These 5 hard drives will pair perfectly with any NAS
Traditional mechanical drives for the desktop can be used in Network Attached Storage (NAS), but they’re not built for continuous operation over prolonged periods. Leading brands in the storage business have enhanced drives available that are specifically designed for NAS installations. We highlight 4TB drives in this collection due to the recommendation of running NAS drives in RAID configurations, guaranteeing you 4TB of capacity.
Seagate’s IronWolf series is the company’s solution for NAS setups, rivaling WD Red. Similar technology, named AgileArray, is implemented to offer enhanced performance and reliability over desktop drives, and these units can be installed in boxes that support up to eight bays. IronWolf Pro is the next step up with slightly more expensive drives but increased supported bays, workload rates, and a limited warranty.
Western Digital’s (WD) Red family of hard drives are manufactured for NAS use and can be deployed in systems that support up to eight bays. Backed by a 3-year limited warranty and a powerful brand in the storage market, WD drives are well known to be of top quality, and they last a long time. The Red series isn’t the fastest batch of hard drives on the market, but using them in a RAID formation can make up for this.
HGST is actually the child company of Western Digital, and as such you’ll enjoy the similar performance, reliability, and customer service experiences. Vibration protection and a million hours MTBF (mean time before failure) make these NAS-classified drives ideal for deployment at home or in a small office. These drives are relatively expensive, but you get better speed than WD Red and Seagate’s IronWolf.
The IronWolf Pro series from Seagate is super fast, packing in 7,200RPM motors that can allow for up to 250MB/s of sustained data transfer, with bursts of around 6Gb/s. For peace of mind, Seagate includes a 5-year warranty and a 300TB per year workload limit. You can store and access a lot of data on these drives, and they work in NAS with up to 24 bays.
Just like Seagate, Western Digital has a “pro” series of drives, which are even more capable than the standard lineup of NAS storage options. Supporting up to 24 bays, these drives come rocking a 5-year WD warranty and more advantage features, including 3D Active Balance Plus and error recovery controls.
What should you look for?
Generally speaking, when looking for NAS hard drives, you will want to aim for a 7,200RPM drive with 64MB of cache. Hard drives will perform similarly between brands, but you’ll want to pay attention to reviews, as well as features and specifications, to pick a drive that will handle everything you throw at it. Choosing the right hard drive is essential, especially for a NAS.
We’ve used the Seagate IronWolf for years without fault and find the drives to be well priced to boot. The same can be said about the Western Digital Red, which are almost identical to Seagate counterparts. If you want to expand on your NAS storage, you’ll want to aim big with the more pricey Seagate IronWolf Pro and Western Digital Red Pro.
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