WD Red 2TB 3.5 Inch NAS Internal Hard Drive - 5400 RPM - WD20EFRX

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I had a slightly different experience from what is expressed here, though I’m not casting any doubt on the validity of the information. I have a Nimbustor 4, populated with 4x8TB, for 24TB of storage.

SATA – Despite it’s age, SATA still remains the most popular connection of HDDs in 2023/2024 (despite the rise of M.2 NVMe SSD use in NAS). SATA allows up to 6 Gigabits per second throughput. However, mechanical HDDs rarely exceeded 280MB/s. By 2023/2024, while SATA remains prevalent, advancements in connections like SAS, NVMe, and U.2, particularly in SSDs, have become more significant in enterprise settings. But more drives also means more power-use as you already indicated and also more heat. (more cooling might be needed) Second thing you’ll need to do is calculate how many disk you are willing to distribuite those “14TB”, always remember the more the better, cuz you will have more redundancy. More means higher throughput can be achieved and higher levels of redundancy can be gained making the setup more resilient when it comes to disk failure. https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS723%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trimBTW, also worth noting, the weight of the NAS might become significantly higher when you are using more drives (noticeable after 8x drives IMHO) When I originally set it up, it had two drives in it. It was kind of noisy but no more than I expected. When I added a third drive, the noise and amount of disc access was much greater than it had been. This change in policy is significant for users needing specific storage solutions or those accustomed to a broader choice of drives. It contrasts with other NAS brands, which continue to support a variety of third-party drives, including the latest high-capacity models. When choosing a NAS hard drive in 2023/2024, it’s crucial to consider not just the drive’s specifications but also its compatibility with your NAS system. This ensures that you can take full advantage of the NAS’s features and avoid potential compatibility issues. Personal use 20tb should be more than suffice. which is probably 4x5tb or 5×4 tb. 450-500 usd probably. All my photos from 2010 is only around 400gb jpg. and since current hdds are 4-5tb or so, yea I can manage to save more copies in more drives. The benefits of an internal SSD drive are the same as the external: They’re fast, they use less power, have no moving parts, and they’re whisper-quiet. The downsides are the same: For those benefits, you’ll be paying a lot more per TB of storage. That said, prices on internal SSDs seem to be more accessible than the external devices, so adding a terabyte or two is more achievable for a little extra effort.

An increasingly important factor when selecting NAS hard drives is their compatibility with specific NAS systems. Over the last 18-24 months, there has been a noticeable trend, especially with Synology, towards reducing the range of compatible, supported, or verified HDDs. Synology has shown a preference for their own HAT3300 and HAT5300 drives, somewhat limiting the choice for users of their systems. This shift marks a departure from the traditionally open approach where most NAS brands, including Synology, supported a wide range of third-party drives. These terms are essential for choosing the best NAS hard drive for your system in the context of 2023/2024. Next, we’ll examine different NAS hardware environments and recommend the best NAS hard drive for each. Best Hard Drives for an Affordable RAID 6 Desktop 6/8-Bay NAS – Seagate Ironwolf (non-Pro)I’m thinking about getting a DS423+ (home media server) and by doing my research i found this great channel and learned a lot about the NAS world. As of late 2023, the market has seen an evolution in storage capacity, with commercial hard drives reaching up to 22TB and data centers testing drives between 24-30TB. This increase in capacity reflects the growing data storage demands in both personal and professional settings. However, the abundance of options, with more than fifteen top-tier NAS and Data Center class drives available, can make the selection process overwhelming. In this guide, I aim to simplify this process. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of eight different NAS/Server architectures along with the most suitable hard drive options for each, updated to reflect the latest advancements in technology and market trends as of 2023/2024. This remote accessibility feature of NAS devices trumps traditional storage methods. Rather than carrying around an external hard drive or the best flash drive, you can securely retrieve files from any internet-connected device. Additionally, NAS devices can serve as a centralized storage hub within your network. Whether for work or personal use, every computer on the network can utilize the NAS as if it were an internal drive. This centralized approach ensures that even if one PC fails, the stored data remains intact and secure in the NAS. There is most certainly a clear design choice here to mirror that of the existing regular-class server drives on the market right now. The Synology HAT 3300+ series has been reported several times, not just here on the blog, to be built using Seagate Iron Wolf drive media with specific Synology firmware on board. Arriving with 180-terabyte annual workloads, 5400rpm, 256-megabyte cache, arriving in a CMR architecture and air-sealed – the specifications we see here are all quite standard. The 12TB benefits from an increased RPM and helium sealing, as per most 12 TB drives in the market, but apart from that the Synology Plus hard drive series are going to run quieter than most pro or enterprise-class drives, as well as have a slightly lower power consumption, but are also going to have a slight performance decrease than that of the HAT5300 and HAT3300. But that is only going to be of significance in larger RAID configurations realistically. Magnetic Recording – This refers to how data is stored on the platters. As of 2023/2024, there are several prevalent types: SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), PMR/CMR (Perpendicular/Conventional Magnetic Recording), EAMR (Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording), and HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording). Each type has its pros and cons, but PMR/CMR remains the most popular for NAS hard drives.

I know my PC HDD will one day fail. However, given a choice between losing a few days of data or paying 24/7 electricity for RAID… I’m prepared to accept the former. The differences between the Synology HAT3300, HAT5300/HAS5300 are pretty much exactly as you would find if you compared WD Red and Seagate IronWolf versus that of Seagate Exos and WD Ultrastar. Indeed, I am a little surprised that Synology has not introduced a middle ground in the form of a pro series drive, but perhaps this is something that will roll out later down the line. Nevertheless, this results in quite a void of performance, durability, and scale between these two ranges when compared to long-term established server hard drive ranges from these other companies filling the gaps of capacity and pro middle ground choices. It should be immediately highlighted that regardless of which Synology hard drive you opt for, you still benefit from firmware updates being actionable from within the Synology DSM software, easier and more streamlined warranty support, and firmware optimization that is specifically tailored towards Synology hardware deployment. We have discussed this at length previously when discussing the Synology enterprise hard drives and SSDs, and although you pay a premium for Synology’s own branded drives when compared to third-party alternatives that people have been using for decades, there are nonetheless merits in using drives specifically geared towards your NAS system rather than requiring a slightly broader design that suits more diverse servers. Here is how the Synology enterprise SATA, enterprise SAS, and mid-range plus hard drives differ in their specifications: Warranty Length – This is the period during which the manufacturer will repair or replace a NAS hard drive if it fails due to manufacturing issues. Warranties typically range from 3 to 5 years. Alls I’m a-saying is; we should be more graceful for synology support to their home/office/prosumer market all-the-while still politely reminding/nagging them of our desires/dreads (aka catching more flies with honey whether than vinegar).

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Rotation Speed – This indicates how fast the platters spin, enabling the arm/actuator to locate and write data magnetically. Business-wide you should replace your HD’s every 3 years (5 years, max) but for the average user at home, you replace when really needed. (or after 10 years?) In recent years we have seen Seagate reshuffle their range of available capacities to align the capacities from 1-12TB to arrive in the standard Ironwolf range and Capacities of up to 18TB and 22TB to arrive on the PRO series (likely due to those larger capacity options requiring the more enterprise hardware as standard and making a non-PRO version impossible without purposely nerf’ing the lesser drives intentionally. There is crossover in 4-12TB models in between, however, the distinction in RPM, cache, build design and TBW rating is wide enough to justify this. The noise level of the Ironwolf HDD series in PRO is noticeable higher, but given these are designed for larger arrays, this noise increase will be less noticeable over the ambient noise of the whole system generally. Temperature! A interesting paper published by a storage company probably a decade ago showed that the ideal running temp for HDD’s seems to be between 35 and 45 °C. Higher or lower temperatures showed increased failure rate. But don’t take this as gospel. However we do know that high temperatures are bad in general, and 40°C is a quite easy target for HDD’s. The drives themselves are fantastically dull in appearance of course, as one might expect from the enterprise tier and also feature quite an aggressive spin up noise. However, in much larger scale environments, you will almost certainly not hear the drive media over the ambient system fan noise. Overall still an oldie but a goodie!

Cache – This memory area on the NAS hard drive compiles and distributes data being processed by the disk. Larger capacity NAS hard drives typically have a larger cache, as do drives using Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), which requires more handling space due to its unique writing style. I understand that they dont add 20TB HDDs on the list if they dont have have their own supported HDDs go up to 20TB. In a company meeting someone might ask “could we go for 20? a simple NO is better than “well we could, but it’s not 100% supported” and then the whole mess would come up… in the end the boss would say “this is to complicated… lets go with another comapny” (welcome to corporate world). In the end it is mainly about certificates that you can hold up and say “this paper says it’s not my fault”.PS: Synology HDD compatibility includes many more/other !NONE Synology HDDs! especially on the newer NAS models Bigger means less power draw, less vibrations and less potential heat, less physical space used and more capacity. I hope you will be able and willing to answer my question. I have a DS218+ with 2 8TB seagate iron wolf harddrives. I want to have an upgrade so I’m buying a DS420+ nas and 2 18TB seagate iron wolf harddrives. My plan is to replace my 2bay synology to the new 4bay synology and I want to know if I can just put the 2 8TB drives into the new synology and then also add the 2 new 18TB drive in bay 3 and 4.. Bigger disks means less options for redundancy as you have less individual disks, less theoretical throughput and often higher cost because even though the cost per GB drops the amount of GB’s per disk is significantly higher. So.. can I just take the 2 older 8TB drives (in SHR) out of my 2bay synology and put them together with the 2 18Tb drives into the new 4 bay synology without losing my data or without having to figure out a way to transfer the data off the drives first.. I do not have the external drive space to temporary store 8Tb worth of data. I don’t really care all that much about any settings from my old nas, all I want is to keep all my own data safe when transferring to the new nas.