Nas and hard drives

[max668]

Hello all

I am currently learning about nas and waned to know what hard drives to use and not use. How much does the Cache Memory matter ?

Could you guys link / recommend some hard drives ?

I was considering buying this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GTD3AR2/ref=crt_ewc_title_oth_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1LVMHJ3R37E4B

 

	there is a wide collection to chose from I want to make sure I am making the right decision Thanks for posting !

[RogueShadow]

I recently got a NAS for our office and I'd recommend using hard drives from WD's Red series or Seagate's IronWolf series. These hard drives are built for server usage and are rated to be used 24/7. 

 

Depending on what you use your NAS for, you could get away with a regular consumer desktop hard drive, but if you are looking to have it running 24/7, definitely look into the server drives. You spend a bit more on them, but in the long run, they'll live up to their price. 

 

Just for reference, here is a link to the HDD I got for our office: https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX40403

[uprightguy]

@RogueShadow you beat me to it. I've got Two of the 2TB reds in my personal Synology NAS...and have used them at work. Good bang for the buck. My NAS has been running for about 3 years now. I think for the $ the WD drives are as good as you can get. 

[max668]

33 minutes ago, uprightguy said:

@RogueShadow you beat me to it. I've got Two of the 2TB reds in my personal Synology NAS...and have used them at work. Good bang for the buck. My NAS has been running for about 3 years now. I think for the $ the WD drives are as good as you can get. 

 

1 hour ago, RogueShadow said:

I recently got a NAS for our office and I'd recommend using hard drives from WD's Red series or Seagate's IronWolf series. These hard drives are built for server usage and are rated to be used 24/7. 

 

Depending on what you use your NAS for, you could get away with a regular consumer desktop hard drive, but if you are looking to have it running 24/7, definitely look into the server drives. You spend a bit more on them, but in the long run, they'll live up to their price. 

 

Just for reference, here is a link to the HDD I got for our office: https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX40403

what kind of NAS do you guys have ?

Is  64 MB Cache Memory enough ?

[RogueShadow]

7 minutes ago, max668 said:

 

what kind of NAS do you guys have ?

Is  64 MB Cache Memory enough ?

Re: 64MB, I'm not sure what you'll be using the NAS for, but I use it for network drives and FTP, and haven't had any problems with performance. 

 

For the NAS, we use the Synology DS218+. 

[AbydosOne]

19 hours ago, max668 said:

Is  64 MB Cache Memory enough ?

HDD cache is basically a non-issue. It make small writes faster (data get written to cache so the OS can move on to the next thing, then gets written to disk the next moment it's convenient) and can hold repeatedly accessed data (so the OS doesn't need to wait for the disk to come around to the right location again).

 

In my experience, the more cache a drive has, the worse it actually is, because they use cache to make up for slow platter speeds or other quirks. For example:

• a Seagate ST3000DM007 has 256MB of cache. It's a 5400RPM SMR drive (making it slow to do basically everything).
• a Seagate ST3000DM008 has 64MB of cache. It's a 7200RPM PMR drive (much better performer).

Both are 3TB drives, and I've (ab)used both to come to that conclusion.

[max668]

9 hours ago, AbydosOne said:

HDD cache is basically a non-issue. It make small writes faster (data get written to cache so the OS can move on to the next thing, then gets written to disk the next moment it's convenient) and can hold repeatedly accessed data (so the OS doesn't need to wait for the disk to come around to the right location again).

 

In my experience, the more cache a drive has, the worse it actually is, because they use cache to make up for slow platter speeds or other quirks. For example:

• a Seagate ST3000DM007 has 256MB of cache. It's a 5400RPM SMR drive (making it slow to do basically everything).
• a Seagate ST3000DM008 has 64MB of cache. It's a 7200RPM PMR drive (much better performer).

Both are 3TB drives, and I've (ab)used both to come to that conclusion.

so I was told that is better to get smaller drives and putting them in RAID 5 rather then 2 8 or 6 tb drives

whats your recommendation ?

I have 1 6 TB drive that Id like to be backed up automatically thats why I am building a NAS 

[AbydosOne]

12 hours ago, max668 said:

so I was told that is better to get smaller drives and putting them in RAID 5 rather then 2 8 or 6 tb drives

whats your recommendation ?

I have 1 6 TB drive that Id like to be backed up automatically thats why I am building a NAS 

If you're only looking to back up to it, I would go with mirrored 6/8TB drives in the NAS, assuming you're keeping the data also on the original drive. If you're looking to offload data (delete the original) to the NAS, I would go with three or four drives in RAID5 or 6 (respectively), depending on your level of data-integrity-paranoia.

 

On 7/8/2019 at 12:33 PM, max668 said:

I was considering buying this

The cool thing to do in the data-hoarding world lately has been to pull drives from externals (and making sure the drive doesn't get 3.3V, which is fairly easy). Drives are new and under warranty (even after removed from the enclosure).

[max668]

1 hour ago, AbydosOne said:

If you're only looking to back up to it, I would go with mirrored 6/8TB drives in the NAS, assuming you're keeping the data also on the original drive. If you're looking to offload data (delete the original) to the NAS, I would go with three or four drives in RAID5 or 6 (respectively), depending on your level of data-integrity-paranoia.

 

The cool thing to do in the data-hoarding world lately has been to pull drives from externals (and making sure the drive doesn't get 3.3V, which is fairly easy). Drives are new and under warranty (even after removed from the enclosure).

Reason why I am doing this is :

I always forget to back up my data. In fact it has been at least 2 years since I have backed it up

Id like to access my data remotely from anywhere