QNAP NAS Community Forum

What hard drive features/benefits are most important to you, when integrating a hard drive into a NAS system?
_ High throughput performance
_ High read/write performance
_ Low latency
_ Proven compatibility
_ ... what else?

for consumers ? (with 1GBit\s network environment)
- low price
- low noise
- high reliability

as dolbyman said

- low price
- low noise
- high reliability (24/7)
- long warranty - i.e. 5 years

Things like compatibility are a given as without it the drive would not be considered in the first place

If hybrid drives are a possibility without a significant premium and can be proven to give a benefit then i would consider that an additional option

speed and throughput are only going to be a more important options when 10gig plus networking for the home user becomes the norm - 3yrs+??

@Seagate.JohnP

Leaving the data centre vs. home differences alone (performance, heat dissipation vs. noise, power requirements, ...) - key factors are reliability, manageability and trustworthyness along with warranty terms.

Any HDD we have to touch onver it's lifetime (in data centre this is the warranty period) or change does easy cost us much more in effort and time than the effective storage block.

One thing I don't appreciate on the Seagate storage blocks are the for-seagate-only SMART attributes mapped over "normal" or "common" ones. While this might be nice be for special troubleshooting, it's very confusing. Seagate's other brand storage block maker does much better in this aspect.

Recently re-started to deploy Seagate NAS and data centre drives again after several years of frustration and night shifts due to heavy reliability problems - this had even hit Seagate NAS beta test units with drives supplied pre- and post Seagate NAS HDD availability, where larger numbers of HDD badly failed within a few month of 24*7 operations.

Glad to have you on board here.

Regards,
-Kurt.

last at least 8 years
8tb capacity (10tb would be better)
quiet as a breeze
quicker than the speed of light
consume next to nothing power wise
cost under $200