Cant thank you enough for your videos. I’ve probably watched 8hours of your videos the past week... particularly the QuMagie vs Moments. I probably changed my mind back and forth 20X
I am so glad I found your channel. I am thinking about buying a NAS for home use - and with your tips I can make a much better decision. And you are really able to explain the topics well (I am a Microsoft server engineer, so the concepts are not completely new to me - only regarding the home use vs. the enterprise environment I am working with).
@@sto2779 Especially since the data is at risk of something going wrong during that whole window, and the error rate is per bit written at the low level so all that extra shingle shuffling ramps up the odds of an unrecoverable error.
One trick that could be used is to use differnt types of drives for differnt uses in groups, and use only those drives when defining the storage pools. Either in different slots on the chasis, or, if your NAS supports multiple external bays, in diferent storage bays. Using a DS1515+ (my NAS) as an example: Slots 1 and 2 are for SSDs, maybe in Write Cache, or read cache for two partitions. Slots 3~5 have NAS drives (say Toshiba N300) in RAID5 for VMs and Speed/Latency sensitive stuff. Then, on the first DX517: A bunch of surveillance drives Say, Toshiba S300 In RAID 6 And finally, on the second DX517, A bunch of normal Hard Drives in RAID 5 or 6 for media and non Speed/Latency sensitive stuff. Same Idea with, say, a 12 bay NAS. Just make sure that, when you create your storage pools, you select only drives of the same type.
Enjoy your videos as I am just getting started in setting up a NAS. My goal is to use it primarily as media storage (apx 2,000 dvd's) and some photos and other family videos. I just purchased a Synology DS920+ primarily because I wanted a minimum of 4 bays, but also wanted the ability to add expansion if I later need. Now comes time for drives. I have looked initially at getting 4x4TB's but then though about starting out with 2x8TB's, now after you video and learning a bit more about RAID, I am back to thinking starting out with 3 and then maybe a fourth 4TB. What are your recommendations as I am just learning this stuff and what to have my immediate needs of storage and backup, but also the room for expansion later if needed?
After just having two drive failures on my NAS within 2weeks of each other (luckily one each for a two-volume mirror), then I would argue that unless you are a muppet, the warranty is the only thing that is important. So 5 years is a minimum I would consider for any drive now. PRO NAS should be the only thing you should think about. 3Years is rubbish I'd have underwear that lasts longer. Sitting waiting for a replacement so the mirror can't be back to 100% is sleepless nights.
Could not agree more mate. Actually, this reminds me of a comment I replied to about an hour ago on RAID 5 validity (I know, sexy, sexy stuff lol) th-cam.com/video/FOCai32nT4Y/w-d-xo.html&lc=Ugyu7DD4QJdR9I-EBQN4AaABAg
New generation of Exos Mach.2 HDDs are a real game changer when it comes to noise reduction. I don't know how Seagate does it, but these dual actuator SATA HDDs are near silent compared to normal enterprise NAS drives.
Maybe a comment or mention about the internal drive cache that assists in the write optimizations or balanced optimizations... you can see the bias when you look at the drive detailed specs. (Im not talking about nas cache)... great tech vid and well grounded advice in this vid. Thank you.
mhhh not sure, I wanted to know about CMR vs SMR, the most important thing for me......I know by myself that in surveilance the drive will be constantly writing....
I have a follow up article on 'WD Red & DM-SMR - One Year On' coming soon which should cover your points more. But in the short term, I wouldn't use SMR architecture drives in a surveillance setup. SMR needs more idle time to reorganize the data on the platters (basically to rectify the shingled lays effect of the writing. If you do not provide the drives any idle time, the drives will have write issues later, as well as throw some roadblocks your way with RAID ReBuild/Re-Syncs later. Stick with CMR/PMR in your NVR system.
I have two 8TB Toshiba n300 drives in raid 1 in my Teramaster F4-210, the main reason i choose Toshiba is that they use CMR and SMR, but not sure if it really makes that much of a difference. i am thinking of getting a Teramaster DAS, the D4-300, no raid on that model, so it will be more or less like an external usb drive, but with four bays, so I presume I could use just a normal lower end drive and not a NAs spec drive, like the Toshiba p300 series, saying that the x300 series are not that more expensive, has a faster spin speed, but would it really make a lot of difference on USB3.1? Mmm.
I am planning on buying my first NAS and am also on a budget. Based on what I have heard here, buying a 4 bay NAS and buying smaller capacity HDs will be "cheaper" (e.g. 3x 4TB instead of 2x 8TB HD) giving me the same total of 8TB storage. My question here is, when the time comes that I need bigger capacity HDs, how will I do it? Let's say I need 16TB of storage now instead of just the 8TB I had when I started (3x 4TB on RAID 5 configuration). Please advise. Thank you.
Hi, good video as always! Do you have another video which refers to the different power consumption of Hard Drives? I am wondering whether there is a general rule or whether it is very brand and model specific.
I skipped the first ad and when the video started it bugged and played your entire 14 minute video in 1 second I feel like I experienced death and my entire life flashed before my eyes 😂
I just want a NAS at home for basic backups: 2 disks in RAID1, just for windows image backup and file history. Bought a cheap office PC, motherboard only has SATA 2 ports, do I really need to know anything about HDDs? :D As long as they're new, I figure they'll last with this low usage. Although they'll still be powered on 24/7.
Yes and No. They are good drives and give good internal performance HOWEVER if you install games on them(eg your Steam library) and the drives are in a NAS, you will need to make sure the NAS and PC are connected by greater than traditional 1Gbe/LAN/RJ45/Ethernet (the standard network interface of a PC). Make sure you use a NAS and PC/Desktop connection that has 2.5/5/10G connections ready
i also watch this video before i bought my HDDs Now i have a Iron wolf M.2 at 16200h and 97TBW and 8 EXOS X18 at 8100h. Just work fine. The SSD is sometimes a bit warm but nothing critical i think. 52°C
Good point about quantity of drives (x3 drives in RAID5 vs x2 drives in RAID1), but if you had 4x8TB drives, how would you upgrade to 4x16TB drives? Presumably that can't be done in-place?
No it would require making an image to a larger drive then installing new drives. Then load image over them. I had a 3 drive raid and one time windows failed. Just loaded image over raid array and booted up.
First Of All I would like to say THANK YOU for providing us very good knowledge about NAS & NAS Hard Drive and I would like to inform you that I am going to buy Synology DS720+ NAS and even going to buy Seagate ironwolf NAS Hard drive of 5400 RPM so, is it good Hardrive for this NAS? Please suggest me. Thank you
Hello @NASCompares, I found the video informative. Though, I have a question. I have Three 4TB Barracuda HHD drive that I will be using as a Internal Access Storage Drive in a 4 Bay DAS. I also want to get Four 2TB WD Red NAS for my personal editing PC. Using it to store edited videos and transfer it to my DAS. Eventually getting a proper NAS w/4 or 6 Bays. Then get 4 or 6 4TB Ironwolf or WB Reds Drives every 2 month as I max out the space on each drive. Turning that into a external access storage archive. Just need to know what you think about the set up? What RAID Configuration should work for each set up? Should HHDs themselves be more or less TBs?
It's very interesting your videos, the only thing is that a long video with only speaking non stop and not getting any graphs, slides, presentation, comparison and big conclusions is hard to digest.
Thanks for the great video, NASComares do you recommend enabling or disabling HDD Hibernation ? I have some Seagate EXOS drives with 2 500 000 MTBF but it does not give a start stop count rating in the spec sheet. I am using a Synology DiskStation DS1821+ 8 Disk populated, General NAS for file storage at home with photos, Plex etc. my current power on hours are 2088 but my start stop count is already 1372, this is with a 20 minutes Hibernation set, as the EXOS drives as designed to run in data centre 24x7 should I rather disable hibernation?, or should i get better lifespan by leaving it enabled?
OK, but will a NAS drive work in a PC??? I have a HP Z6G4 workstation, will NAS drive work inside? NAS drives are only a little bit more than a PC drive.
Concerning regular NAS drives vs. Surveillance drives: What when you start use to use a SDD cache or SDD with Qtier? Does it then still matter? Another option could be to have e.g. a 3 drive RAID5 in your NAS filled with regular drives and put 1 surveillance drive in there for your surveillance and create a separate storage pools on each. Or if you do not want to give up a that slot in the NAS, can you attach a single USB drive to the NAS for the surveillance application instead (just put the surveillance drive inside an USB casing)?
Hi. I’ve been watching your videos and they helped me pick a DS720+ now looking for drives. I had settled on 2 x WD Red Plus 4TB but although Synology lists some Red Plus as compatible, it’s doesn’t list the 4TB specifically, and their chat support couldn’t confirm compatibility. Does anyone know? Can I assume that if some Red Plus are listed as compatible, then all Red Plus are actually compatible? Many thanks for any advice.
Didn't WD have a lawsuit against them not too long ago with those red drives being unsuitable for NAS as they were SMR drives and not adequately labeled as such, as long as the drives you've got aren't SMR and are CMR you should be good
Do I need those expensive NAS drives? All I do is store video footage and I only download shots from it once or twice a month. 99% of the time it’s sleeping.
Some of the pro hard drives are the least noisiest (Hitachi MG, Ironwolf Pro), which is why silence enthusiasts specifically target them. Regular hdd's are noisy by comparison.
Yes, some of the pro drives, are so loud, they make a real real noise racket. I began using 5400RPM for a while only, as its whisper quiet and one can sleep in the same room as the NAS then. Yes, less performance, noticable for movies and database storage? Nope. Perfect for my configuration.
What would be best for me? We, basically just want a NAS for media (archive) so we can have movies, pic's & music so we can use throughout our home. It would be only used by my wife & I, using computers, laptops or our phones.......
Good advice, but too much of it. WAY way way too repetitive, and verbose. I'm from California; is that why this dissertation seem drawn out 10X beyond what's essential?
It would be nice to know what to do with replaced hard drives when you buy a new one. That is what I always plan for, a use case for the old hard drive before I buy one. I am coming from 4TB to 10TB drives btw.
Buy 2.5" 10TB SATA Exos, That way, at the end of their life, they can go on the NAS of a user with less demands than you, or on a laptop, or on a desktop (with a bracket), or on an enclosure as portable drives. Be mindful of reading the spec sheet in full, and avoid SATA 2.5" Exos with SMR.
The reason, why there are drives specified for different use is binning. It would be costly for the manufacturer to make each segment as standalone. Just like chips, not all drives are created equal. When a drive is specified for 5400rpm, it only means it´s unable to meet specs required for 7200rpm drive. Worst HDDs end up in external boxes, worst CMR HDDs end up as surveillance disks or compute units (if such line still exists). So, basically, a WD Purple is a drive, that couldn´t made it into WD Red line and WD Red (RED Plus currently) line couldn´t made it into WD Red Pro line, which couldn´t made it into WD Gold line, etc. You can use ANY drive in your PC - you can also use ANY drive in your NAS - that depends entirely on you. Telling people, that you have to pick a HDD according to your use is just a fall under manufacturer´s manipulation. Also check the datasheets, Seagate specifies all compute Barracuda drives to be used max 8 hours in bussiness days. Made me wonder about the drive internal quality, when i read it. I´m using a NAS-specified drive in PC, do you think it does not work? I´m getting sick of all SMR drives, that silently replaced all cheap compute drives. Yes, Seagate did this as well, a lot sooner, than WD SMR scandal happened. Eventually, every HDD will fail - it´s inevitable. If HDD fails within few days of purchase or arrives DOA, it does not mean it´s a bad quality drive, just a bad luck. Important thing here is to have backups, or even backups of backups.
In order for that to be true, HDD manufacturers would have to be putting out *huge* amounts of defective or subpar drives. I doubt that's the case. Yes binning happens, but there's no way that every 2nd or 3rd tier drive is a binned drive, that would basically mean their manufacturing process is terrible. Not just that but these lower tier drives still (usually) come with pretty decent warranties. Like I said, it definitely happens, but I doubt that every purple drive is a failed red, every red a failed pro, etc etc. They simply make too many for that to make sense.
Sadly I didn't watch this video before I bought a new NAS 3 months ago, my old DS214p died and I had to get up and rjnning again so inmh stress I bought a DS220+ and and soon after upgraded the discs to 2x16Tb Toshiba. I have now come go the conclusion I'd rather have a DS920 with 3x8Tb drives. That would also have given me a quad core instead of the dual core and possibility for SSD cache if needed down the line. Sure a DS920 doubles the price of a DS220+ but as you mention you will save that on buying 3 smaller drives ror a RAID5 instead of a RAID1.
All in all for home user / very small business that want to have a backup drive that is both as fast as possible and as large as possible - would it not be recommended to buy something like 14-16 TB NAS HDD instead of paying a couple of times more for the same size SSD or same size SATA HDD? Because generally [in theory] NAS drives are 100% faster that SATA ones. With the caveat being that you have to have a specialized PC motherboard with NAS slots - or buy an PCI-Express hub that will allow to use NAS drives with an ordinary mobo?
I got an Asustor NAS and 4 10TB Ironwolf Exos drives. Now I am replacing 1 due to relocated sectors via smart. Seagate didn't even ask for info before processing an rma. Gotta love pro level gear.
Old comment, but of course Seagate asked for info, they need your address to deliver the replacement HDD. On a more serious note, when you're support you learn how to tell who knows what they are talking about VS those who don't, but also, often the people for pro and non-pro support are the same, but the rules and QOS targets are different. By this I mean that for product line A there may be a question like "has it been retried after full format and firmware upgrade?" that is mandatory, while for product line B that may not be there. I used to be one of the people running the support for a storage brand, that's where I get this from. There is a whole lot more to it, like we would know if a drive is likely to have a specific type of failure behavior based on the serial number/PID/mfg date etc - it won't be communicated to the customer but it will show in the system once the unit is identified. So if you call describing a known failure type affecting a matching model and mfg date, there is no point in jabbering on further, we'll just replace it and call it good.
a question, so is it ok to buy a single NAS drive and use it for storage of say movies and a few other files for a single person that sometimes streams movies or stores files onto it. I ask because I use a raspi4 that has two 2TB hard drives connected to it, I want to use a single harddrive with its own powersource instead of a two Hard drives using USB3 adapters my raspi is always powered on so are the drives connected to it
@NASCompares Hi! Does a desktop PC support using an Exos (Seagate Exos X16 ST14000NM001G 14TB 7200 RPM) as HD without doing Raid like a individual SATA HD? I've been asking but no one has been able to answer this question so far.
Fantastic video! What are your thoughts on adding a large drive in my Dell Server and sharing that over the network? I know there's no redundancy but how would you compare that solution with a far more expensive dedicated NAS? The Dell is running all the time anyway for security so this solution would not add, really, to my power bill. Thank you.
I am populating a DS920+ NAS I have 2x 16TB WD Red Pro drives in bay 1 & 2 and I am planning to remove 2x 4TB WD Ext HD enclosure USB-3 drives to put in bays 3 & 4. Do you believe this is a good idea and will work OK? Set up in Synology SHR. Note the External HD's were being used in a WD My Cloud always on type set up.
I'm concerned about the noise but I still want to buy Pro harddisk. Then I assume that it would be better for me to go for a 2 bay instead of a 4 bay because the latter would be noisier?
I have just a standard Windows PC I have a physicaal D and E drives and a SSD boot drive with Windows on it. Are my D and E drives working all the time ? or only when I read or copy data to them?
Nice video but you missed the Enterprise HDD which are much better than the NAS HDD, I think Enterprise have special cooling mechanisms, sensors that detect and correct vibration, etc.
Great content, suggestion for future videos. Please add a written overlay for the math sections. E.g. The Capacity section with explanations of drives & config vs storage, "seeing" the math written out side by side could help. I can tell I was not the only one since the analytics say a lot of people re-winded back and forth there, which can get confusing.
Would be nice to put some numbers to the noise differences. I recognise that measuring noise is almost a science in itself but measuring a couple of the most common scenarios for Pro vs non-Pro would be helpful (with other things kept as similar as possible to make it a fair comparison). I'd rather get Pro drives if I can, but if I need ear defenders to make it workable then maybe not!
you know.... :-) I consider myself a non-pro as far as NAS... I mean, it is just ME (not multiple people accessing)... backup data, Music, Photos, Plex, .... But I swear my 1621+ has been running non-stop for months since I bought it. Between the various Indexing, Volume Leveling, Face Recognition, Thumbnail Creation, Data Scrubbing, Volume Expansion, Space Reclamation, bla, bla bla....... The constant noise drives me mad. I am always wondering, what the heck is it doing NOW!!! 57 to 60+dbA at the unit; 45dbA 4ft away where I am. which frankly doesn't seem like a bad number; but the noise is very distracting and I don't have an option to move it anywhere 😞
Db meter which about any phone can do now or if purpose built desired many devices to measure. Very affordable options. Another words like silencer testers that go ah its quieter than x. Then go well db testing is pointless. Which is not true. Going to pc builds, servers, and hardware noise comparisons. You would think tech guys would be all over.
How good are NAS apps (like WD OS5) at playing back Hi-Res music (say, FLAC or WAV) vs streaming services; such as Spotify, Tidal, or Amazon Music, playing at their max output levels?
I need to add storage to my Synology NAS 415+ I was going to put in a WD WD101EFBX 10TB Red Plus 3.5" 7200RPM SATA NAS Hard Drive can I vary the speed. my last drive was WD WD40EFRX 4TB Red 3.5" IntelliPower SATA3 NAS Hard Drive, I am a TV show editor and use my NAS daily. So can I get the first drive I listed? Thanks
Dude! how do I upload a picture? Just before watching this video, I had an "experience" with a Desktop drive (shucked from a Seagate backup unit) in my NAS. I just finished using the drive to backup my main volume, rebuild the main volume with 20TB WD Red Pro drives (looking forward to the iNAND performance), and then restore. I like running benchmarks, so of course I got the numbers for the new drives first. Afterwards, I tested all the older drives... with and without Write Cache Enabled.... One drive at a time, three drives at once, etc... I put this 'desktop' drive back into the DX517 and that entire volume puked instantly. Synology fella helped me get everything straight again but told me it had to be the drive that caused the problem..... ya right!.... Well, I took the drive apart and found flakes of something on almost every platter surface (in the same spot if you are looking down at the stack).... That seemed pretty crazy. Then I removed the heads and see tiny wire looking things sticking out as well as what almost looks like a flake/chunk of gold. Perhaps the benchmarks overheated something? SMART temps looked quite fine during all the testing.... Would love to send pics (have a video too). And to think - it had my data precariously held. I feel so lucky it waited another day to die. I've had many HDDs since the mid-80's; this is the 4th or 5th Seagate that has croaked on me (just in the past 5 years). Never any trouble with WD -- I had one drive at 54k hours runtime. I only removed it because the size was no longer of use. So now I have 2 WD Red Pro SSD for system volume (databases, main packages, temp files...); 4 WD Red Pro HDDs for Plex; and 2 WD Red Pro NVMe for cache 😀 It (1621+) is SO much faster than before! Now a question -- I have a 20TB UltraStar Enterprise/DataCenter drive (with same iNAND caching as the Red Pros). Since the WD Reds benchmark slower than the HC560, I have to wonder which is really better for my Pro-sumer self...? Seems to me a "Data Center" is going to have lots of drives side-by-side just like a NAS.... [I can't imagine the vibrations in a BackBlaze POD!!! yikes! and the noice in that room has to be deafening.] So it seems like the slightly cheaper UltraStar might have been an okay choice. You also mentioned Metal cases for the NAS making it louder. I wonder if you stick some of those silicon heat strips on the inside of the cover if it would help... I have used those to overcome rattles and hums in external enclosures. #geek #overthinker oh. btw. Thanks for all your informative videos !!
than 1 conclusion if i want to buy 2TB hdd to my home personal desktop for only data keeping (photos, movies, etc - because i have ssd-s for system and games) i shouild looking only for something like seagate barracuda or WD blue right? and what about rpm better 7200 or 5400 ?
After listening for 4 minutes, I still don't understand what is the objective difference between regular and "Pro NAS" drives. All sounds like marketing slogans. What is technically different? Materials? Bearings? Heads?
Remember you gotta pay electricity for more drives so less money spent while building the nas means not less money after using it for 3 years or longer....
I have a Synology NAS with 4 bays, filled up with 6Tb drives from Seagate Ironwolfs in RAID 10, gives me redundant HD space of 12Tb, and using teaming LAN to read and write. Nice setup. I use only Seagate NAS drives, because WD is implementing SHR in some of their red HD's which have less performance. And even loss of data, so be careful with WD.
You just have to know the product number of the WD drive you're getting, then cross-reference with the hard drive data sheet. I.E. WD EFAX products are SMR drives; EFRX are CMR; EFZX are CMR. EFAX is 256 MB cache;. EFRX is 64 MB cache; EFZX is 128 MB cache. Ironwolfs are definitely great drives, but if you'd have known this beforehand, you could have potentially saved money by buying the WD Reds, if their lower data transfer rates and URE rates are acceptable to you.
Cant thank you enough for your videos. I’ve probably watched 8hours of your videos the past week... particularly the QuMagie vs Moments. I probably changed my mind back and forth 20X
Which one have you chosen finaly? ;)
It's almost as if he's reading my mind. Need to move out of Google Photos? Here's a video. Wondering what disk to choose? Here you go!
I am so glad I found your channel. I am thinking about buying a NAS for home use - and with your tips I can make a much better decision. And you are really able to explain the topics well (I am a Microsoft server engineer, so the concepts are not completely new to me - only regarding the home use vs. the enterprise environment I am working with).
CMR vs SMR drives can often be quite important as well, especially when you need to write large files and move them frequently.
not "quite" important... more like "very" important, nobody wants to wait 9 days or more for a failed drive to rebuild using SMR drives...
@@sto2779 Especially since the data is at risk of something going wrong during that whole window, and the error rate is per bit written at the low level so all that extra shingle shuffling ramps up the odds of an unrecoverable error.
You want the same type of drives
So CMR for large files?
SMR drives just plain suck..............; end of discussion! :)
One trick that could be used is to use differnt types of drives for differnt uses in groups, and use only those drives when defining the storage pools. Either in different slots on the chasis, or, if your NAS supports multiple external bays, in diferent storage bays. Using a DS1515+ (my NAS) as an example:
Slots 1 and 2 are for SSDs, maybe in Write Cache, or read cache for two partitions.
Slots 3~5 have NAS drives (say Toshiba N300) in RAID5 for VMs and Speed/Latency sensitive stuff.
Then, on the first DX517: A bunch of surveillance drives Say, Toshiba S300 In RAID 6
And finally, on the second DX517, A bunch of normal Hard Drives in RAID 5 or 6 for media and non Speed/Latency sensitive stuff.
Same Idea with, say, a 12 bay NAS.
Just make sure that, when you create your storage pools, you select only drives of the same type.
Should i use a nas if i have a movie server?
Enjoy your videos as I am just getting started in setting up a NAS. My goal is to use it primarily as media storage (apx 2,000 dvd's) and some photos and other family videos. I just purchased a Synology DS920+ primarily because I wanted a minimum of 4 bays, but also wanted the ability to add expansion if I later need. Now comes time for drives. I have looked initially at getting 4x4TB's but then though about starting out with 2x8TB's, now after you video and learning a bit more about RAID, I am back to thinking starting out with 3 and then maybe a fourth 4TB. What are your recommendations as I am just learning this stuff and what to have my immediate needs of storage and backup, but also the room for expansion later if needed?
Thanks for the suggestion of buying less disk space with more disks to have the same equal space but less money!
After just having two drive failures on my NAS within 2weeks of each other (luckily one each for a two-volume mirror), then I would argue that unless you are a muppet, the warranty is the only thing that is important. So 5 years is a minimum I would consider for any drive now. PRO NAS should be the only thing you should think about. 3Years is rubbish I'd have underwear that lasts longer. Sitting waiting for a replacement so the mirror can't be back to 100% is sleepless nights.
Could not agree more mate. Actually, this reminds me of a comment I replied to about an hour ago on RAID 5 validity (I know, sexy, sexy stuff lol) th-cam.com/video/FOCai32nT4Y/w-d-xo.html&lc=Ugyu7DD4QJdR9I-EBQN4AaABAg
@@nascompares I just got an email from Seagate to ship back one faulty drive, so this is all good. :-) keep up the great content.
It depends. Sometimes the extra noise from the Pro drives really is a dealbreaker.
@@Un1234l I don't put my NAS in bedrooms so for me it's a clear cut choice.
New generation of Exos Mach.2 HDDs are a real game changer when it comes to noise reduction. I don't know how Seagate does it, but these dual actuator SATA HDDs are near silent compared to normal enterprise NAS drives.
Maybe a comment or mention about the internal drive cache that assists in the write optimizations or balanced optimizations... you can see the bias when you look at the drive detailed specs. (Im not talking about nas cache)... great tech vid and well grounded advice in this vid. Thank you.
When you put drives on a NAS, the recomended course of action is to disable the Write cache, even if you have an UPS.
mhhh not sure, I wanted to know about CMR vs SMR, the most important thing for me......I know by myself that in surveilance the drive will be constantly writing....
I have a follow up article on 'WD Red & DM-SMR - One Year On' coming soon which should cover your points more. But in the short term, I wouldn't use SMR architecture drives in a surveillance setup. SMR needs more idle time to reorganize the data on the platters (basically to rectify the shingled lays effect of the writing. If you do not provide the drives any idle time, the drives will have write issues later, as well as throw some roadblocks your way with RAID ReBuild/Re-Syncs later. Stick with CMR/PMR in your NVR system.
What brand do you prefer for long lasting life? In home NAS 2 IP cameras , media sharing ant thats it. Ironwolf Pro maybe ?
I have two 8TB Toshiba n300 drives in raid 1 in my Teramaster F4-210, the main reason i choose Toshiba is that they use CMR and SMR, but not sure if it really makes that much of a difference.
i am thinking of getting a Teramaster DAS, the D4-300, no raid on that model, so it will be more or less like an external usb drive, but with four bays, so I presume I could use just a normal lower end drive and not a NAs spec drive, like the Toshiba p300 series, saying that the x300 series are not that more expensive, has a faster spin speed, but would it really make a lot of difference on USB3.1?
Mmm.
I am planning on buying my first NAS and am also on a budget. Based on what I have heard here, buying a 4 bay NAS and buying smaller capacity HDs will be "cheaper" (e.g. 3x 4TB instead of 2x 8TB HD) giving me the same total of 8TB storage. My question here is, when the time comes that I need bigger capacity HDs, how will I do it? Let's say I need 16TB of storage now instead of just the 8TB I had when I started (3x 4TB on RAID 5 configuration). Please advise. Thank you.
Hi, good video as always! Do you have another video which refers to the different power consumption of Hard Drives? I am wondering whether there is a general rule or whether it is very brand and model specific.
I skipped the first ad and when the video started it bugged and played your entire 14 minute video in 1 second
I feel like I experienced death and my entire life flashed before my eyes 😂
Great video, what is best rpm speed for Nas hard drives
I just want a NAS at home for basic backups: 2 disks in RAID1, just for windows image backup and file history.
Bought a cheap office PC, motherboard only has SATA 2 ports, do I really need to know anything about HDDs? :D As long as they're new, I figure they'll last with this low usage. Although they'll still be powered on 24/7.
Is NAS good for installing games on it? Pls respond
Yes and No. They are good drives and give good internal performance HOWEVER if you install games on them(eg your Steam library) and the drives are in a NAS, you will need to make sure the NAS and PC are connected by greater than traditional 1Gbe/LAN/RJ45/Ethernet (the standard network interface of a PC). Make sure you use a NAS and PC/Desktop connection that has 2.5/5/10G connections ready
@@nascompares ok thx
i also watch this video before i bought my HDDs
Now i have a Iron wolf M.2 at 16200h and 97TBW and 8 EXOS X18 at 8100h.
Just work fine. The SSD is sometimes a bit warm but nothing critical i think. 52°C
Good point about quantity of drives (x3 drives in RAID5 vs x2 drives in RAID1), but if you had 4x8TB drives, how would you upgrade to 4x16TB drives? Presumably that can't be done in-place?
No it would require making an image to a larger drive then installing new drives. Then load image over them. I had a 3 drive raid and one time windows failed. Just loaded image over raid array and booted up.
First Of All I would like to say THANK YOU for providing us very good knowledge about NAS & NAS Hard Drive and I would like to inform you that I am going to buy Synology DS720+ NAS and even going to buy Seagate ironwolf NAS Hard drive of 5400 RPM so, is it good Hardrive for this NAS?
Please suggest me. Thank you
This is so helpful. Thank you!
Hello @NASCompares,
I found the video informative. Though, I have a question.
I have Three 4TB Barracuda HHD drive that I will be using as a Internal Access Storage Drive in a 4 Bay DAS.
I also want to get Four 2TB WD Red NAS for my personal editing PC. Using it to store edited videos and transfer it to my DAS.
Eventually getting a proper NAS w/4 or 6 Bays. Then get 4 or 6 4TB Ironwolf or WB Reds Drives every 2 month as I max out the space on each drive. Turning that into a external access storage archive.
Just need to know what you think about the set up? What RAID Configuration should work for each set up? Should HHDs themselves be more or less TBs?
If I have a 4 bay Nas with 2 WD Red drives set in a RAID for data storage, can I add a WD Purple drive just for surveillance storage?
I’d like to know this too!
On synology you for sure can . Just set your storage for surveillance station on the wd purple .
@@criminala2257 awesome. Thanks!
Very informative video, I'm debating between a Synology or TrueNas setup on an old PC for personal use
It's very interesting your videos, the only thing is that a long video with only speaking non stop and not getting any graphs, slides, presentation, comparison and big conclusions is hard to digest.
WD red pro vs gold, what’s your suggestion? Very close price.
Hi
Is there really much difference in their design that makes them more reliable, or is it just hype.
is it better to buy NAS just as a single HDD for video storage, instead of simple HDD
Thanks for the great video, NASComares do you recommend enabling or disabling HDD Hibernation ? I have some Seagate EXOS drives with 2 500 000 MTBF but it does not give a start stop count rating in the spec sheet. I am using a Synology DiskStation DS1821+ 8 Disk populated, General NAS for file storage at home with photos, Plex etc. my current power on hours are 2088 but my start stop count is already 1372, this is with a 20 minutes Hibernation set, as the EXOS drives as designed to run in data centre 24x7 should I rather disable hibernation?, or should i get better lifespan by leaving it enabled?
Did you find an answer for this?
great information, thank you!
great info, thanks!
OK, but will a NAS drive work in a PC??? I have a HP Z6G4 workstation, will NAS drive work inside? NAS drives are only a little bit more than a PC drive.
Great video 👍
Concerning regular NAS drives vs. Surveillance drives: What when you start use to use a SDD cache or SDD with Qtier? Does it then still matter?
Another option could be to have e.g. a 3 drive RAID5 in your NAS filled with regular drives and put 1 surveillance drive in there for your surveillance and create a separate storage pools on each. Or if you do not want to give up a that slot in the NAS, can you attach a single USB drive to the NAS for the surveillance application instead (just put the surveillance drive inside an USB casing)?
So you're telling me I can't buy the 4tb seagate barracuda hard drive in my Amazon cart rn and I have to spend $20 more dollars?
Should you mix pro hdd with standard nas? Say 2x4TB pros and 2x8TB stnd
Hi. I’ve been watching your videos and they helped me pick a DS720+ now looking for drives.
I had settled on 2 x WD Red Plus 4TB but although Synology lists some Red Plus as compatible, it’s doesn’t list the 4TB specifically, and their chat support couldn’t confirm compatibility.
Does anyone know? Can I assume that if some Red Plus are listed as compatible, then all Red Plus are actually compatible?
Many thanks for any advice.
Didn't WD have a lawsuit against them not too long ago with those red drives being unsuitable for NAS as they were SMR drives and not adequately labeled as such, as long as the drives you've got aren't SMR and are CMR you should be good
Keen to have a chat with you about your company, and the service. How can I email/call you?
be carfull about SMR harddrives i almost bought one when i still had regular harddrives
This video makes me want to go to a proper shootout with some proper men!
And we still aren’t talking about synology forcing us to use their own drives in their NAS
As I understand it, from the people I have followed on the topic, it is only the Enterprise range that will be locked to their own enterprise drives.
I don’t trust WD or Seagate drives. Far too many failures over the years to make me recommend them.
So which drives do you recommend?
@@saccityprince HGST and Toshiba are the ones I prefer when I need to use them.
1.5x playback speed seems to be the sweet spot...
I get that alot. Hurts the most when it's my wife sayin' it though
fix your audio please on all of your videos
The best NAS content on the web. You have helped me so many times. I am on my 3rd NAS thanks to you and it's running like a top. Thank you sir!
Do I need those expensive NAS drives? All I do is store video footage and I only download shots from it once or twice a month. 99% of the time it’s sleeping.
As always, a brilliant video. Thank you again. I'm learning so much.
Some of the pro hard drives are the least noisiest (Hitachi MG, Ironwolf Pro), which is why silence enthusiasts specifically target them. Regular hdd's are noisy by comparison.
Yes, some of the pro drives, are so loud, they make a real real noise racket. I began using 5400RPM for a while only, as its whisper quiet and one can sleep in the same room as the NAS then. Yes, less performance, noticable for movies and database storage? Nope. Perfect for my configuration.
What would be best for me? We, basically just want a NAS for media (archive) so we can have movies, pic's & music so we can use throughout our home. It would be only used by my wife & I, using computers, laptops or our phones.......
Good advice, but too much of it. WAY way way too repetitive, and verbose. I'm from California; is that why this dissertation seem drawn out 10X beyond what's essential?
Ran a cheap WD blue for 5 years in an Old ReadyNAS, it did eventually totally fail with no warning but that's what backups are for.
It would be nice to know what to do with replaced hard drives when you buy a new one. That is what I always plan for, a use case for the old hard drive before I buy one. I am coming from 4TB to 10TB drives btw.
Buy 2.5" 10TB SATA Exos, That way, at the end of their life, they can go on the NAS of a user with less demands than you, or on a laptop, or on a desktop (with a bracket), or on an enclosure as portable drives.
Be mindful of reading the spec sheet in full, and avoid SATA 2.5" Exos with SMR.
The reason, why there are drives specified for different use is binning. It would be costly for the manufacturer to make each segment as standalone. Just like chips, not all drives are created equal. When a drive is specified for 5400rpm, it only means it´s unable to meet specs required for 7200rpm drive. Worst HDDs end up in external boxes, worst CMR HDDs end up as surveillance disks or compute units (if such line still exists). So, basically, a WD Purple is a drive, that couldn´t made it into WD Red line and WD Red (RED Plus currently) line couldn´t made it into WD Red Pro line, which couldn´t made it into WD Gold line, etc.
You can use ANY drive in your PC - you can also use ANY drive in your NAS - that depends entirely on you. Telling people, that you have to pick a HDD according to your use is just a fall under manufacturer´s manipulation. Also check the datasheets, Seagate specifies all compute Barracuda drives to be used max 8 hours in bussiness days. Made me wonder about the drive internal quality, when i read it.
I´m using a NAS-specified drive in PC, do you think it does not work? I´m getting sick of all SMR drives, that silently replaced all cheap compute drives. Yes, Seagate did this as well, a lot sooner, than WD SMR scandal happened.
Eventually, every HDD will fail - it´s inevitable. If HDD fails within few days of purchase or arrives DOA, it does not mean it´s a bad quality drive, just a bad luck. Important thing here is to have backups, or even backups of backups.
In order for that to be true, HDD manufacturers would have to be putting out *huge* amounts of defective or subpar drives. I doubt that's the case.
Yes binning happens, but there's no way that every 2nd or 3rd tier drive is a binned drive, that would basically mean their manufacturing process is terrible. Not just that but these lower tier drives still (usually) come with pretty decent warranties.
Like I said, it definitely happens, but I doubt that every purple drive is a failed red, every red a failed pro, etc etc.
They simply make too many for that to make sense.
🤔 NAS drive is not saying it is Raid compatible , logic 101
Sadly I didn't watch this video before I bought a new NAS 3 months ago, my old DS214p died and I had to get up and rjnning again so inmh stress I bought a DS220+ and and soon after upgraded the discs to 2x16Tb Toshiba. I have now come go the conclusion I'd rather have a DS920 with 3x8Tb drives. That would also have given me a quad core instead of the dual core and possibility for SSD cache if needed down the line. Sure a DS920 doubles the price of a DS220+ but as you mention you will save that on buying 3 smaller drives ror a RAID5 instead of a RAID1.
Can I use a NAS hard drive to record IPTV? I use an app ( TiviMate ), that allows for recording TV shows and movies.
All in all for home user / very small business that want to have a backup drive that is both as fast as possible and as large as possible - would it not be recommended to buy something like 14-16 TB NAS HDD instead of paying a couple of times more for the same size SSD or same size SATA HDD? Because generally [in theory] NAS drives are 100% faster that SATA ones. With the caveat being that you have to have a specialized PC motherboard with NAS slots - or buy an PCI-Express hub that will allow to use NAS drives with an ordinary mobo?
backblaze begs to differ...
I got an Asustor NAS and 4 10TB Ironwolf Exos drives. Now I am replacing 1 due to relocated sectors via smart. Seagate didn't even ask for info before processing an rma. Gotta love pro level gear.
Old comment, but of course Seagate asked for info, they need your address to deliver the replacement HDD. On a more serious note, when you're support you learn how to tell who knows what they are talking about VS those who don't, but also, often the people for pro and non-pro support are the same, but the rules and QOS targets are different. By this I mean that for product line A there may be a question like "has it been retried after full format and firmware upgrade?" that is mandatory, while for product line B that may not be there.
I used to be one of the people running the support for a storage brand, that's where I get this from. There is a whole lot more to it, like we would know if a drive is likely to have a specific type of failure behavior based on the serial number/PID/mfg date etc - it won't be communicated to the customer but it will show in the system once the unit is identified. So if you call describing a known failure type affecting a matching model and mfg date, there is no point in jabbering on further, we'll just replace it and call it good.
You know everything about NAS, it’s insane, hats off 👏🏼
a question, so is it ok to buy a single NAS drive and use it for storage of say movies and a few other files for a single person that sometimes streams movies or stores files onto it. I ask because I use a raspi4 that has two 2TB hard drives connected to it, I want to use a single harddrive with its own powersource instead of a two Hard drives using USB3 adapters my raspi is always powered on so are the drives connected to it
Could you please make a video on synology mail plus?
@NASCompares Hi! Does a desktop PC support using an Exos (Seagate Exos X16 ST14000NM001G 14TB 7200 RPM) as HD without doing Raid like a individual SATA HD?
I've been asking but no one has been able to answer this question so far.
Please explain how to do automatic , scheduled back up of my C:drive ( certain selected work forders for example ) onto synology !!! PLEASE !
Google
Fantastic video! What are your thoughts on adding a large drive in my Dell Server and sharing that over the network? I know there's no redundancy but how would you compare that solution with a far more expensive dedicated NAS? The Dell is running all the time anyway for security so this solution would not add, really, to my power bill. Thank you.
I am populating a DS920+ NAS I have 2x 16TB WD Red Pro drives in bay 1 & 2 and I am planning to remove 2x 4TB WD Ext HD enclosure USB-3 drives to put in bays 3 & 4. Do you believe this is a good idea and will work OK? Set up in Synology SHR. Note the External HD's were being used in a WD My Cloud always on type set up.
Perfect timing! Just looking to get my first nas.
Just bought a pair one week ago. Ohh here we go...
I'm in the same boat :-( noisy HD,s just added
I'm concerned about the noise but I still want to buy Pro harddisk. Then I assume that it would be better for me to go for a 2 bay instead of a 4 bay because the latter would be noisier?
So if i just want to make a long term archival storage. Buying WD Blue drives would be enough than buying WD Red drives right?
I have just a standard Windows PC
I have a physicaal D and E drives and a SSD boot drive with Windows on it.
Are my D and E drives working all the time ? or only when I read or copy data to them?
Nice video but you missed the Enterprise HDD which are much better than the NAS HDD, I think Enterprise have special cooling mechanisms, sensors that detect and correct vibration, etc.
Great content, suggestion for future videos. Please add a written overlay for the math sections. E.g. The Capacity section with explanations of drives & config vs storage, "seeing" the math written out side by side could help. I can tell I was not the only one since the analytics say a lot of people re-winded back and forth there, which can get confusing.
So a surveillance drive would be good if you want ed to use NAS as a Veeam backup store?
Yes, until your first restore task. Then, those surveillance drives aren't so good anymore.
I keep seeing these "Water Panther" drives on NewEgg. Has anybody else heard of them?
Would be nice to put some numbers to the noise differences. I recognise that measuring noise is almost a science in itself but measuring a couple of the most common scenarios for Pro vs non-Pro would be helpful (with other things kept as similar as possible to make it a fair comparison). I'd rather get Pro drives if I can, but if I need ear defenders to make it workable then maybe not!
you know.... :-) I consider myself a non-pro as far as NAS... I mean, it is just ME (not multiple people accessing)... backup data, Music, Photos, Plex, ....
But I swear my 1621+ has been running non-stop for months since I bought it. Between the various Indexing, Volume Leveling, Face Recognition, Thumbnail Creation, Data Scrubbing, Volume Expansion, Space Reclamation, bla, bla bla.......
The constant noise drives me mad. I am always wondering, what the heck is it doing NOW!!! 57 to 60+dbA at the unit; 45dbA 4ft away where I am. which frankly doesn't seem like a bad number; but the noise is very distracting and I don't have an option to move it anywhere 😞
Db meter which about any phone can do now or if purpose built desired many devices to measure. Very affordable options. Another words like silencer testers that go ah its quieter than x. Then go well db testing is pointless. Which is not true. Going to pc builds, servers, and hardware noise comparisons. You would think tech guys would be all over.
How good are NAS apps (like WD OS5) at playing back Hi-Res music (say, FLAC or WAV) vs streaming services; such as Spotify, Tidal, or Amazon Music, playing at their max output levels?
Seriously great video man.
I need to add storage to my Synology NAS 415+ I was going to put in a WD WD101EFBX 10TB Red Plus 3.5" 7200RPM SATA NAS Hard Drive can I vary the speed. my last drive was WD WD40EFRX 4TB Red 3.5" IntelliPower SATA3 NAS Hard Drive, I am a TV show editor and use my NAS daily. So can I get the first drive I listed? Thanks
Even has the time to answer emails direct.. top lad.
Dude! how do I upload a picture? Just before watching this video, I had an "experience" with a Desktop drive (shucked from a Seagate backup unit) in my NAS.
I just finished using the drive to backup my main volume, rebuild the main volume with 20TB WD Red Pro drives (looking forward to the iNAND performance), and then restore.
I like running benchmarks, so of course I got the numbers for the new drives first. Afterwards, I tested all the older drives... with and without Write Cache Enabled.... One drive at a time, three drives at once, etc...
I put this 'desktop' drive back into the DX517 and that entire volume puked instantly. Synology fella helped me get everything straight again but told me it had to be the drive that caused the problem..... ya right!....
Well, I took the drive apart and found flakes of something on almost every platter surface (in the same spot if you are looking down at the stack).... That seemed pretty crazy. Then I removed the heads and see tiny wire looking things sticking out as well as what almost looks like a flake/chunk of gold.
Perhaps the benchmarks overheated something? SMART temps looked quite fine during all the testing....
Would love to send pics (have a video too). And to think - it had my data precariously held. I feel so lucky it waited another day to die.
I've had many HDDs since the mid-80's; this is the 4th or 5th Seagate that has croaked on me (just in the past 5 years). Never any trouble with WD -- I had one drive at 54k hours runtime. I only removed it because the size was no longer of use.
So now I have 2 WD Red Pro SSD for system volume (databases, main packages, temp files...); 4 WD Red Pro HDDs for Plex; and 2 WD Red Pro NVMe for cache 😀 It (1621+) is SO much faster than before!
Now a question -- I have a 20TB UltraStar Enterprise/DataCenter drive (with same iNAND caching as the Red Pros). Since the WD Reds benchmark slower than the HC560, I have to wonder which is really better for my Pro-sumer self...? Seems to me a "Data Center" is going to have lots of drives side-by-side just like a NAS.... [I can't imagine the vibrations in a BackBlaze POD!!! yikes! and the noice in that room has to be deafening.] So it seems like the slightly cheaper UltraStar might have been an okay choice.
You also mentioned Metal cases for the NAS making it louder. I wonder if you stick some of those silicon heat strips on the inside of the cover if it would help... I have used those to overcome rattles and hums in external enclosures. #geek #overthinker
oh. btw. Thanks for all your informative videos !!
Not sure if I should thank you or want to slap you across the screen bc I just went broke upgrading my system to the right NAS drives. 😂
than 1 conclusion if i want to buy 2TB hdd to my home personal desktop for only data keeping (photos, movies, etc - because i have ssd-s for system and games) i shouild looking only for something like seagate barracuda or WD blue right? and what about rpm better 7200 or 5400 ?
After listening for 4 minutes, I still don't understand what is the objective difference between regular and "Pro NAS" drives. All sounds like marketing slogans. What is technically different? Materials? Bearings? Heads?
Toshiba MG07ACA12TE for sure. Some of the best drives and super Price
Iam using a QNAP TVS473 for surveillance and media (Store movies/pictures) usage. Can I mix 1x surveillance HDD with 3x NAS HDD?
how about today's technologies? NVME SSD into NAS
Very informative as always, could I use 1 purple for surveillance and 3 red for data in a DS920+ 🤔
Yes, you 100% can. However I would NOT recommend mixing them together in the same storage pool (RAID).
Thanx, I was thinking of 3 pools in my DS920+
1 2TB surveillance 1 6Tb personal data and 1 pool w/2 12TB for media
What sort of opinion of these new Enterprise SSD's vs, Platter Drives, for long term use/storage?
Remember you gotta pay electricity for more drives so less money spent while building the nas means not less money after using it for 3 years or longer....
And even you can suggest me which NAS i should buy, I am also in IT field and in short time I will start my youtube videos.
How can 8 tb of redundancy cover 16 tb of data for recovery?
WD shipping normal drives as NAS drives was too shady for me to trust them.
bullshit. i have desktop toshiba running 7years 24/7. all ok ;)
Can I put a NAS hdd to my gamer desktop and run games from it well?
I start to own my own data after been dealing with monthly fee.
I have a Synology NAS with 4 bays, filled up with 6Tb drives from Seagate Ironwolfs in RAID 10, gives me redundant HD space of 12Tb, and using teaming LAN to read and write. Nice setup. I use only Seagate NAS drives, because WD is implementing SHR in some of their red HD's which have less performance. And even loss of data, so be careful with WD.
You just have to know the product number of the WD drive you're getting, then cross-reference with the hard drive data sheet.
I.E. WD EFAX products are SMR drives; EFRX are CMR; EFZX are CMR.
EFAX is 256 MB cache;. EFRX is 64 MB cache; EFZX is 128 MB cache.
Ironwolfs are definitely great drives, but if you'd have known this beforehand, you could have potentially saved money by buying the WD Reds, if their lower data transfer rates and URE rates are acceptable to you.