Hard Drives for Storage Server

[Dahak]

So being as picky and cheap as I am 🙂 Im trying to decide what drives to get for my storage server rebuild

Looking to get either 4x3TB or 4X4TB, but the question is if i should go with the "Nas" drives or the normal drives.

depending on the drive, they can be anywhere from $60-$130 between them

the storage server will be either build with Windows Storage Spaces or FreeNas/Nas4Free

 

[Elixer]

What are 'normal' drives, are you talking about WD green or blue, or are we talking about WD black drives ?

I have seen them all used for NAS, so, the biggest factor to you seems price. As long as you have a good backup strategy, then, you can get whatever.
You can read some info about using 'consumer' HDs used in data center here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
If this is for a business, with mission critical data, then I would pony up for the WD SE drives.

 

[Compman55]

Hitachi, I wish I did....... Not that the seagate's I bought are bad, but if you search my user name, you will find a link to an awsome review that a member posted.

 

[Dahak]

Normal as in the non NAS flavor, just the regular desktop drives like
TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 or the seagate desktop drives, WD black or WD blues

Not for mission critial, home use, media, laptop backup, iso storage for work

And nothing against that backblaze post, but ive read that before and seen it till am blue in the face 🙂
but it would help if they had a new version of that post with some newer drives.

If I use the same basic principle, off the top of my had I have had 4 wd drives that never failed 1 of 3 hgst drives that failed, 2 out of 5 seagate drives failed.

But basically it come down to budget, I could go with whatever drives but trying to keep the price of the whole system down as much as possible, trying to stay under $1000 CND. so if possible to keep the hdds under $500 would be ideal.

But as I said in the OP I am cheap or should say frugal is a better term 🙂 unless there is a good reason. I don't mind paying if its worth it, but for a storage server where 99% of the time it just sits there and I can save $15-$20 per drive it helps

 

[Compman55]

Yep, thats me......I bought the seagate 4TB 5900RPM models because if cost. I wish I got the hitachi's for better peace of mind, but I am happy with my seagates. Time will tell however.

Although I have had some hard drive failures, I have not lost data as a result, just a crashed OS or some smart errors. With the newer higher capacity's I am getting more nervous.

Lastly, think about how you are going to backup that much info. That can get expensive.

 

[smitbret]

So being as picky and cheap as I am 🙂 Im trying to decide what drives to get for my storage server rebuild

Looking to get either 4x3TB or 4X4TB, but the question is if i should go with the "Nas" drives or the normal drives.

depending on the drive, they can be anywhere from $60-$130 between them

the storage server will be either build with Windows Storage Spaces or FreeNas/Nas4Free

Regular drives will work fine, but if you consider using ZFS instead of Storage Spaces then you may want to consider the NAS drives. Because ZFS is striped, all drives will spool up when you access data. Storage Spaces and other RAID over file systems keep the files entirely on just one physical disk so if you call up a file, then only that disk spins. The net result is a lot more spinning in ZFS so just from a durability standpoint you may want to consider Reds or Seagate NAS.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

So being as picky and cheap as I am 🙂 Im trying to decide what drives to get for my storage server rebuild

Looking to get either 4x3TB or 4X4TB, but the question is if i should go with the "Nas" drives or the normal drives.

depending on the drive, they can be anywhere from $60-$130 between them

the storage server will be either build with Windows Storage Spaces or FreeNas/Nas4Free

Hi Dahak. I would recommend that you go for NAS drives. You could take a look at the WD Red drive 3TB (offering 3TB so that it's in your price range). NASware 3.0 improves their reliability and performance in NAS and RAID environments significantly. It also has a MTBF of 35% improvement over standard drives and a 24/7 specific support line for WD Red drives. So if you would like to take a closer look at its features, here's a link: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

Let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD