NAS Hard Drives - Before You Buy

[Music] hello and welcome back to another before you buy and today i want to talk about nas hard drives i want to tell you guys five very important things to bear in mind about network attached storage hard drives that you might want to know that may make you buy it or make you go oh i'm not interested so that's what i want to do today talk about those five things five very key bias concerns for network attached hard drives or just nas hddds so the first one straight away is understanding the difference between regular and pro series hard drives in fact dare i say it is very important to know the difference between normal hard drives and nas hard drives ultimately it's about having a tool that is better suited to the job so if you look at normal hard drives your standard barracuda wd blue these are hard drives designed for pcs that boot up boot down periodically do a bit of wordpress do a little bit of microsoft office do a bit of chrome shut the lid go those are standard what is arguably a single drive use scenario the reason nas hard drives exist is because a lot of the time people need to have large amounts of storage they have multiple drives working together in a raid maybe in the case of a nas they're spinning up and spinning down periodically or randomly and they'll be in systems that are on 24 hours a day seven days a week um for 52 weeks a year more and more and more what i'm saying is uh nas hard drives are a tool that designed for the job at hand in the same way the cutlery drawer at home has several different kinds of knives several different kinds of spoon you're not going to use a ladle to eat a yogurt are you and you're not going to use a bread knife to eat your dinner it's about having a tool that's best suited for the job and when it comes to regular nas hard drives and pro hard drives the argument is still very much there because regular nas hard drives are designed for what is arguably home prosumer and small medium business smb nasties that's up to about five or eight bays of storage this is when they'll be dealing with rate rise but generally the storage requirements the amount of capacity inside is at a certain level and then they tailor the internals of the drive the vibration sensors heat sensors uh rotations per minute cache and stuff like that to be more tailored towards that smaller more compact environment and by small i am comparing against rack mounts 10 base 12 base 16 base 24 bays arguably enterprise grade architecture ones where the vibrations high the temperatures are higher the drives have to perform higher for the demand and they are in chassis and systems which have got arguably higher powered memory cpus and more and external connections to boot so pro versus regular hard drives is important because it isn't just about the price tag arguably pro series drives are more expensive but that's because of uh high performing a more rugged internal hardware and longer warranties as a kind of guarantee of service against that architecture but if you are going to be utilizing a nas for more home concerns you don't need to go for pro series drives even on a you know a two or four value whatever device but conversely if you are using a small nas you don't necessarily have to not go for pro series drives again high performance um a higher warranty available on day dot higher cash they are just better performing drives so knowing the difference between regular and pro series drives is important when buying nas hard drives because one way or another you might end up buying drives that are not suitable to you the end user be it home or business so make sure you bear that in mind before you buy your nas hard drives the next thing to bear in mind is of course speed and i'm not just talking about how long it takes to watch a movie on your nas or how long it takes for a vm to be responsive speed is measured in many different ways and the reason i want to talk about speed in this video is a lot more to do with speed within a raid nas hard drive one of their defining characteristics is that they are to be utilized in a raid array that's multiple drives all working together and they're going to be on for long lengths of time we've already touched on this but a lot of the time nas hard drive manufacturers like wd red seagate iron wolf toshiba nas and more they advertise their drives to have a certain performance normally in read and write performance and in megabytes per second now this speed is basically for that single drive so you might see regular hard drive regular nas hard drives reporting about 160 to 200 odd megabytes per second transfer speed pro series drives you generally find it your 240 or 250 up to about 270 i think is the current max for nas pro series hard drives but if you've got multiple drives in a raid array four five six seven eight whatever it doesn't just take that speed of 250 megs and then go 250 500 750 1000 it doesn't work that way raid configurations depending on the one you choose because they've all got their inherent advantages and disadvantages each drive you add to the raid array will improve the performance in read and write across the majority of ray configurations but not adding the full performance so if you're using regular nas hard drives again wd red seagate iron wolf then you will generally get that figure of around 160 to 200 megs for the first drive and then it will increase around 50 to 70 megs per drive you add so each drive you add will improve that performance now that isn't a stone cold figure the raid configuration you choose the cpu inside that nas and the number of drives maximum and the external uh interface will make a difference but generally as a rule of thumb regular nas hard drives you're looking at 50 to 70 meg with each added drive now with pro series drives it is slightly different pro series drives again giving between 240 and 270 megs per second they will add around about 80 to 120 megs extra per drive that you add again the ray configuration and the architecture of the nas inside will make a difference but bear in mind the speed you're looking at for an as hard drive isn't just one drive at 200 megs five drives extra thousands it's not that way the drives in the raid configuration and the architecture of the nas will dictate the majority of the overall performance you're going to get from those drives so know that about the speed and don't just do bog standard maths you've got to think about the raid and all the other bits in between another really important buying point for a number of you out there that are looking to populate a nas with hard drives is about the difference between capacity and the number of drives conversely the number of hard drives you put inside a nas doesn't necessarily dictate that you're going to get the most storage in fact some raid configurations tailor more towards safety and redundancy or a safety net than they do about capacity a classic example being raid one where you end up with two hard drives which are effectively the same data being read and written consequently you're only going to get one drive worth capacity because they're both using the same amount of data now you can use this to your advantage to actually get more capacity for your money ultimately more terabytes per pound or per dollar so in the case of say 8 tb drives a standard 8 tb hard drive knocks around for about 170 275 quid and that is vaguely on average between sega iron wolf and wd red and that's for 8 terabytes now twice that or a 16 terabyte drive knocks around for about 350 to 360 quid so effectively double twice the capacity for twice the price and you're thinking well that's fair and well it's about the same price per terabyte what's the problem well if you get two 16 tb drives you're going to be spending about 700 quid and you're going to get 16 terabytes in that raid one environment you've got two 16 tb drives about 350 a pop so you've spent 700 quid but you're only gonna get one driver capacity but if you bought eight tb drives and you bought three 8 tb drives that's going to cost you about 520 530 nicker but you are going to get for the lesser money 16 tb of storage in a raid 5 because you've got three drives one disc is redundancy so you've got eight and eight you've got 16 tb so you've spent close to 200 quid less for the same storage and that's important because when you're buying hard drives if you're feeling a four bay nas you can afford to buy smaller drives to get the same capacity as if you bought fewer of the bigger hard drives newer hard drives always seemingly arrive at a higher price tag so if you're buying a two-bay nas and you've got a certain budget and you're looking at bigger hard drives all too often it's easier to scale down the hard drives save a bit of money and buy a four-bay nas rather than a two-bay and the same logic does apply to four up to six bay up to eight bay and more so remember that when buying nas hard drives that there's a good chance that you can make a saving and improve the nas and that money can go into the cpu and memory and maybe 10 g and more buy lessering the hard drives but getting more hard drive capacity versus quantity bear that in mind another feature that so so many people seemingly overlook when it comes to buying the hard drives in their nas is about noise i talk about on the channel at least once a week in one video or another the noise of more enterprise grade hard drives is noticeable and i'm talking about the pros i'm talking about ironwolf pro i'm talking about wd red pro i'm talking about ultra style i'm talking about exos i'm talking about pro series drives some pro series drives are noisier than others but ultimately regular hard drives do not make as much noise as pro series hard drives and by noise i mean clicks hums words vibration that is because enterprise-grade hard drives are designed in a far more enterprise way they've got a higher rotations per minute rpm they have a higher cache to have more data pulling through them which makes the arm and the actuator that the arm that reads the platter the mechanical rotating discs inside make that clicks and hums and the worse all together inside that moreover more enterprise grade hard drives in metal nas chassis also amplify and multiply the noise even more so so if you're in close proximity to a nas or the nas is on metal stanction or wobbly furniture it will amplify that noise dramatically so you have to bear in mind that if you are going down the road of buying more pro series hard drives because of their more enterprise and more rugged design they will produce more clix hums and worse which could be amplified by the ambient hardware around them so bear that in mind when choosing nas hard drives from pro or standard classes finally a point that i do highlight i would say at least every three months whenever i talk about anything to do with surveillance if you're going to buy drives for a nas and you intend to use that nas for surveillance cctv or as a standalone nvr network video recorder then you should think about surveillance hard drives rather than nas hard drives now as a rule of thumb i've always stated that if you're going to use your nas for both standard network attached storage data sharing and surveillance go for nas hard drives and if you're going to use it for 90 or above for surveillance buy surveillance hard drives such as seagate skyhawk and wd purple the reason being that the surveillance and general nas use although at a glance seeing the same have actually very different processes internally now surveillance hard drives are spending more than 90 to 95 of their time writing they are connected to one or more cameras in your home or business environment each one of those cameras is sending a camera feed sometimes multiple with multiple streams all to the nas which is writing data constantly to the disk just writing writing writing even if you have a rotational recording pattern where every two weeks the oldest data is written over by the new data that just means the disks are constantly constantly working never idle always writing but from time to time you'll get an alert on your phone you'll check periodically what what time larry from the warehouse went home one way or another you're going to access the nas that is that rare occasion comparatively that you're reading you are accessing the contents of those drives consequently surveillance hard drives are designed with far far more of their architecture leveraged and leaning towards right than they are read and that's why surveillance hard drives much like our point about tailored hard drives are suitable for nazis in surveillance situations whereas nas hard drives have a better balance of read and write and not just read and write but random access and i mean random in a sec random and sequential data reading and general nas access externally by connected users what i'm saying is nas hard drives have a better balancing act of read and write as needed or surveillance hard drives they tip the scales heavily towards right so that's why you should look at how you're going to use the nas then by the media because you might buy the wrong media for your needs and if you end up buying non now suitable uh sorry non-surveillance suitable nas drives for a nas then although it's not going to fall apart those drives are not going to be geared perfectly to what you're trying to do and you may have spent money in a way that would have been better if with a little bit more thought for but these are things to remember before buying nas hard drives if you've got any things that i've missed out on or maybe mistakes that you've made along the way that you think other people should know let me in the comments we can always do a follow-up click like if you enjoyed the video if you subscribe to learn more and visit the links in the description for the best nas hard drives to buy for your needs thank you so much for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 87,726

Keywords: wd colors, WD Colours, WD Purple, WD Re, WD Red, WD Blue vs WD Black, WD Red vs WD Gold, WD Red vs WD Purple, WD Red vs WD Green, WD HDD Guide, Western Digital Hard Drive Guide, WD Red NAS, WD Purple Surveillance, WD Gold vs WD Red Pro, WD Red Pro vs WD Gold, wd hdd black, WD HDD RED, wd red smr, wd gold drive, wd red drive, seagate NAS hard drive, Seagate Ironwolf, Seagate Ironwolf vs WD RED, WD Red vs Seagate ironwolf, nas hard drives, nas hard drives vs regular

Id: MqQ8MVDcYA0

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021