Installing a NAS hard drive in a desktop

[Michael McChesney]

Is there any reason I should avoid installing a NAS hard drive in a desktop pc?

 

My current desk top has a 128 GB SSD and a 1 TB HD.  I have approximately 4 TB of video files on external drives.  I'd like to add a much larger internal HD, perhaps an 8 TB drive.  But the internal drives I see on the Best Buy website seem to indicate they are for use in a NAS.  For example there is the "WD - Red Pro 8TB Internal SATA NAS Hard Drive" for $361.99.  There is also a "WD - Red NAS 8TB Internal SATA NAS Hard Drive for Desktops" for $249.99.  While the second one says "for desktops" the product description and reviews only discuss its use in a NAS.

 

My understanding is that a NAS drive is designed to be vibration resistant, as it is expected to be installed in close proximity to other mechanical drives.  It is also expected to perhaps be more reliable and/or capable of more or less constant use.  If that's correct, it seems to me it should be fine in my PC.  Am I right?  Given what I want to use the drive for, do you think it would be worth the extra $112 to go with the Pro version?  Is there a different drive you might recommend?  I have heard rumors that it is possible to buy computer parts from stores other than Best Buy...

 

If I decided to go with 2 8TB drives and wanted the second drive to mirror the first, would I need to get a RAID controller or could I just set  the first drive to back up to the second?  

 

Thanks guys (and or gals).  This is my first time on these forums.

[AshleyAshes]

Wrong.  Desktop usage of NAS drives is known to cause explosions.  They're deadlier than a water heater exploding.   Similar to what happens if you try to use a Xeon CPU on any land that is zoned residential.  KABOOM.  Entire families have been KILLED.

[Mira Yurizaki]

A NAS drive is like any other hard drive, just with some firmware optimizations (if any) and other physical features. You can plug it into any computer as long as it has the right interface.

 

I also don't see a reason to not buy from Best Buy, but meh, some people have their reservations. If online is an option, there are plenty of stores out there.

[Michael McChesney]

Ashley, what can I say?  Who knows how many lives your thoughtful answer may save?  I am 100% against having my computer explode.

 

M.Yurizaki  Thank you very much.  

[seagate_surfer]

The main drawback with using a NAS drive in a desktop computer comes into play with error recovery. NAS drives are engineered to work in environments which typically use some form of RAID, so the firmware on the drive is designed to work with the controller so that when the drive runs into errors, it has a time limit on how long it can work on fixing the errors before the controller passes it to another drive in the array. This actually helps keep the performance spiffy (yes, spiffy is still a word) when used this way. However, as a single drive not in a RAID array in a desktop environment, this feature could cause errors on the drive to pile up faster than is ideal.

If your primary goal is a backup, then it's important to note that RAID is not a backup. RAID is designed to make it so that you can swap drives out which fail without having to take the whole system down to deal with it. For this reason, a NAS drive is probably not your best fit in your situation. Another drive from our lineup which would probably be a better fit is the BarraCuda Pro 8TB (model ST8000DM004). You could also go with an external such as the Seagate Expansion 8TB (model STEB8000100).

[LeGOaks]

Hi, Sorry for reviving this old thread, but I'm searching online for an answer for some time now and I can't seem to find what I am looking for. If anyone else is looking for a similar answer I believe it's better off in a related thread instead of a separate one

 

I've come across other people mentioning the error correction time margin that NAS drives have as a drawback and in general I get it, but I'm just not very clear on what exactly errors mean. Does it practically mean that your data gets labeled as corrupted because the drive can't read a sector in the time its firmware allows it to try? Or is the drive labeling a sector as bad before it is even used to store data? I suspect it's both, but I just want to get this right.

I like the idea of having a more robust drive for data storage since my PC in general is running at least 8 hours/day on average, but getting a corrupt file is never a good thing when you are not keeping backup for every single thing. I keep backup of crucial data (mostly job related) fairly regularly, but not everything on this drive will be getting backups constantly (some even none at all). As this will be a secondary drive I don't really care that much about performance, but mostly reliability/longevity, so am I on the right track looking into a NAS drive for this kind of use? I'm thinking of going for the Seagate Ironwolf 4TB in particular if going for a NAS drive.

 

Thanks in advance to anyone that might take the time to answer :).

[seagate_surfer]

Hi LeGOaks, 

first of all; thank you for considering a Seagate drive. 

To answer your questions about the NAS drives ... they do not block data that can be saved when it is a hardware related problem. But if it is a problem that is related to the software of the drive they cannot be saved. 

 

What is your purpose of having a NAS in your computer? Have you a heavy workload?

[seagate_surfer]

And welcome to the Forum!

[LeGOaks]

Well, I'm a sound engineer/small recording studio owner and I work a lot with audio for a living, so it's crucial that I don't lose any files related to that. My main drive is an SSD that I only keep windows and applications on. I use a secondary high end HDD to store the audio files on the fly as they are being recorded or processed (WD Black 1TB at the moment to be exact, which I will probably have to replace soon as well and shift that one to more casual use because it's been going for a few years now and it also used to be my main drive -any recommendations on the Seagate front btw? :D) and when a session is over I manually run a program that makes a mirror of certain folders that these files are stored in. I keep one copy on an external drive that I just turn on for backup and then switch it off and I also make an extra copy on a separate internal drive.

 

I'm thinking of switching that latter internal drive to a NAS drive. 4 TB is a lot for my current use so it will probably have a lot of other unrelated files too, but in general the intended use is mainly storage. I don't care that much about the random read/write that the NAS drives are supposed to be good at because all I can think related to that is the occasional torrent download/upload, and any backup will be happening manually as I said. My reasoning behind getting a NAS drive for desktop use is that my PC is running almost constantly and I believe this puts strain on a casual desktop HDD, even though the drive is not being used very much, while a NAS drive is meant to be running pretty much 24/7. Do you think that it's overkill to get a NAS drive for this kind of use? Losing a drive is always a pain and I don't mind paying a bit more for some extra peace of mind... I know that all drives eventually will fail, but I want to go with the more reliable option if possible, that will probably last longer.

 

 

As for my previous question, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying to be honest, so I would appreciate it if you could elaborate a bit on that. I will also try to rephrase my question in relation to what concerns me. Will the error recovery on a NAS drive make it more susceptible to data corruption in the event of a sector that's harder to read? Is this something that is a real concern actually?

 

Thanks

[ChrisPeacock1976]

Hi guys, I am a virgin poster and new to this forum.

 

I have an old WD MYBookLive NAS 2tb hard drive and it works perfectly (most of the time) and is used as a media server, however, It is nearly full and I am really scared that the drive will fail at some point int he future.  I know that the drive runs "Linux Apache" as the O/S.

 

My plan is to buy a 4tb or 6tb HDD (as the price is negligible) and clone the 2tb drive to the the new drive. Here comes the question part.....I have an old desktop with 8gb ram and an i5 processor sitting doing nothing, my plan is to put the new drive in the old desktop and use that as the NAS.  Will this work?.....I am not sure whether the O/S is on the hard drive or is embedded in the NAS and dont really want to waste the money to do this.  I get the other option is to build a NAS out of Apache on the har drive, but really CBA doing that, especially if (hoperfully) the Apache O/S is on the hard drive in the WD NAS.

 

I did, once, try to ask WD technical support this same question, but it was like talking to a brick wall.

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

Thank you in advance guys.

[seagate_surfer]

12 hours ago, ChrisPeacock1976 said:

Here comes the question part.....I have an old desktop with 8gb ram and an i5 processor sitting doing nothing, my plan is to put the new drive in the old desktop and use that as the NAS.  Will this work?.....I am not sure whether the O/S is on the hard drive or is embedded in the NAS and dont really want to waste the money to do this.  I get the other option is to build a NAS out of Apache on the har drive, but really CBA doing that, especially if (hoperfully) the Apache O/S is on the hard drive in the WD NAS.

 

I did, once, try to ask WD technical support this same question, but it was like talking to a brick wall.

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

Thank you in advance guys.

Yeah right! Why shouldn't it work? If you mean compatibility problems then do not worry, putting the new HDD on an old computer with certainty will not cause any incompatibility problems. Most likely, they have not answered you because you also sound like you are doing some hardware shucking at some point, that is, remove the HDD for use outside the case and that is not well seen before the manufacturers (Then don't do it).

Finally, regarding the question of where the RAID software is, if in the HDD or in the case? It is usually installed in the case and in some cases the data can only be read when the HDD is inside the case, that is, if you take out the HDD and install it in a different system and it does not work, it is because it is designed so that only it can be read inside the case.