There is a nice article over at custompcreview.com discussing options for choosing hard drives for use in a NAS. Over the past few years, the major manufacturers have made this a simpler task by releasing drives specifically designed for use in a NAS such as the new drives from Seagate and the Western Digital Red drives.
The article deals with the issues associated with running hard drives in a NAS:
Another point of failure is the drives themselves. Many users (myself included) opt for cheap consumer drives for NAS units. After all, if they work fine in our desktop systems, what’s the problem with using them in a NAS, right? WRONG! If you’re running any RAID array using standard consumer drives such as a Seagate Barracuda, Western Digital Green, or whatever, your data is at risk. I’m not joking!
I’ve had a number of readers ask me why their RAID arrays in their brand new NAS units keep degrading and almost every time, it’s because they’re using either WD Green hard drives, WD Blue hard drives, or Seagate Barracudas. If this happens to you, it’s not the NAS units that are at fault. Don’t return them or RMA them. It’s probably the drives.
The author suggests that Seagate NAS drives are his current favorites.
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