p.1 #1 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
I've been running a Synology DS412+ for the past decade or so, using 4TB Western Digital HDs. Looking to possibly upgrade my storage capacity. It looks like the WD Red Pro is the way to go? Any other suggestions? I heard the WD Red Plus is quieter than the Pro but that doesn't mean much to me, as long as the Pro isn't like jet engine decibel level lol. The Pro HDs sound more durable according to online reviews.
p.1 #2 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
I doubt any reviews can do much more for "durability" that repeat the mfr. specs for MTBF, TB/year, and duty cycle. Those are all statistical so matter most for large users of hundreds or thousands of drives. The enterprise drives are designed for heavy use for 5 years continuously. For example, WD Ultrastar DC, Seagate EXOS, and whatever Toshiba has as enterprise would be my definition of best. Ironwolf Pro or WD Red Pro should be fine, but the lesser versions are typically slower regardless of the RPM. I have about 60 HDDs is various arrays, mostly in RAID-Z1 (RAID 5) or RAID-Z2 (RAID 6). In the 2020s I've experienced more failures or received DOAs than before, but my sample size is still too small to mention. Be sure to do a full test of each drive after receipt. Then be ready for failures over the drives' lifetime.
One practical concern is that NAS is so old and slow that it will not necesarily even work with all the newer drives. Make sure there is firmware at least of a time when the drives were of the size you will be using.
Ming-Tzu wrote:
I've been running a Synology DS412+ for the past decade or so, using 4TB Western Digital HDs. Looking to possibly upgrade my storage capacity. It looks like the WD Red Pro is the way to go? Any other suggestions? I heard the WD Red Plus is quieter than the Pro but that doesn't mean much to me, as long as the Pro isn't like jet engine decibel level lol. The Pro HDs sound more durable according to online reviews.
p.1 #4 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
I switched to Seagate IronWolf drives after having premature failures with two WD Red NAS drives. I have used 7200 and 5400 drives and with a RAID the disc speed is not important but I found that the slower drives run 15-20 degrees cooler.
p.1 #5 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
EB-1 wrote:
I doubt any reviews can do much more for "durability" that repeat the mfr. specs for MTBF, TB/year, and duty cycle. Those are all statistical so matter most for large users of hundreds or thousands of drives. The enterprise drives are designed for heavy use for 5 years continuously. For example, WD Ultrastar DC, Seagate EXOS, and whatever Toshiba has as enterprise would be my definition of best. Ironwolf Pro or WD Red Pro should be fine, but the lesser versions are typically slower regardless of the RPM. I have about 60 HDDs is various arrays, mostly in RAID-Z1 (RAID 5) or RAID-Z2 (RAID 6). In the 2020s I've experienced more failures or received DOAs than before, but my sample size is still too small to mention. Be sure to do a full test of each drive after receipt. Then be ready for failures over the drives' lifetime.
One practical concern is that NAS is so old and slow that it will not necesarily even work with all the newer drives. Make sure there is firmware at least of a time when the drives were of the size you will be using.
p.1 #7 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
elkhornsun wrote:
I switched to Seagate IronWolf drives after having premature failures with two WD Red NAS drives. I have used 7200 and 5400 drives and with a RAID the disc speed is not important but I found that the slower drives run 15-20 degrees cooler.
So you recommend 5400 drivers because of the lower temps?
Based on their chart for Best Backblaze HD Models by Size, it looks like the sweet spot of sample size and reliability is the WD WUH721816ALE6L4, which is an Ultrastar drive. Never hear of these mentioned for NAS when compared to WD Red. So interesting stuff!
p.1 #9 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
Ming-Tzu wrote:
So you recommend 5400 drivers because of the lower temps?
Most of the Ironwolf are 7200 RPM also. However, they have some funkiness with the firmware or other issue that makes them about 3/4 of the speed of the Pro. Any He-filled drives are plenty cool enough. Today that usually means getting a drive at least 12TB in capacity although there may be some older 10TB He drives around. The smaller typically still use air and that consumes substantially more power. Just check the EXACT part number for the idle power in watts, which is ideally about 6W. For example the idle power of the Ironwolf pro on He are about 5.5-5.0W down to 12TB. The 8/10TB Ironwolf pro with air uses 7.8W at idle. You can figure out that is a large difference in heat since nearly all electrical power into the drive is emitted as heat. There are some small, older tech Ironwolf drives listed that use even less power, but are even slower and have worse rated UBER. Given the fixed cost of a NAS, I'd be looking at 12-24TB as a baseline in 2025 to have good capacity for the long run.
Realistically any good NAS will have fan speed settings including automatic that will keep the drives cool.
p.1 #10 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
Ming-Tzu wrote:
Based on their chart for Best Backblaze HD Models by Size, it looks like the sweet spot of sample size and reliability is the WD WUH721816ALE6L4, which is an Ultrastar drive. Never hear of these mentioned for NAS when compared to WD Red. So interesting stuff!
I have an 8-drive array with 18TB DC H550 but that seems to be obsolete or nearly so now. They were nice and relatively quiet.
The problem with Backblaze data is that by the time it is relevant the drives are nearing EOL.
You do have to be careful with the enterprise drives in that they are purchased from a reliable vendor. Some do not have an end user warranty and Amazon in notorious for questionable supply chains. BH is usually good and at least will take a return easily in the event of DOA.
Granted it's relatively cool and temperature controlled in my basement. I believe Western Digital purchased the hard drive unit of Hitachi since I bought these.
p.1 #12 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
Red Pro, Red plus, Ironwolf Pro, Toshiba X or N series... they're all CMR and all good NAS drives IMO. The Pro-level drives are indeed noisier (and enterprise-grade drives are even noisier) but different capacities also have different noise levels based on number of platters etc. (Red Plus 10TB are, for example, noisier than the 12TB version according to reviews and WD's own spec sheet). Pro-level also generally have longer warranties, but TBH they're all pretty long warranties and the nature of NAS means (or should mean) a single drive failure is not going to take down all your data.
I personally run WD Red Plus 12TB drives in my Qnap.
p.1 #13 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
I have a 12 disk Synology NAS. I populated it with 10TB WD Reds that were scavenged from new 'Bookcase' drives many years ago. I just looked up an Amazon order from 2019. 4 of them were just over $600. I run a Raid 6 configuration that can lose 2 drives and still survive but, so far, no drive failures.
p.1 #14 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
EB-1 wrote:
You do have to be careful with the enterprise drives in that they are purchased from a reliable vendor. Some do not have an end user warranty and Amazon in notorious for questionable supply chains. BH is usually good and at least will take a return easily in the event of DOA.
I agree with this... and also test the drives as soon as you get them. I bought a couple Toshiba 8GB retail boxed drives (rather than the ones you get in the generic Amazon HDD box in an antistatic bag) on sale on Amazon, but I sat on them for about a year because I didn't need them as soon as I expected. When I finally got around to setting them up, neither would spin up. I'm still sitting on them and unsure if I'll pursue the warranty. It's a bit convoluted, of course.
Since then I always test each drive as soon as I receive it. A while back I ordered a couple 18GB WD Red Pros from B&H and one was DOA. B&H was very fast to facilitate the return, and even paid for it, from Canada, which was very appreciated. I had bought them on sale and was initially offered just a refund because the HDD was on extended backorder. But I was able to get a replacement instead once the backorder cleared after a couple months. So yeah, definitely buy from a reputable vendor with a good return policy.
p.1 #15 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
With multiple drives in an array the speed of the drives is not important interms of overal read and write performance that is most affected by the OS, the CPU, and the amount of cashe available. QNAP with some of their RAID boxes provides for having standard hard drives along with one or more SSD drives can boost I/O speeds.
Electronics do not like heat. The burn-in period refers to the practice of putting electronics in over racks for 24 hours to see which failed with the thinking that it was better to fail during this process than in a critical server.
With negligible gain in I/O with the 7200 RPM drives in a RAID enclosure the heat gain made no sense and so I switched to slower drives.
I have never relied on published mean time failure rates for anything. There are server management companies that operate tens of thousands of drives and their failure statistics might be useful for someone with a large server farm. For use in a single RAID the operating temperature is more important.
p.1 #16 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
Personally I stick with WD Red Plus. I don't care about noise either, but I also don't need the speed. Red Pro are faster but they also consume more power. I'm not so sure they're more durable either. The main benefit is that they have a 5 year vs 3 year warranty, but my WD Red Plus have always lasted more than 5 years anyway.
p.1 #17 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
It seems like the (12TB+) RED Pro, Ultrastar DC and the Gold are very similar in specs now, with FW and some internal differences in parts. I'd probably get whatever is available at a reasonable price and has an end user warranty (check mfr. websites).
I just pulled older (2021) Red Plus 14TB drive and although 7200 RPM they are definitely slower than the higher grade drives. The low capacity means they will be repurposed for other use. Apparently you cannot even get Red plus in over 12TB now. So I would not suggest Red Plus unless you have low-capacity needs.
Many users underestimate the importance of CPU and NIC, which can limit overall performance, but that is another issue.
p.1 #18 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
I was using the Red drives in my two QNAP RAID servers but had too many drive failures and switch to the Seagate Iron Wolf NAS drives. I also was suprised to see that the 7200 RPM drives ran 20 degrees F hotter than the 5400 rpm drives. As I/O is primarily a function of the CPU and operating system and cache with a RAID setup I have moved to using the slower drives that operate at a much lower temperature.
p.1 #19 · Western Digital Red Pro the best HDs for NAS?
You might want to check the fan settings. I'm getting 34-39°C with 18-20TB 7200 RPM He drives in one of my Synology NAS with two 120mm fans at less than 600RPM, Quiet mode. It was writing 50TB of data to the HDDs over the past couple of days, so a fairly heavy workload.
My QNAPs are somewhat weirder to control the fans, but I'm targeting 800-850RPM. Most of them have Seagate HDDs, so they are naturally louder. Everything is a compromise.
