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Suggestion for hard drive to use in Synology NAS device

O

ozaz

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 27, 2011
1,626
598
Hello,

I am going to buy a NAS device for the first time (probably a synology DS212J or DS213).

Could anyone please suggest one or two decent choices for a drive to use in these devices?

I would like to equip the NAS device with two 2TB drives. I intend to use the NAS device for backing up my Windows PC and my Mac and accessing media content. There are 2 others in the household who will probably also end up using the NAS for accessing media content.

I guess this is pretty basic usage so don't really need super high end performance. But I do want something that has a good reputation for reliability.

Cheers
 
Done a bit of browsing since my original post. WD Red drives seem pretty popular for this sort of thing, and the price is ok. Good choice?
 
ozaz said:
Done a bit of browsing since my original post. WD Red drives seem pretty popular for this sort of thing, and the price is ok. Good choice?
Click to expand...

Definitely a good choice. The WD Red series is built for 24x7 use. If you want anything better you will be looking at Enterprise-class drives ($$$). Those often come with a 5 year warranty instead of 2 or 3 years, but the price is like 3 times higher and they tend to be very noisy.

I bought a couple of Hitachi enterprise 3 TB drives last year because one of my old 2 TB WD Green drives in the RAID-1 started coughing (after about 2.5 years of 24x7 operation) when running SMART tests. I found out that QNAP (NAS maker) was warning against that particular WD Green drive on the compatibility list on their home page. I didn't lose any data and the drive is still used for various stuff when I mess around - I just don't put anything of real value on it.

Other than that one drive I have had really good experiences with WD (must be 20+ drives now). The only "noisy" one (from vibrations) I have got is the one inside this iMac >.< Running my system from an SSD by firewire and spinning the internal HD down mitigates that problem though.

If I had to buy some drives for a personal NAS today I would buy the WD Reds.

WD verified NAS compatibility for the WD Reds:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

Synology compatibility database:
http://www.synology.com/support/compatibility.php?lang=us

Happy NAS'ing :)
Nikolaj

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ozaz said:
I am going to buy a NAS device for the first time (probably a synology DS212J or DS213).
Click to expand...

Oh - just want to make you aware of one of the differences between those two is that the DS213 supports Wake-on-LAN while the DS212J does not.

Of course it might not be an issue in your setup.

List of Wake-on-LAN Synology products:
http://www.synology.com/support/faq_show.php?lang=us&q_id=437

Cheers,
Nikolaj
 
Thanks everyone for your help. I think I'll go with DS213 (primarily because it has USB 3.0) and the WD Red drives.
 
You might want to pop over to the Synology site and look at their official list of compatible drives.

The list obviously doesn't list every possible drive that'll "work" with the NAS, but if you have an issue and need Synology support, if you're not running drives they list as compatible it gives them an easy out for not having to support you.
 
fhall1 said:
You might want to pop over to the Synology site and look at their official list of compatible drives.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I checked. As noted by nikolajlr earlier, the WD Red drives are on the compatible list.
 
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