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Choosing disk for a NAS?

Silmano
By Silmano
in Storage Devices
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I'm building a custom NAS with 4x WD Red HDDs. I was thinking on using 1T drives to do a Raid-Z but checking those drives I find WD has a 2.5" and a 3.5". The main differences between the two is the cache: 16Mb (2.5") vs 64Mb (3.5") and the power consumption: 1.4/0.6W (2.5") vs 3.3/2.3W (3.5").

 

Since the 4 HDDs would be mounted in the front of a Lian-Li PC-Q08 case, they would be partially or totally blocking the air pushed by the front fan. Having this in account and that the NAS is ment to be running 24/7, I was thinking on buying the 2.5", but I was wondering, is there any other fact that I should consider over the 3.5" HDDs?

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I'm building a custom NAS with 4x WD Red HDDs. I was thinking on using 1T drives to do a Raid-Z but checking those drives I find WD has a 2.5" and a 3.5". The main differences between the two is the cache: 16Mb (2.5") vs 64Mb (3.5") and the power consumption: 1.4/0.6W (2.5") vs 3.3/2.3W (3.5").

 

Since the 4 HDDs would be mounted in the front of a Lian-Li PC-Q08 case, they would be partially or totally blocking the air pushed by the front fan. Having this in account and that the NAS is ment to be running 24/7, I was thinking on buying the 2.5", but I was wondering, is there any other fact that I should consider over the 3.5" HDDs?

 

The only thing I can think of would be mounting options, and even then most cases support both sizes very easily. 

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The 2.5" drives only have a capacity up to 1TB so I'd go for the 3.5" and the air flow will be good enough.

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with all that space i would go raid 10

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What CPU are you going to use on the NAS? lower end and low power parts don't need that much cooling, even if the hard drives block most part of the air, it's going to be fine.

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What CPU are you going to use on the NAS? lower end and low power parts don't need that much cooling, even if the hard drives block most part of the air, it's going to be fine.

 

Right now I have an i3-3220T (35W max TDP) and its around 50ºC with the stock cooler. I suppose since I'm gonna use a software raid, the CPU will take some extra work from it.

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Right now I have an i3-3220T (35W max TDP) and its around 50ºC with the stock cooler. I suppose since I'm gonna use a software raid, the CPU will take some extra work from it.

Should be perfectly fine, if you live on a hot area or can't stand the noisy cooler you can always get a cheap low profile cooler, like a Gemini II M4. 3.5" is usually the way to go with NASes

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3TB WD Reds are best NAS drives atm

 

Comparing 3TB WD Reds vs 2TB and 1TB, is there any other reason despite Gb per euro/dollar ratio (3TB HDDs have the best ratio)? 

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Have you considered going with a raid-1 using 2 x 3tb WD reds?  It still has the same capacity as 4 x 1tb WD reds in raid-z, it's cheaper for the 2 drives in most places and hardly requires any CPU performance.  You also don't need as much RAM as zfs, but it is definitely slower in reading data.

Main rig: i7 3770K @ 4.54, Sapphire R9 290, Sabertooth Z77, 16 GB Mushkin Redline 2133, Lian Li PC-P50R, Seasonic 860xp Platinum, Kingston Hyper X 3K 240GB

freeNAS server: AMD Athlon II 170u 20W, 5 x 3TB WD Red in raid-z1 (12 TB)

media centre: AMD A10-5700, crucial M4 (boot), running XBMC,4 x 3TB WD Red, 3 x 3TB WD green + 2TB green in FlexRAID (17 TB)

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Have you considered going with a raid-1 using 2 x 3tb WD reds?  It still has the same capacity as 4 x 1tb WD reds in raid-z, it's cheaper for the 2 drives in most places and hardly requires any CPU performance.  You also don't need as much RAM as zfs, but it is definitely slower in reading data.

 

I haven't though of that, thanks for the tip! Also raid-1 should be faster in reading (not slower) than ZFS, isn't that right? Since it can read from the two drives instead of just one in the case of raid-z

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The 3.5' drives give you more for your money, with the 3TB model having the best $/GB at the moment.

 

2.5' drives are generally used where you need to get a lot more IOPS, because you have more spindles to read/write from/to. They have similar data density to the 3.5' drives, depending on the enclosure they're in (that's all changing very fast with the introduction of 6TB+ drives).

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Build Logs: Tophat (in progress), DNAF | Useful Links: How To: Choosing Your Storage Devices and Configuration, Case Study: RAID Tolerance to Failure, Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage , Why Choose an SSD?, ZFS From A to Z (Eric1024), Advanced RAID: Survival Rates, Flashing LSI RAID Cards (alpenwasser), SAN and Storage Networking

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Why Red's?

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cause they're the best NAS drives

 

It depends on what they're being used for.

I been using Green's for at least 3 years in mine without any problems.

 

If it's just for media storage and scheduled backups then I'd go WD Green.

You guys are crazy. You know you guys are self-destructive. There's a funny farm somewhere and it's got your names written all over it. But I'm gettin' outta here.

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It depends on what they're being used for.

I been using Green's for at least 3 years in mine without any problems.

 

If it's just for media storage and scheduled backups then I'd go WD Green.

Can't use greens in RAID, Greens don't have TLER, platter spin-up/down increases read/write times...plus 5400rpms  :blink:

 

Reds are meant to be used in an always on environment. Servers, NAS, etc...

 

list goes on

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I run 8 Greens in RAID Z (I know it's not the most efficient number of drives for Z)

You can enable TLER on greens

You can have them not spin down/park at all

Speed is more than good enough for media storage and backups

 

Red's are the "NAS drive" but not everyone needs them.

 

EDIT: This is a good read... http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hacking-wd-greens-and-reds-with-wdidle3-exe.18171/#post-98858

You guys are crazy. You know you guys are self-destructive. There's a funny farm somewhere and it's got your names written all over it. But I'm gettin' outta here.

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Hi there,

It is true that the WD Reds are the most popular choice for NAS environments and that is because the RED line is designed for this kind of usage. The size and capacity of the drives is up to you. Personally, I would go  for 3TB 3.5 drives.
Talking about WD Green drives, Chris230291 has some point. They perform really good, if you use them for storage purposes and backups. I would not recommend putting them in a RAID. I am aware of the fact that there are some workarounds that claim to enable some features, needed for the normal functioning of the RAID, but it is also reported that these measures not always work as planned. Some users enable TLER with third party software, but eventually experience some annoying RAID drops from time to time. It is really great that some are not experiencing any issues, but if you plan to do a reliable and supported NAS, I recommend you to go with the WD Reds.

 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1397 – Difference between Desktop edition drives and RAID edition drives

 

Hope this helps

WD Representative

www.wdc.com/en/

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