Best value drives for a NAS (8 bays)

asheenlevrai · December 21, 2023

Hi

I have several NASes (mostly 6 to 9 bays and a few smaller ones).

They all use "NAS grade" HDDs from either WD (6TB RED) or Seagate (12TB ironwolf).

I bought the disks several years ago after I learned that using regular consumer drives in a NAS was a bit of a risk (premature failures).

I also read back then that SMR drives were crap and that I should use CMR drives only. Now it seams there are newer types of drives (PMR, LMR, HMR, EAMR, ???) but I haven't kept up with the literature, yet.

I was a little disappointed with the Ironwolf drives (great price then but noisy) or the RED drives (slightly higher failure rate compared to the Ironwolf drives) but I guess that's what it is. Nothing's perfect nor lasts forever.

Now, I need to purchase a few more spare drives to replace the ones that I used but I'm wondering if I should keep using the same "NAS grade" drives or if other types could be smart alternatives. I'm not sure I understand the market segmentation for HDDs.

In the 12TB range, retailers in my region offer a variety of "enterprise" or "high reliability" drives from Toshiba (N300, MGxx), Seagate (Exos), WD (ultrastar), that are significantly cheaper than the WD REDs or the Ironwolf. Synology drives are significantly more expensive here...

Currently the cheapest option for me would be the TOSHIBA Enterprise Capacity MG07ACA12TE, which look promising on paper. The best price/TB would be Seagate Exos X18 here.

Do you have any recommendation, warning, or any kind of advice ?

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Best,

-a-

Ryker Robb · December 21, 2023

If your looking for the most reliable drives, enterprise class(wd gold/ultrastar, seagate exos, toshiba mg) drives are the way to go. Just be aware they aren't designed to be quiet. The toshiba model you mentioned is a good drive, i would personally go with that.

The synology branded drives are really just rebranded Toshiba's, so you can just ignore those if they're more expensive.

Ryker Robb · December 21, 2023

3 hours ago, asheenlevrai said:

I also read back then that SMR drives were crap and that I should use CMR drives only. Now it seams there are newer types of drives (PMR, LMR, HMR, EAMR, ???) but I haven't kept up with the literature, yet.

Pmr and cmr basicly mean the same thing, lmr is an older recording style, and is no longer used(and would still be considered cmr), *hamr, mamr, and eamr are new technologies that allow for higher data densities, but otherwise do not affect how data is layed out on the platters, and drives using them are still labled as being either cmr or smr.