Discussion Are NAS HDDs and Surveillance HDDs just a scam ?

[kyle bitchson]

Hey guys, So I wanted to buy a new hdd since my ssd only had around 100GB left.
So I saw these 3 different types of hdd in Amazon, which is:

• NAS HDD
• Surveillance HDD
• Desktop HDD

Their prices aren't significantly more expensive than the regular pc hdd and it is advertised that they are far more durable than the regular pc hdd, so that left me wondering whether buying any of these three would even make any difference other than spending 10 to 20 more bucks? Is there even a difference? What do you guys think? What's your experience using these hard drives? Are they actually better than a regular pc hdd?

And also, if I'm planning to build a nas. Would it be just fine if I use the regular pc hdd? What about home security system?

 

[kanewolf]

Hey guys, So I wanted to buy a new hdd since my ssd only had around 100GB left.
So I saw these 3 different types of hdd in Amazon, which is:

• NAS HDD
• Surveillance HDD
• Desktop HDD

Their prices aren't significantly more expensive than the regular pc hdd and it is advertised that they are far more durable than the regular pc hdd, so that left me wondering whether buying any of these three would even make any difference other than spending 10 to 20 more bucks? Is there even a difference? What do you guys think? What's your experience using these hard drives? Are they actually better than a regular pc hdd?

And also, if I'm planning to build a nas. Would it be just fine if I use the regular pc hdd? What about home security system?

NAS HDs are designed to tolerate the vibrations that having multiple disks in close proximity generates. They can be used in a desktop.
Surveillance HDs are optimized for continuous sequential writing. They can be used in desktops, but they may be slower because they may not be 7200RPM.

A Corvette and an a Celica are both "cars". They have been optimized differently. Same with hard disks.

 

[kyle bitchson]

I personally don't think choosing different types of hdd for different purpose have any impact for basic home usage like me, but I think this part is really true.

NAS HDs are designed to tolerate the vibrations that having multiple disks in close proximity generates. They can be used in a desktop.
Surveillance HDs are optimized for continuous sequential writing. They can be used in desktops, but they may be slower because they may not be 7200RPM

But since I'm just a basic home user, is buying the cheapest hdd available available a good idea? e.g., using a regular hdd for a home NAS or home surveillance system.
Let's say that I'm building a home surveillance system. From what i got, if i use the regular pc hdd, it will surely break faster than the surveillance hdd that were optimized for constant writing.
And if i use the regular pc hdd for nas, it will surely break due to not having a tolerance against vibration.
But i will be just ok for using a nas hdd on my pc or a surveillance hdd albeit slower speed isn't it?

 

[SkyNetRising]

But since I'm just a basic home user, is buying the cheapest hdd available available a good idea? e.g., using a regular hdd for a home NAS or home surveillance system.

NAS/Surveilance HDDs are meant for 24/7 operation. NAS - lot of reads. Surveillance - lot of writes.
Desktop HDDs are meant for typical desktop use - like turning on/ off each day and not a lot of reads/writes.
Desktop HDD will probably fail sooner, if you use it with nas or surveillance type workload.
But any HDD can fail.

Just use appropriate type of HDD for appropriate workload. Prices are not that different.

With cheapest desktop HDDs you'll probably get SMR drive. Avoid those at all costs. Very inconsistent write performance.
Not usable for heavy write scenarios.

 

[fzabkar]

I suspect the differences are mainly in the firmware.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I suspect the differences are mainly in the firmware.

Is it possible to change SMR drive to CMR just by updating firmware?
That would be cool.

 

[mdd1963]

No...SMR drives can't be 'changed' to CMR, and SMR drives can be very slow if doing large sustained write operations, and can take 10 times longer if doing a full rebuild/resilvering is needed.

If your SSD is getting cramped, i'd look at simply replacing that, with many quality SSDs quite inexpensive, especially when on sale thru Amazon..

Just ordered a 2 TB Crucial MX500 SATA SSD for ....$79, and got a 2 TB Samsung 990 Pro for $119...

You'll likely pay at least that much for any spinning NAS or surveillance drive by WD, unless shopping for old 2.5" spinners in the $30-$40 range....; if you need SATA instead of NVME, Crucial's MX500 at even 1 TB can be found for like $50-$55...

You don't want a spinning drive for running an OS or any applications installs, IMO; I'd try to reserve their use for bulk storage, backups, etc...

 

[fzabkar]

Is it possible to change SMR drive to CMR just by updating firmware?
That would be cool.

Sometimes ...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-is-shipping-22tb-hdds

Seagate’s hybrid SMR (HSMR) hard drives feature non-shingled zones (for decent random write performance) and shingled zones (for higher areal density and additional capacity). Technically, such drives leave the factory as conventional magnetic recording (CMR) HDDs and the end-user formats them in accordance with its requirements. As a result, the size of CMR and SMR bands can vary from drive to drive.