Recommend Me Some Affordable, Worry Free NAS Hard Drives

pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 17:28

Well, it's time to update the good ship Plexstation 4000 to a bigger NAS. Her belly has grown fat from feasting on the high seas and she needs a wider berth when she docks, so it's time to unload some of her cargo hold and send her back to sea…

I currently have 2TB dual HDD's setup as a total 4TB drive (RAID 0??) and if I get a failure, I have a total failure. I now have a 4 drive QNAP NAS and looking to put in 4x 4TB and running it in a RAID 5 config to give me a total of about 12TB but at least this time with some redundancy if a drive dies.

I don't really care for write speeds, as I want this as a data hoarding drive and the good ship Plexstation 4000 will still be running it's own drives, but I at least want to move some of the "cargo" over that is not currently in use. I will also be using this as a home archive drive and "roll your own" cloud backup for the whole family.

What I would like is recommendations on what are good NAS drives to use in this project. They dont need to be 25,000rpm, 5gb cache and 500Tb transfer speed drives, but I want something that is most importantly, reliable. They have to be 3.5" drives (No SSD, no 2.5", no M3.2N something something…) and they have to be cost appropriate, so no Seagate Double Helix XR Datafarm Supersentry TriplePro AI Enterprise Edition drives. Also no Fengxing Double Coin Dragon drives. I know they probably make drives for *insert well known brand*, but I just dont want the hassle.

Current drives I have in the other NAS are WD Purple "surveillance" drives. Touch wood, I have never had an issue with them, but I dont know if they are still good, have read a heap online lately about how WD drives have "slipped" in quality, even for their NAS drives.

Also, no, I dont want 4x 18TB drives. It has taken me about 4 or 5 years to fill 4TB, so 12TB total should get me at least another 5 years. And yes, I know it's QNAP, but it's what I have used and what work uses and I got the chassis "very cheap", so no, I wont be buying a different NAS. :P

TL;DR: I need 4 x 4TB 3.5" drives for a new NAS build, what drives are the best value vs reliability vs performance I should get? And bonus points if you add a link to some good prices.

And a poll, because OzBargain loves a poll…

Poll Options

  • 1
    Seagate Ironwolf
  • 5
    Seagate Ironwolf Pro
  • 15
    Seagate Exos M/X/etc.
  • 6
    WD Red Plus
  • 7
    WD Red Pro
  • 0
    WD Purple (Surveillance)
  • 1
    Synology Plus
  • 0
    Fengxing Double Coin Ultra Dragon Pure Sky
  • 5
    "Other" (see comment)
Computing Computer Component Hard Drive NAS

Comments

  • Lord Fart Bucket on 28/11/2024 - 17:33
    +3

    WD Reds for me all the way. I have upgraded the drives in my synology and looked at how long they have been running… some were cracking on 7 years without a hitch.
    Edit: shouldn't have to tell you that raid5 will help you with a drive failure… but if your place floods/burns down, data is still gone. Offsite back up of all the important data (photos) is the way to go.

    • Devastator0 on 28/11/2024 - 18:54
      +2

      I'll also give a +1 to WD Red's. I've been using them for years with no issues. Very solid drives and they just work well. 10/10 Can recommend.

    • pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 21:56
      +1

      Fire, maybe a problem… and everything that is “irreplaceable” is backed up using the “3” media method. On a drive at home and 2 seperate cloud based storage (as well as just left on the original device).

      Floods… if the water level gets up high enough to flood my house, I’ve got bigger things to worry about than “data storage”.

      And Red Plus or Red Pro? I’ve had a good run out of my purple drives, but didn’t know if the quality was still the same after 5+ years.

  • spackbace on 28/11/2024 - 17:39
    +2

    Also, no, I dont want 4x 18TB drives.

    Well that's an L

    • Lord Fart Bucket on 28/11/2024 - 17:47
      +1

      Perhaps 4x 22TB then?

      • Axelstrife on 28/11/2024 - 20:01
        +2

        Nah 8x 18tb, with Unraid and 2 more for parity.

        • pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 22:00

          I tried to get the boss to give me their old rack mounted NAS and it has something like 16 drive bays and run RAID 10 or some shit… it’s old though and only has 1TB drives in for a total of about 8TB? I don’t know… all I know is when you open the rack case door, it sounds like a jet engine with a few bent impellers.

          • Axelstrife on 28/11/2024 - 22:18

            @pegaxs: I have 8 drives for a total of 118TB in my Define R6 unraid server in my bedroom and its quiet as.

            Real server parts are noisy which is why mine isnt a rack.

  • damow15 on 28/11/2024 - 17:50
    +2

    Also, no, I dont want 4x 18TB drives.

    You will one day, and you'll regret not getting larger drives sooner.

    • pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 22:01

      Nah, by the time I “need” larger drives, I’ll just buy another NAS and 18TB drives will cost what 2TB drives do now.

  • FoxJump on 28/11/2024 - 17:55
    +1

    If you're cheap get WD Blues,

  • zan5hin on 28/11/2024 - 18:31
    +1

    Your most affordable option would be to monitor facebook marketplace for someone who is selling 4x drives because they are upgrading to much bigger drives.

    Or buy one by one on eBay.

    Or new on eBay with eBay Plus - lots of coupon codes at the moment:

    4tb wd plus
    https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/175640337758?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mk…

    4tb seagate barracude
    https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/273179155693?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mk…

    • pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 22:02

      Are the barracuda and plus drives OK for 24/7 operation in a NAS? I thought these were for things like desktops/laptops and single bay external drives?

      • Liamhos08 on 29/11/2024 - 09:45
        +1

        I wouldn't recommend them. I used 2 in my raid that were from my gaming PC after I upgraded. After about 50,000 hours both have warnings for reallocated sector count so now I'm using ironwolf & Exos drives.

  • impoze on 28/11/2024 - 18:41
    +4

    Could get drives from East Digital HK

  • painkillers on 28/11/2024 - 20:18
    +1

    18TB is an ideal size at the current market. Get 3 for RAID 3 and add the 4th one later.

    • pegaxs on 28/11/2024 - 22:09

      I may end up going that way. I think you can run 3 in RAID 5, so I may end up going with larger drives, just less of them and add another one later.

    • p1 ama on 28/11/2024 - 23:57

      Yes, this - I would seriously avoid buying 4TB drives now, they will be slower (much worse latency), less cost effective, and will draw more power (more platters).

      18TB is definitely the sweet spot, if cost is of concern, and it's just a dump for content from the high seas, I'd rather just get a single 18TB drive and start from there.

      • Loopholio on 29/11/2024 - 09:12

        Also, go through your list of stolen booty. I delete anything I won't rewatch any time soon.

  • Lord Fart Bucket on 29/11/2024 - 06:25

    Few little things… don't buy 4 at once, if you get a bad batch (unlikely, not impossible), you're screwed. Different manufacturing months solve this. I replaced my 8 drives in my synology over a period of 3 months, a raid rebuild puts extra strain on a drive as well.

    • pegaxs on 29/11/2024 - 08:22

      This may even be the way to go… Start with one 18TB drive as it would be cheaper than 4x 4TB drives and just add to it as I go. 2x 18TB drives would be cheaper than 4x 4TB drives (in terms of TB/$$, not outright cost) and for redundancy I can just run them in mirroring and still have more storage than a RAID 5 with 4x 4TB drives.

  • Leiothrix on 29/11/2024 - 08:02

    WD Blue.

    5400 RPM. They are slow, but in this case that is a good thing.

    And as far as I can see 8TB is still the best $/TB.

    So get four of those and RAID 5 or 6 it.

    Then do it again because RAID is about availability it is not a backup.

  • skillet on 29/11/2024 - 10:26

    but I want something that is most importantly, reliable.

    You want protection first. So get yourself a UPS with a USB connection so it can communicate with the NAS. If you win the lotto then go for fully isolated UPS.

    You can always have a cheap NAS and backup to cloud coldstorage. It's pretty good insurance.

    • pegaxs on 29/11/2024 - 14:36

      All my NAS and networking units are on UPS. They are on their own separate UPS each and these NAS are on a UPS that will give them about an hour or so of run time in the event of a power outage (last time I had a power outage, the UPS said at the current idle load of the single NAS that it had 136 mins until power out).

      The UPS is not "linked" and I dont know how to link them to the NAS, but in the event of a power outage, it would give me time to manually shut them down and I can even remote shut down the NAS if I know there is a black out.

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