What's a good 2TB HDD these days?

[Quattro Pete]

I'm going to buy a NAS enclosure. Need to pick a 2TB sata drive for it. It'll be used mainly for streaming HD videos and music. Should I go for the newer SATA III as opposed to SATA II? Will that make a noticeable difference, or will the ethernet (gigabit) adapter be the bottleneck anyway?

Any suggestions for a specific HDD model? I'd preferably want the drive to not cost more than $120 or so. I'm looking at reviews at Amazon and Newegg, and they all have some share of negative/DOA reviews.

Also, does WD now own Hitachi/HGST? I didn't even know...

 

[RiceCake]

On an external NAS, which I'm assuming you're using over ethernet (and not eSATA), the performance of SATAIII over a SATAII drive is pointless. Actually even within an actual computer, SATAIII may not be that important a factor. Its to say don't worry about it.

SATAIII is more important for SSD's then mechanical hard drives, which are still notoriously slow and often don't take full advantage of SATAII's bandwidth potential.

As for what type of drive, think warranties. Seagate still has a 3 year warranty I think on most drives. The rest are one year the last I checked. A drive is a drive is a drive for a NAS, so if you want a fallback for if the drive dies, focus on warranty.

Of course, any drive can die: so back up your data. Nothing but regular backups will keep data safe. Regardless of what drive you buy.

As for what type of drive you can get pretty much anything. WD's "green" series of drives, Seagates cheaper drives, Hitachi drives, they're all fine. Avoid performance oriented drives; they run faster and have more cache but on a NAS, the performance difference is highly unlikely to ever be noticeable. They also often run a little noisier and hotter as they have higher spindle speed. They also cost more. Since you just want "storage", just get a basic disk.

Really, main concerns: warranty. Thats about it. If you can get it on sale thats a huge bonus. NAS storage is pretty slow all things considered and pretty much any drive will do wonders in the thing.

All I can suggest, is I know Seagate's disks had a longer warranty then others, which is nice if the disk dies. Of course, your data is always at risk without backups.

Happy hunting.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Thanks. Most Seagate and WD drives only have 1 year warranty now. The WD black drives come with a 5-year warranty, but as you noted, due to their performance they may be more noisy than the green ones.

Looks like Hitachi still has a 3-year warranty.

 

[OVERKILL]

The Caviar Green drives show as having a 24 month warranty in my pricelist. Caviar Red has 36 months, Caviar blue has 24 months and as Qattro noted, 60 months on the Black drives.

 

[demarpaint]

WD Caviar Black gets my vote.

 

[rjundi]

I believe the choke of NAS in cheap version is not network/HDD as much as processor involved with NAS.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: rjundi
I believe the choke of NAS in cheap version is not network/HDD as much as processor involved with NAS.

This is true. It is certainly true of my old Buffalo NAS. Even though it has a gigabit ethernet port, it can't transfer files faster than about 10 MB/s due to a weak CPU.

That's why I'm planning to buy a little better NAS this time around. Something like Synology DS213 with a 2 GHz cpu that was independently tested to read at 60 MB/s and write at 30 MB/s over ethernet.

 

[SLCraig]

I have a Seagate 2TB LP that I have had for quite some time now and I have had no issues with it. For data storage it works great, and its super quiet.

 

[Volvohead]

Yeah, the processor, memory and the NIC architecture can make a big difference with the NAS, depending on what you ask of it. Load one down with apps, and some can bog badly.

Also depends on how many clients are going to be using it, and how. Streaming MP3s vs. five timemachine clients makes a difference.

Synology makes generally a good line. A bit more plastic bits than some others, but fairly decent performance.

If you can spend a little more, the business-class Readynas is still the most reliable of the one's we've used. Netgear hasn't ruined them as feared. If you can accommodate aggregate teaming on your LAN, you'll get excellent throughput with them. Look at the driveless models. Just avoid the low end models.

If you're looking just for safe quiet storage in a 2TB drive, the Samsung F4 has been a very dependable, cool-running general storage drive with good numbers. That's presently a $100 drive. More dependable than the WD green drives. Don't know what you'll get now that Seagate owns them, though. Don't like Seagate these days.

Otherwise, the WD RE4 is my choice for RAID storage these days. That's a bit more $ though and a speedier and hotter 7200 drive. Haven't looked at Hitachi lately, but the last box of Ultrastars we bought are still humming along in hand-me-down service after 5+ years 24/7.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: Volvohead
Also depends on how many clients are going to be using it, and how. Streaming MP3s vs. five timemachine clients makes a difference.

It's typically going to be just one client at a time, streaming HD videos or music. No apps. So, given this, even this Synology one will most likely be overkill; however, I just don't have patience for slow network transfer speeds and seeing my gigabit home network seriously underutilized.

There is also a cheaper Zyxel NAS (NSA320 I think) enclosure that got good reviews, but somewhat slower than the Synology one due to lower end components obviously.

Thanks for the Samsung F4 recommendation.

 

[VicVinegar]

Well I bought two last year before prices shot up. One Barracuda LP and a WD Green. The Green was DOA and the Seagate has been fine. I don't have a use for the WD at the moment, so I haven't even RMA'd it.

 

[Volvohead]

One client streaming even HD video should be a piece of cake over any decent CAT5e or 6 GB LAN.

Most current NASes should have no problem handling that.

The Synology sounds like a good choice. I've never seen overkill last that long anyway.