important consideration for a NAS drive.

WD Elements/My Book 10TB+ drives contain helium white label drives, which appear to be re-badged high quality data-center drives. I shucked a 14TB drive for my NAS over a year ago, had no problems with it and it's very quiet.
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Hmm, good to know. I do have some Exos drives, but I've only ever run them as a set of 8, so am not sure really of how loud a single one is.

I do have some older Ironwolfs and they sound like hell, WD Reds that sound great, and a pair of 8tb WD MyBook white labels, which sound really quiet. Thinking about it, the 4 x Reds do sound less than half the noise of the 8 x Exos.

So, I ordered myself a 14tb Seagate Expansion today which should be either an IronWolf Pro or an EXOS. After reading your post and having a think, I've added a 14tb WD Elements to the order for pretty much the same price. I'll see what's in them both and what they sound like and probably return the loser.

Shall report back!
 
Alright so 14tb Seagate Expansion and 14tb WD Easystore delivered. The Seagate contains an IronWolf Pro, model ST14000NE0008 (so a 'proper' NAS drive) which CrystalDiskInfo reports as running at 7,200rpm. The WD contains a WD140EDFZ, which CrystalDiskInfo reports as running at 5,400rpm.

Have done some very quick tests in their enclosures and the Seagate reads and writes at about 250mb/s, whilst the WD is about 150mb/s, so a massive difference.

Noise wise, the Seagate has no spindle noise at all - you honestly can't hear it spinning, but it does have louder clicks when really seeking. The WD has a high-pitched spindle that's there constantly, but the clicks are more muted.

So pick your poison I guess. Personally I'm keeping the Seagate. The read/write speeds are significantly better, the clicks aren't that bad, and for me, the drive will spend most of its time sitting doing not a lot, so the constant spindle of the WD would be far more annoying.

Also I like the idea of knowing what's in my PC. I know that's an IronWolf Pro, through and through. I don't really know what the WD is... they like to re-label HGST stuff, and various reviews peg the WD140EDFZ at 7,200rpm, which mine certainly isn't, plus the whole selling 5,400 drives that turn out to be 7,200 thing...
 
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doug_1986 said:
The WD contains a WD140EDFZ, which CrystalDiskInfo reports as running at 5,400rpm.

Have done some very quick tests in their enclosures and the Seagate reads and writes at about 250mb/s, whilst the WD is about 150mb/s, so a massive difference.
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I have the exact same drive, the read/write speed at the start of the drive was 215 MB/s, so there was something very wrong with your testing or you got a faulty drive.
 
DeliciousStorage said:
I have the exact same drive, the read/write speed at the start of the drive was 215 MB/s, so there was something very wrong with your testing or you got a faulty drive.
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I can certainly try it again, but there's nothing wrong with my testing. The results were consistent across both AJA's system test and Blackmagic's disk speed test.

And that's the other thing I was saying about WD - you don't really know what's in there. Same model, people report them being 7,200rpm, whilst mine is 5,400. They 'appear' to be high quality data centre drives, but no one's 100% positive and WD could change what's under the label at any time. At least with the IronWolf Pro in that Seagate enclosure, you know exactly what you've got - a proper NAS drive.
 
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doug_1986 said:
I can certainly try it again, but there's nothing wrong with my testing. The results were consistent across both AJA's system test and Blackmagic's disk speed test.

And that's the other thing I was saying about WD - you don't really know what's in there. Same model, people report them being 7,200rpm, whilst mine is 5,400.
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The issue with that was drives reporting themselves as 5400 whilst actually being 7200, so yours might not actually be 5400. There's definitely something abnormal about a 14TB drive being only 150MB/s, whereas my speed graph is right where I expect it to be.
 
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