QNAP NAS Community Forum

Hi,

I am wondering from experience NAS user, will it be better to buy a NAS with more bays or less bays with big HDD size.

What I mean is as an example, will it better to have a 2-4 bays NAS with 18T HDD? Or it's better to have a 6-8 bays with 8T HDD?

Also, I am thinking to do it incrementally, which mean, if the NAS had 4-6 bays as an example, I am planning to start with 2 HDD with RAID1 as start till I am almost running out of space, then I will buy another HDD and change from RAID1 to RAID5, and keep on this process when I reach another limit again. Please let me know if this approach is the right way to do? The reason of asking is because if I start with the first 2 HDD with 10T as an example, it seems like I need to keep the same 10T for the rest of the bay in order to keep RAID5 to work properly. Therefore, it seems like the decision of the size of the first 2 HDD is critical. Thanks.

check what the storage cost sweetspot is your market

normally medium size drives have the best cost to storage ratio
so more bays with medoum size drives is cheaper and has better performance (spindle counts ups the IOPS)

Hi dolbyman,

When you refer to medium size drive, I assumed it's around 8-10TB, correct? Is there a specific disk size you think it's better in performance? If you have a choice, will you prefer to use Seagate or Western Digital or others? Thanks.

I dont know what the cost/performance sweetspot would be right now..I'd say between 4 and 8TB

After WD pulled the SMR stunt, I would personally go with ST Ironwolf/Pro

Thanks again for the info =)

peterlo2000 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:04 am Hi,

I am wondering from experience NAS user, will it be better to buy a NAS with more bays or less bays with big HDD size.

What I mean is as an example, will it better to have a 2-4 bays NAS with 18T HDD? Or it's better to have a 6-8 bays with 8T HDD?

....

What is the intended use of the NAS? Home use, small business use, occasional disk access, frequent disk access, etc? The number of bays to choose from depends on your level of fault tolerance. Six bays in RAID6 means four drives usable, but a Two drive unit could have the same capacity as a six drive unit.

Hard drive availablity and prices have been fluctuating a bit recently, which in the past has meant new HD technology was being readied for market.

In terms of hard drive brands to use, again that depends on usage. The best all-around drives seem to be Ironwolf at the moment.