NAS and NAS hard drive for low demand usage

[Kogure]

Hello.

I was thinking about switching to using a NAS for some of the stuff I have on my devices. I will be the only person accessing it, and I won't be read/writing all that often. The system will be on 24/7, however.

We're talking stuff like movies, pictures, music, and documents being stored in one location instead across many of the devices that I own.

I'm pretty sure that a relatively cheap system will be just fine (something like a cheap Synology), but picking the hard drive is a bit trickier. It seems like 99% of guides are praising the expensive specialist NAS drives and are saying how you absolutely need them, yet somewhere on the page, hidden incredibly well and in incredibly fine print, is the note about a sponsorship from a hard drive manufacturer...

So, I want honest opinions. Do I need expensive NAS drives for my storage? It will be very low demand, and data loss won't be a huge disaster. I'm pretty sure I also won't be using RAID. It will be like having few computers with one big hard drive for storage.

 

[USAFRet]

Purpose built "NAS drives" are not that expensive.

I just got 4 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST4000VN008/dp/B01LOOJBQY
~$125 each.
A regular Seagate Barracuda 4TB is only $20 less, at $108
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LNJBA50

A 4TB WD Blue is only $10 less, at $117
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013HNYV8I

My NAS is a Qnap TS-453A
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=212

 

[kanewolf]

No you don't have to have a NAS drive. The NAS drives are intended for use where you might have 5 hard drives in a single enclosure and the vibration of the enclosure can be an issue. The NAS may be on 24/7 but the drives will automatically spin down after a configurable amount of non-use.
I am still a fan of NAS drives for NAS enclosures. They have firmware that is optimized for NAS operation.

The HGST (Hitachi/Toshiba) Deskstar NAS drives are not significantly more expensive than the non-NAS drives.

 

[Kogure]

I checked a couple of stores here, and a cheapest 2TB drive will cost me around €66. For the same price I can get a NAS drive with a capacity of 1TB. To go 2TB I would have to pay €88. To me, that is not a small price difference. Since I'm not planning on having some crazy configuration, it would pretty much be used like any kind of a PC hard drive. Maybe even less since technically there would be no random stuff like daily web browsing.

 

[USAFRet]

Well...prices in your market may differ.

For me, a 5-10% price premium for a dedicated NAS drive (IronWolf, WD Red, etc) is well worth it.
At 20-25%, as seems to be your situation...I'd probably reconsider.

 

[seagate_surfer]

Well...prices in your market may differ.

For me, a 5-10% price premium for a dedicated NAS drive (IronWolf, WD Red, etc) is well worth it.
At 20-25%, as seems to be your situation...I'd probably reconsider.

Hi Kogure,

we are absolutely supporting this comment! If you are planning on running your device 24/7 in a NAS environment, you should go for a NAS drive!

NAS drives, as mentioned, are rated for 24x7 use, and also designed to push bigger workloads year round. For example, a standard Seagate BarraCuda drive is rated to handle 55TB of data a year, whereas a standard Seagate IronWolf (NAS) drive is rated to handle 180TB a year, bump up to the IronWolf Pro, and that is rated for 300TB per year. So how hard the drive is going to work does come into play as well. There is also the warranty to consider. A standard BarraCuda drive comes with a 2-year warranty, whereas a standard IronWolf drive comes with a 3 year warranty, and the IronWolf Pro comes with a 5 year warranty. One reason that some users prefer to buy NAS rated drives is that warranties can be longer for them.

NAS drives are also designed to handle more vibration than your standard desktop drives, the reason for this: Imagine a NAS enclosure with, say, 4-8 huge 8TB or 10TB drives all stored right next to each-other in that enclosed space. Hard drives used in this capacity tend to have the potential to "beat up" on each-other just with the raw force of all of those spinning platters and the operations taking place on them, causing performance and longevity issues. So the firmware on NAS drives is designed to account for, protect against issues with, and manage these vibration considerations. Some NAS drives actually have what are called RV (Rotational Vibration) Sensors on them as well for this same reason.

Whichever drive you go for, evaluate your projected usage behavior first and make your drive(s) decision in regards to that scenario.

Enjoy your new drive(s)!