What HDD should I use for a home NAS?

frogsot

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Jan 16, 2013
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I am going to build a NAS from scratch, but I am some what unsure of what kind of drives to get. There are obviously normal drivers, and then there are NAS drives and WD driver that cover all kinds of situations.

This is going to be a basic home media and file storing NAS, and maybe later I will add in remote access. I think I will have the drives spin down when not used after 1 or 2 hours.

I plan on having only one or two 5 tb drives at first then add more as I need them. I will not be doing a raid for my NAS until farther down the road. Another thought on this though is if I can use usb external drives in a NAS and have those back up the internal?
 
Solution
5TB drives are good, but if you are on a tight budget, get an array of 4TB 3.5 inch drives. Internal drives will cut down on your space needed for the NAS.
The short answer: It doesn't really matter as long as you are buying a new HDD

The longer answer:
I’d recommend going with one of the NAS drives, browse through Newegg and check them out: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Depa=0&Description=ppssNASHDD&cm_sp=Cat-Internal-Hard-Drives_1-_-VisNav-_-NAS_5
Brand: You will find LOTS of opinions on this. Personally I just bought the WD Red 4TB for my Home Theater, but really anything in the NAS category with a decent number of reviews will be fine.

For a 5 TB recommendation check out this WD Red 5TB drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236738&cm_re=ppssNASHDD_5tb-_-22-236-738-_-Product
 
5TB drives are good, but if you are on a tight budget, get an array of 4TB 3.5 inch drives. Internal drives will cut down on your space needed for the NAS.
 
Solution