Ideal HDDs for NAS device (Synology 1512+)?

[Baasha]

I have a Synology 1512+ NAS and it currently has 2 WD Caviar Black 2TB in RAID-0.

Right now, I have about 800GB free and so I need to get more drives for the NAS. There are 3 slots available so I was thinking I should just buy 3 more Caviar Blacks (2TB) and call it a day.

Those HDDs can be had for ~ $180 per drive and so for 3 it's around $540 + taxes. I guess I get 6TB for that but since I mostly store stuff in there (videos, movies, music, and pictures), I'm not sure I want to drop nearly $1k for drives to store stuff on. I already spent $440 for 2 of them since when I bought them a few months ago, each Caviar Black 2TB was ~ $220 a pop.

The Seagate Barracuda 2TB (same 64MB cache & 7200RPM platter drives) are $106 a pop! Why are the Caviar Blacks $74 more than the Seagates? I've heard some bad rep for Seagate but are they really that bad? I mean, if all I want to do is store data on there, is the price delta commensurate to the performance delta (if any)? On paper, both the Barracuda 2TB and the Caviar Black 2TB seem to be identical. What's the secret sauce to the Caviar Black?

Would appreciate advice on this. I usually go for the more expensive one just to feel safe but at the same time, I don't want to feel retarded for paying $222 more for the same $hit.

Thanks.

 

[n0x1ous]

I have a Synology 1512+ NAS and it currently has 2 WD Caviar Black 2TB in RAID-0.

Right now, I have about 800GB free and so I need to get more drives for the NAS. There are 3 slots available so I was thinking I should just buy 3 more Caviar Blacks (2TB) and call it a day.

Those HDDs can be had for ~ $180 per drive and so for 3 it's around $540 + taxes. I guess I get 6TB for that but since I mostly store stuff in there (videos, movies, music, and pictures), I'm not sure I want to drop nearly $1k for drives to store stuff on. I already spent $440 for 2 of them since when I bought them a few months ago, each Caviar Black 2TB was ~ $220 a pop.

The Seagate Barracuda 2TB (same 64MB cache & 7200RPM platter drives) are $106 a pop! Why are the Caviar Blacks $74 more than the Seagates? I've heard some bad rep for Seagate but are they really that bad? I mean, if all I want to do is store data on there, is the price delta commensurate to the performance delta (if any)? On paper, both the Barracuda 2TB and the Caviar Black 2TB seem to be identical. What's the secret sauce to the Caviar Black?

Would appreciate advice on this. I usually go for the more expensive one just to feel safe but at the same time, I don't want to feel retarded for paying $222 more for the same $hit.

Thanks.

Most Seagates are 1 year warranty whereas WD Black are 5 year. I would recommend WD RED (3 yr warranty) for your NAS as thats specifically what they are designed for.

they come in 1, 2 and 3 TB sizes.

 

[ronbo613]

I like WD Blacks, my computer is full of them(and RE4), but for NAS, I think Blacks are overkill, my Synology has WD Reds, they work fine. The price of the 3TB Red keeps coming down...

 

[Twotenths]

I am a devoted WD person due to their warranty foremost. When I have a dead drive I can contact WD and I give them my Credit info and they send me a new drive. When I receive the new one I use the same package and send them the failed unit. As long as they receive the bad unit they don't charge me any money. If they never get the failed drive then they can charge my card. I've done this twice and have no problems at all. The unit I get only takes 2-3 days to receive. They respond quickly. I also have a 2TB Seagate drive that I use to clone my drive from time to time as a backup and I've had no problems with it at all. You pay extra for the WD drives because of their superb replacement service and warranty period. As for reliability I don't think there is much difference between the two. I have approx 12 WD drives all are 1TB sata 3 that I run in Raid 5 arrays. If one drive fails then I put a new one in and rebuild the array. I have roughly 5 1TB sata2's on my old system that still run with no problems. One advantage is the support website that WD has where you can login to their website when an array fails and has the resources to rebuild your array. I have found that on a few situations the array has a failed drive but there is nothing wrong with the drive so you can just rebuild your array without changing anything. I just look in disk management and i will see a rogue drive unformatted so I format it and run a few tests on it. It always passes these tests so then i use it to rebuild my array again without any data loss.

 

[Mixolydian]

WD Red for NAS applications

 

[Baasha]

B&H Photo had the WD Black 2TB for $150 + free shipping so I bagged 3 of them yesterday only to see that the WD Reds are $110 on Amazon.

Looks like I should have waited and picked up the REDS! I will return the Blacks and get 3 REDS instead. BTW, if I want to do a 5-drive JBOD RAID on the NAS (acting as one usable drive in Windows), can I mix and match the WD Blacks (4TB that are in the NAS now) and the WD Reds (6TB) for a 10TB JBOD drive?

 

[Twotenths]

If you do a JBOD setup then you are limited to a Raid0 array and will have no redundancy built in. You risk losing all data if 1 drive fails. For a Raid5 or 6 all drives must be the same size or you will end up with wasted drive space because it will only multiply the smallest drive size in the array by the number of drives installed. If you have 2 1TB drives and 3 2TB drives you will only get 4TB actual in Raid 5 or 6 scenario. I have used Raid0 on previous builds and ended up losing all my data when 1 of the drives failed. I look for redundancy now so that if one fails all I have to do is reformat the failed drive and rebuild the array. Mostly all of my Raid5 arrays when they fail it is not an actual drive failure but a disconnection from the array of 1 drive and the drive is actually in perfect working order. I just go to disk management and find the drive that is not formatted then I create a new partition and format it. Then I rebuild the array with the reformatted drive and have no data loss. All drives must be the same size for a Raid 5 or 6 array to utilize all drive space effectively. The brand or type does not play a significant role in the array. The size of each drive must be equal.
P.S. When your create a Raid 5 or 6 array you will lose some space because each drive carries a duplicate section of the other drives. i.e A three drive array @1TB each will give you 2TB usable space. Each drive contains 33-1/3% of the other drives information. If you have a 5 drive array then each drive will have 20% of the other drives information. this is how when you lose a drive then the data lost is duplicated among the other drives. So in a 10TB 5 drive array you will lose 20% capacity overall. 10TB - 20%= 8TB total usable available space. That is the price of redundancy.

 

[beginner99]

Pro prebuild NAS that use linux software RAID green drives are perfectly fine too. However the reds are not that much more expensive so its a close call.

Besides that I don't see the point of RAID for home user for storing video and music. RAID is not back-up and if you have a proper back-up putting it back on the NAS will probably not take much longer than rebuilding a RAID array and it is only needed when a drive actually failed and not just a "fluke" in the RAID.

The advantage of the RAID (1, 5, 6) is that you can still offer a service even when a disk failed. However thats hardly important for home use.

 

[Twotenths]

That's true but do you want to take a chance and lose it all in a single drive failure. Raid1 is a total waste because it is a direct mirror image and will cost you 50% of drive space. So if you have 10TB in Raid1 you will only get 5TB usable. Raid5 was the best alternative but now Raid6 expands on the functionality of Raid5 and is more reliable. Doing a backup of the array will still create a very large file if you are using all 8TB of space. A backup is compressed but will still take roughly 4TB of space to create the backup.

 

[Twotenths]

I have roughly 385GB on my new system right now and I ran a complete system backup and saved it on a hot-swap drive using Acronis software. The backup image is 247GB so that means that it is not a 50% reduction of size. The actual image is 64% of the actual file size. Video files are even less compressible because they are already in a compressed format to begin with. To do a backup of a 10TB drive that is lets say 80% full will result in a backup of 65% times the 8TB used will give you a file that is bigger than 5TB. Running a Raid 6 array will only cost you 2TB of lost space. I think that that is a better scenario for redundancy.

 

[beginner99]

That's true but do you want to take a chance and lose it all in a single drive failure.

You only lose that 1 drive that. I'm not even taking about JBOD, just use the drive as it is (or is that not possible in those prebuild NAS?).

A possible alternative would be flexraid or snapraid.

Doing a backup of the array will still create a very large file if you are using all 8TB of space. A backup is compressed but will still take roughly 4TB of space to create the backup.

I agree. backing up large amount of data is somewhat problematic and expensive.
In my case I don't have a NAS just my pc and use SyncToy for back-up to external hdd.

In case of failure I just order a new drive and move the data back to the new drive. In the mean time I can just use the external hdd as source if I really need to. Of course if the external hdd fails at the same time the stuff is lost, but then it is just video files.

EDIT:
I'm taking about back-up not redundancy. The latter seems pointless for home use.

You can take the external hdd to your office, parents, friend, storage... then you are safe even in case of fire. This in replay to the second post. RAID is not back-up. If you are flooded or your house burns down its useless.

 

[Twotenths]

OK then somewhere along the line you have decided to keep all the drives individual and not create a single drive of them all shown as 1 drive. I must have missed something along the way in our conversation. Your original post that I replied to was asking about a JBOD system which is a Raid reference. You can run the drives individually but you will have a lot of drive letters. You will have to name each drive so you know which one to drop your files into. and worst case scenario you will only lose 2TB of information. Doable but still it might cost you 2TB of info whereas a Raid 6 array will cost you the same but you will never lose any information. It`s your choice and I was just adding my 2 cents worth of wisdom.

 

[beginner99]

OK then somewhere along the line you have decided to keep all the drives individual and not create a single drive of them all shown as 1 drive. I must have missed something along the way in our conversation. Your original post that I replied to was asking about a JBOD system which is a Raid reference. You can run the drives individually but you will have a lot of drive letters. You will have to name each drive so you know which one to drop your files into. and worst case scenario you will only lose 2TB of information. Doable but still it might cost you 2TB of info whereas a Raid 6 array will cost you the same but you will never lose any information. It`s your choice and I was just adding my 2 cents worth of wisdom.

I did not directly reply to you in my first post in this thread nor did I ever talk about JBOD.

It won't cost be any data because it is all backed-up on an external hard drive.

I do need more space than with RAID 5 or 6 (same amount as with RAID 1) but I can keep my back-up off-site (=my office at work).

Also assigning drive letters and naming a drive is not really big of an issue. sure takes much less time than managing a RAID:

I have found that on a few situations the array has a failed drive but there is nothing wrong with the drive so you can just rebuild your array without changing anything.

 

[Baasha]

As a quick update I ordered 3 WD RED 3TB NAS drives and installed them in the NAS device. They work great and together as "one volume", they have about 8.2TB of usable space.