Best HDD for Synology NAS drive

[PJ1200]

As above really, does it matter which drives I purchase for the Synology DS212J? Just thought I'd check before blowing c£400 on a 2TB drive and server.

 

[Chisy1]

I'm on the look out for one of these as well. All the reviews I've read for WD, Seagate, Hitachi etc on Amazon and other sellers have people who are chuffed with them and people who have had real problems. So this isn't really answering your question but as a throw away comment I've read, and it seems to make sense, that you should buy from different retailers to minimise problems in similar batches.

I'll personally be going for 2TB Seagate drives, simply because they appear to be the cheapest of these familiar brands

 

[Chisy1]

Just realised your question might be more general and whatever drive youre contemplating you need to check this website for compatability

http://www.synology.com/support/hd.php

 

[PJ1200]

I'm on the look out for one of these as well. All the reviews I've read for WD, Seagate, Hitachi etc on Amazon and other sellers have people who are chuffed with them and people who have had real problems. So this isn't really answering your question but as a throw away comment I've read, and it seems to make sense, that you should buy from different retailers to minimise problems in similar batches.

I'll personally be going for 2TB Seagate drives, simply because they appear to be the cheapest of these familiar brands

Thanks Chisy1 - glad I'm not the only one!

Which particular drives are you using from Seagate?

I bought the latest WHF mag over the weekend, which has a small review of the DS212J, but it did mention that the correct drives need to be used...

 

[Anonymous]

No quality recommendations to give you; most drives outlive their production timespan, so by the time we have meaningful numbers on the quality of a particular drive they're no longer available for sale. Other than that:

- for a NAS you should be looking for drives that are rated for 24/7 operation -- which excludes most desktop drives. Going from memory, I only know about the Western Digital AV series and the Seagate Pipeline drives. Then again, a regular desktop drive might go for years without issue as well, there are no hard rules

- don't worry too much about disk speed. Even the highest-quality video stream in MPEG-4 is only 20Mbps, which is less than 10% of what the slowest drive can deliver -- and most consumer-grade NAS and home networks are not fast enough to really benefit from fast drives anyway

Current harddisk prices are very high, and will probably remain high for the coming months. Were I in the market right now, I would go for the smallest/cheapest drive that can hold my data, and start looking for a better drive in a year.

 

[PJ1200]

No quality recommendations to give you; most drives outlive their production timespan, so by the time we have meaningful numbers on the quality of a particular drive they're no longer available for sale. Other than that:

- for a NAS you should be looking for drives that are rated for 24/7 operation -- which excludes most desktop drives. Going from memory, I only know about the Western Digital AV series and the Seagate Pipeline drives. Then again, a regular desktop drive might go for years without issue as well, there are no hard rules

- don't worry too much about disk speed. Even the highest-quality video stream in MPEG-4 is only 20Mbps, which is less than 10% of what the slowest drive can deliver -- and most consumer-grade NAS and home networks are not fast enough to really benefit from fast drives anyway

Current harddisk prices are very high, and will probably remain high for the coming months. Were I in the market right now, I would go for the smallest/cheapest drive that can hold my data, and start looking for a better drive in a year.

Thanks tremon - appreciate the time you've taken to explain.

I understand all of the above, just about! Looking at the link above, it mentions 'Enterprise' drives are the ones to go for in order to benefit from the 24/7 timespan you're talking about. I note you need these too, in order to benefit from the RAID part of the equation (which I understand allows you to use two separate drives as their own entity, in order to do back ups).

So unless I buy two 'Enterprise' drives (which are compatible) I won't be able to backup my data on the separate drive???

Also note you're point about price and drive size to start with - good point.

 

[AnotherJoe]

The only thing you need to be sure of is that the HD is compatible with the NAS. As long as it is 2TB or less then it almost certainly will be. Drives > 2TB will only be compatible if the NAS supports 4K block sizes (most now do via firmware updates).

Modern HD's usually have a MTBF of 100K-1000K hours. Even 100K hours is 11 years !

Prices are currently around double what they were this time last year (if you can even find the larger sizes).

 

[Anonymous]

'Enterprise' drives are usually just that: they are intended for business use. That means higher speed, higher reliability, higher longevity and inevitably a higher price tag and higher noise level. If you can afford them, more power to you. The drives I was talking about were these and these (model numbers WDxxEURS, STxxxxVX and STxxxxVM). They are listed as "surveillance" drives in the compatibility list.

RAID is a separate issue. All drives can be used as RAID drives, it's just that WD has modified some of their drives slightly to work better in such a setup. It is completely counter to your understanding: it allows you to combine multiple drives into one disk set. With two drives, you would be using RAID-1, and this would automatically copy (mirror) the contents of one drive onto the other (visual explanation). If you want to use the second drive for manual backups you should not use RAID.

 

[fizban_UK]

I use a 411J and use 2*Seagate Barracuda's and 2* Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD's purely for redundancies sake as the likelihood of two manufacturers drives going at the same time is slimmer than using just one manufacturers and as i have them in a RAID 6 configuration i can just swap them out at any time.

 

[PJ1200]

'Enterprise' drives are usually just that: they are intended for business use. That means higher speed, higher reliability, higher longevity and inevitably a higher price tag and higher noise level. If you can afford them, more power to you. The drives I was talking about were these and these (model numbers WDxxEURS, STxxxxVX and STxxxxVM). They are listed as "surveillance" drives in the compatibility list.

RAID is a separate issue. All drives can be used as RAID drives, it's just that WD has modified some of their drives slightly to work better in such a setup. It is completely counter to your understanding: it allows you to combine multiple drives into one disk set. With two drives, you would be using RAID-1, and this would automatically copy (mirror) the contents of one drive onto the other (visual explanation). If you want to use the second drive for manual backups you should not use RAID.

I assume that I will need two drives in order to do any kind of backup (RAID or otherwise)?

The 'surveillance' drives appear to be more expensive than the 'enterprise' ones....??

Basically my PC is at the end of it's life! The Maxtor backup drive I have is no longer registering when I plug it into my PC (via USB - the light comes on but Windows says it's an unknown device) so I need to get something sorted pretty soon.

I am assuming the set up of this would mean plugging the NAS drive (with HDD in) into my router (downstairs), fire it up and then install the software on my PC. This will then enable me to save/backup all my music/photos/documents on my NAS drive straight off. I can then back up the stuff on the NAS drive (either on a separate disc within the drive itself or via some form of partioning??) and then delete all the documents on my PC, probably re-format the whole thing, and start again!!

Does the above make sense?

 

[nads]

i have 6 WD caviar green HDD in 2 NAS and two Hitachi that came preinstalled in another.

the HDD in all my PCs (the 2 I built) are also WG Caviar Greens

 

[the record spot]

Bought my Western Digital Elements 1TB HDD for £50 off Amazon last year and it's fine. No issues, very quiet, runs cool, USB connection only (mains powered though) and I think you can snag a 2TB for around £70.

 

[nads]

Bought my Western Digital Elements 1TB HDD for £50 off Amazon last year and it's fine. No issues, very quiet, runs cool, USB connection only (mains powered though) and I think you can snag a 2TB for around £70.

and inside them is a WD Caviar Green HDD

 

[PJ1200]

Interesting guys - thanks all for your opinions/views.

Looking at some of the 'Desktop' drives available, such as the ones mentioned above by WD, they are pretty cheap:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-6Gbps-Saving-Internal/dp/B004VFJ9MK/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1324368861&sr=1-1

£107 for a 2TB (model number WD20EARX). Seems good.

For a 'Surveillance' version (model number WD15EURS), it is quite a bit more:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-AV-GP-Internal-Drive/dp/B0042AG9V8/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1324369231&sr=1-1

£460!!!

Someone please explain the difference!??? Seems to me I might as well go with a couple of 500gb (or 1tb as price is pretty negligible) 'desktop' drives and install them; see how I last for the year and go from there, keeping an eye on drive prices???

I assume the discs are all I need? They easily install (or 'click') into place in the NAS drive???

Cheers all for your help thus far!

PJ

 

[Chisy1]

I'm waiting for some Amazon vouchers for Christmas to go towards buying the NAS but I've read that there are a couple of screws but these are only to secure the HDs firmly place, otherwise they slot in.

If you google DS212j review there are quite a few recent reviews (November) which review the entire NAS 'experience' from unboxing, setting up and using them. Some quite useful pointers.

.

 

[Anonymous]

Looking at some of the 'Desktop' drives available, such as the ones mentioned above by WD, they are pretty cheap: £107 for a 2TB (model number WD20EARX). Seems good.

For a 'Surveillance' version (model number WD15EURS), it is quite a bit more: £460!!!

Wtf... that's ********. Given those prices, I'd be using desktop drives too. :O

I'm using 2TB Seagate Pipeline drives (ST2000VM002), which cost me a whopping 80 euros a piece. I got them half a year ago. At that time, regular desktop drives were going for 60 euros, the cheapest enterprise drives (WD RE4-GP) were going for 150...

 

[Tonya]

FYI, for my home music collection I went for the NetGear ReadyNAS II running 2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda drives.
I usually use Samsung drives as they are deadly quiet in use (PC, film server, Sky+HD, etc) but the Seagates were part of the bundle with the NAS so I gave them a try.

The thing is that they are designed specifically to be used in a NAS setup and despite running at a slower than usual 5900 RPM, they format to the preferred AF4K standard and are lightning quick, produce less heat and are generally just great.

The NetGear runs Logitech's SqueezeBox Server software internally so no need to have your PC on to access your music files, so it's a perfect match for the Logitech Touch.

However, always check the website of the NAS manufacturer as not all drives are compatible with all setups.

By the way, here in Norway the NAS & HD came to £180 which I thought was very reasonable indeed.

 

[Xanderzdad]

As mentioned previously all HDD comfortably out perform any streaming needs.

I have successfully used the 'Green' variety which run at 5200rpm in my PC and NAS.

This gives a number of benefits: they are cheaper, they run cooler and most important for me - they are a lot quieter.

Even though they run at 5200rpm as opposed to the 7200rpm more commonly found they actually out performed all my HDD from as little as 3 years ago. This is due to the larger cache, better technology and denser packing of the data (necessary because the disk holds more i.e. 2Tb instead of 500Gb) and this allows the heads to cover a greater distance in a smaller time.

 

[PJ1200]

Well boys and girls (Happy New Year) I've taken the plunge.

Just purchased a 212j and two 2TB 'Desktop' drives:

1x Seagate ST2000DL003 Barracuda Green

1x Western Digital WD20EARX Caviar Green

Thought I would try two different ones out as advised here. Total price just over £350.

Now I just need to work out how to set up, transfer my data to one drive, set up a mirror backup (guess that is the RAID 1 config mentioned earlier?) and get my new Sonos 3 to point to it all and play my music PC-free!!

Cheers for all your help.

PJ

 

[Anonymous]

Usually, you need to set up your NAS before you put data on it. Many NAS systems require a complete wipe if you change their disk configuration.

boilerplate RAID1 vs backup talk, take from it what you will:

- RAID is a solution for high availability. It is designed to minimize downtime in the event of a hardware failure; it does this by making copies of the data, and spreading these copies over multiple disks. These redundant copies are always kept in sync, this is referred to as a "online copy". The upside of this is that if your disk fails, you can simply replace it and you never lose access to your files. The downside is that you are only protected from single disk failures. If you accidentally overwrite or delete some files, or if both disks fail at the same time, you lose your data.

- Backup is a solution to protect against data loss. It is designed to minimize the risk of losing data due to any kind of failure, and it does this by making copies of the data, and keeping these copies in a safe location. These redundant copies are never updated, this is referred to as an "offline copy". The upside of this is that you always have a separate location in which to access your files, even if the master copy is lost or corrupted. The downside is that recovering from a backup is always a manual procedure and you can not access your files in the meantime.

If you keep "backups" in the same machine as the original data, you are already not protected against some failures, like a fire or an electrical surge, but RAID does not protect you from software errors either: if you delete or overwrite something, or a program crashes and leaves behind only half a file, you are out of luck.

By all means, use RAID on your NAS, it's what it is designed for. But be aware of what RAID does not protect you from. Always keep an offline copy (external disk, stack of dvd's) of data you really care about.

 

[PJ1200]

Thanks Tremon. All makes sense. I'm sure when the drive turns up it is unlikely to be a seamless process! I'm sure I'll be scouring the net and be on here for further help!!

 

[tbodsworth]

I've been in the market for a synology NAS for a while can you please let us know how you get on with yours?