#WHY A NAS VS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE PRO#

The SSD version of Western Digital's Red drives brings with it the expected speed boosts you can get out of solid state storage in either a 2.5 inch or M.2 form factor, although predictably they don't boost up to the kinds of storage sizes you can get in a mechanical drive. Western Digital Red SA500 SSD Credit: Western Digital Western Digital Red SSD

#WHY A NAS VS EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE PRO#

If you want that kind of speed out of WD, you'll need to step up to the Red Pro drives instead.Д«uy it now via Amazon. They're often very competitively priced, although it's worth noting that the regular Red drives are all 5,400RPM models, so they're not quite as quick as some competing drives. Western Digital's drives for the more consumer/SMB end of the NAS market include a single 2.5 inch model at 1TB, and a variety of sizes for more standard 3.5 inch drives. Read more QNAP introduces AI-ready NAS Western Digital Red Credit: Seagate Western Digital Red Hard Drive They are - as you might expect - a little more expensive on a per-TB basis, and they don't scale up in size to the same extent as its regular or Pro edition mechanical drives. Seagate's SSD-variant of its IronWolf line of drives bucks that trend, with a claimed mean time before failure (MTBF) of 2,000,000 hours, along with the speedy access you'd expect from an SSD drive. SSDs aren't typically recommended for NAS use because very few of them are built with 24/7 runtime in mind, and failure states on SSDs are usually immediately terminal rather than an issue of developing faults as you'd find on a traditional mechanical SSD. Seagate IronWolf SSD Credit: Seagate Seagate IronWolf SSD IronWolf Pro drives are engineered to work in larger drive arrays than the regular IronWolf drives, but that does mean that they might be overkill if you're working with, say, a 4-drive NAS bay.Д«uy it now via Amazon. Warranty time is also extended to 5 years, and for drives of 4TB or more, you also get 2 years of access to data recovery services if your IronWolf Pro drive does fail. For a start, they're all 7,200RPM drives, where that speed is only found on the higher capacity models of the regular IronWolf drives. Seagate's Pro line of drives includes a range of features - and some storage capacities - that you don't find on the regular IronWolf drives. They're sealed drives that use helium internally to reduce friction on drive plates for even more durability over the (hopefully) long life of each drive.Д«uy it now via Amazon Seagate IronWolf Pro Credit: Seagate Seagate IronWolf Pro Hard Drive These include vibration sensors - Seagate dubs them 'AgileArray' that minimise vibration, which is important if you're putting them into a NAS with multiple drive heads. Seagate's base line NAS-capable drives sell with IronWolf branding, and they're built with specific technologies on board to maximise their effective lifespan. Seagate IronWolf Credit: Seagate Seagate IronWolf Hard Drive We're not presenting this list as a grouping of tested drives, but more an informed look at the drives and technologies you should consider when buying drives to populate a NAS - or replace drives that have recently failed.

Even then, variability could lead figures astray. Realistically the only way to do so would involve potentially years of testing over hundreds of drives to eliminate small scale batch issues and ensure identical usage patterns. Testing NAS drives is a less than precise process.

Why a nas vs external hard drive