Best bang for your buck NAS HDD

[b0redom]

I've been running NAS for 20 years. I always buy whatever disks are cheapest. Think I've had 2 disks fail on me. Personally I use FreeNAS on a very old TS140 Lenovo desktop. FreeNAS uses ZFS under the covers, which means even if the hardware dies, I can just transplant the drives into any other box, and zpool import and I'm up and running again. I'm not sure if that is also the case with hardware NAS boxes.

I'm personally considering moving from spinning rust to all flash as it's much quieter, less power hungry and smaller, but it will require clearing out a load of junk I have lying around on my existing NAS just because I have terrabytes of space to play with.

[jamesbrown]

My Synology NASes have WD Reds in them. Worked flawlessly for years

Same setup here. WD reds and a Synology NAS, cannot go wrong. Well, I mean, as NAT points out, there will always be disks that fail and there may be bad batches too, so you may get unlucky and you should never confuse redundancy and backup, but WD reds are pretty bulletproof in my personal experience. Of course, you will probably find other people that have had multiple failures, that's just how it is with spinning disks. For a statistical assessment, you can look at the MTBF rating and workload rate, but don't take any of those numbers literally, they are really only an indication of (theoretical) relative reliability (and even then, you are best comparing within manufacturers).

Another tip: don't get the cheapest NAS you can find and get an enclosure with more bays than you think you'll need, because you probably will use them. As noted above, if you want a RAID set up, it's better to have disks of the same capacity, although not strictly necessary (e.g., Synology Hybrid RAID).

[ladymuck]

My Synology NASes have WD Reds in them. Worked flawlessly for years

[Protagoras]

I recommend a mixture. I bought a bad batch of WD. Probably made at the same time and failed within a few months of each other.

+1
I have 6 (identical) disks for my NAS and swap them out from time to time so that the hours-run counts differ significantly. Some years ago I'd 2 disks in a RAID5 array fail at the same time. Backups remain important!

[NotAllThere]

I recommend a mixture. I bought a bad batch of WD. Probably made at the same time and failed within a few months of each other.

[eek]

All that matters is price per tb - and then how the NAS works.

based on what you quote the Toshiba 16TB is the best deal - although I think the drives I need to install cost less as I bought them before storage costs started to increase thanks to AI.

[WTFH]

This might not fit your need, but I have a few Apple Time Capsules set up. As standard they are 2 or 3TB and you can get them second hand for not much on eBay. One is used just for music/films and is accessible by the TVs/Sonos. One is for photography and has limited access. One is shared documents. One is a backup of the Mac.

[Dorkeaux]

Obviously, this above can be looked at as £/TB and I don't have a view on that.
I'd buy the required capacity rather than pay more for lower £/TB.

I can say that I've had no problems with 2TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives.
The hours count on the most used one in my NAS is 58k hours with no errors, running 24x7.

The use case affects what drive you buy, obviously.

For example, if you are using the drive in a RAID scheme there are features like error recovery on many hard drives that can cause problems.
Also, in general drives should be of the same size, but different brands/models (in case there is a manufacturing defect common to multiple RAID drives).
All sorts f other things to look at other than £/TB.

If it's meant to be in constant use (like a PVR or security system) there are special drives that are designed for this.

For use as a single drive in a USB enclosure, you will be looking for performance and bang for buck, probably.

All kinds of stuff to consider.
There are some good recent reviews out there (Tom's Hardware etc.) that can lay this all out.

[Protagoras]

Obviously, this above can be looked at as £/TB and I don't have a view on that.
I'd buy the required capacity rather than pay more for lower £/TB.

I can say that I've had no problems with 2TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives.
The hours count on the most used one in my NAS is 58k hours with no errors, running 24x7.

[SimonMac]

Anyone upto speed with best value NAS drives, the three most popular/readily available brands are:

Toshiba N300 // 12tb = ~£240 // 16tb = ~£280 // 18tb = ~£340

Seagate Ironwolf Pro // 12tb = ~£265 // 16tb = ~£355 // 18tb = ~£390

Western Digital Red // 12tb Plus = ~£235 // 16tb Pro = ~££400 // 18tb Pro = ~£460

Is there a good price point for bang for your buck?