Are "NAS" HDDs necessary?

[PenguinMaster]

I am planning on building a NAS in the future, I was planning on using UNRAID since I have multiple random Seagate, WD, and HGST drives lying around. They are all meant for "desktop" use. Does it really matter though? Can I not use these drives in my NAS? I will have a backup of everything anyway so if one dies I can always replace it. I noticed pricing is vastly different, $54.99 for a 2TB Seagate "Desktop" Drive and $79.99 for an IronWolf "NAS" 2TB Drive; the one without Data recovery. What justifies spending $25 more?

 

Edit; I also just realized that the "NAS" HDDs are 5900rpm and the "Desktop" ones are 7200rpm?! Also the cache on the "NAS" one is 64MB whereas the one on the "Desktop" one is 256MB?!

[zeusthemoose]

I believe nas drives are rated for running 24/7 without wearing down while standard drives can wear down or break if running 24/7.

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, Chickenfans said:

Can I not use these drives in my NAS

Yes, you can.

[PenguinMaster]

1 minute ago, zeusthemoose said:

I believe nas drives are rated for running 24/7 without wearing down while standard drives can wear down or break if running 24/7.

 

Just now, WereCatf said:

Yes, you can.

So would it be ok to use the drives I have now and as they slowly die move over to NAS drives?

[WereCatf]

Just now, Chickenfans said:

So would it be ok to use the drives I have now and as they slowly die move over to NAS drives?

Yes, there is no technical reason for why regular HDDs wouldn't work for NAS-use. The NAS-drives typically have higher ratings for 24/7 operation and handle vibration slightly better, but neither of those aspects is a show-stopper or anything like that.

[Jarsky]

1 minute ago, Chickenfans said:

 

So would it be ok to use the drives I have now and as they slowly die move over to NAS drives?

 

Yes. Just because a drive isnt a NAS drive, doesnt mean it wont perform for long periods of time. 

The idea of "NAS" and Enterprise drives, is they're rated for 24/7 use, have more vibration tolerance for closs proximity to a large number of other spinning disks, and they have functions such as TLER (makes the drive aware of a faulty sector so it will skip it instead of getting stuck on retrying). Some desktop drives implement some of the features of NAS drives, but not all. 

 

My UnRAID server is full of white label WD's shucked out of EasyStores. In dual parity even if some die, they cost me almost 50% the price of getting NAS drives...so for me it was a considerable price difference taking the risk of replacing the odd drive, vs buying all "NAS" drives like the WD Red's in my FreeNAS box. 

 

 

[Windows7ge]

NAS rated drives are not explicitly necessary. They come with certain benefits that are not necessarily circuital for a home owned NAS.

 

You don't really need them.

[Aragorn-]

The desktop drives with the big cache are probably SMR drives. You probably dont want those, especially if your using ZFS.

 

Other than avoiding SMR drives though, theres unlikely to be any real issue running "normal" drives.

 

A good place to source half-decent drives for a NAS are WD easystore and mybook external drives. They're perpetually on sale somewhere and are often significantly cheaper than a bare drive. Plus you get a nice enclosure and/or SATA to USB converter for free. Downside ofcourse is no warranty. However if your careful, you can open the enclosures without damaging them and if they did give you any trouble you could put them back into the enclosure and return to the store you got it from.

[Mihle]

17 hours ago, Aragorn- said:

The desktop drives with the big cache are probably SMR drives. You probably dont want those, especially if your using ZFS.

 

Other than avoiding SMR drives though, theres unlikely to be any real issue running "normal" drives.

 

A good place to source half-decent drives for a NAS are WD easystore and mybook external drives. They're perpetually on sale somewhere and are often significantly cheaper than a bare drive. Plus you get a nice enclosure and/or SATA to USB converter for free. Downside ofcourse is no warranty. However if your careful, you can open the enclosures without damaging them and if they did give you any trouble you could put them back into the enclosure and return to the store you got it from.

He said unRAID, and using multiple different HDDs, so he won't use ZFS. SMR isn't as bad just in JBOD+Parity, but is ofc still in slower sometimes.

 

I have also heard that WD or Seagate or both have started using SMR drives in those external drives, but searching online might make you figure out what one are and what one aren't. Also some of them require you to tape one pin on the HDDs. (Don't remember what ones).

 

But NAS drivers aren't required, but on paper, NAS drives is less likely to die in a NAS configuration, I don't know if anyone have actually tested it tho.