Is there a difference between HDD's labled NAS and those that are just standard?

By jnelsoninjax
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Grand Master

jnelsoninjax

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I have seen a deal for a 4TB internal Western Digital HDD labeled as NAS for ~$120. My question is what (if anything) if different between a NAS drive and a standard drive? I know NAS is network attached storage, but beyond that is there a physical difference?

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Grand Master

+devHead Subscriber²

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I think NAS drives are  slower, right?  They're not 7200 RPM.  Otherwise I'm not sure.

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Grand Master

Mindovermaster Moderator

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NAS drives are normally WD RED. They run at 5400 instead of 7200. It is meant to store data, not to be used as OS drive.

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bearda

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It depends on the model and manufacturer, but there are two big differences I'm aware of that Western Digital uses for their Red NAS drives

- Better vibration dampening.  In a NAS or other RAID configuration there are usually a couple drives mounted very close to each other, which causes more wear on the adjacent drives than just one on it's own.  This is probably not much more than an extra rubber bumper or two along the casing.

- Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER).  When most single drives encounter a fault they try to recover over and over again, hoping eventually they'll be able to complete their read or write operation.  TLER basically means after some fixed interval of time (maybe a second or something) the drive gives up and admits that it's screwed.  In a RAID configuration this gives the host controller (or whatever is managing the array) a chance to try to rebuild/recover/whatever it's going to do to the array rather than just waiting for the disk. 

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d5aqoëp

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10 minutes ago, bearda said:

It depends on the model and manufacturer, but there are two big differences I'm aware of that Western Digital uses for their Red NAS drives

- Better vibration dampening.  In a NAS or other RAID configuration there are usually a couple drives mounted very close to each other, which causes more wear on the adjacent drives than just one on it's own.  This is probably not much more than an extra rubber bumper or two along the casing.

- Time Limited Error Recovery (TLER).  When most single drives encounter a fault they try to recover over and over again, hoping eventually they'll be able to complete their read or write operation.  TLER basically means after some fixed interval of time (maybe a second or something) the drive gives up and admits that it's screwed.  In a RAID configuration this gives the host controller (or whatever is managing the array) a chance to try to rebuild/recover/whatever it's going to do to the array rather than just waiting for the disk. 

To add to that, Seagate IronWolf NAS drives have vibration sensors which help further in NAS environment.

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Grand Master

+Fahim S. MVC

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It's all about TLER.  That's the key difference.

 

@bearda's explanation is pretty good.  With a standard drive, when it goes into an extended recovery cycle, the RAID controller in the NAS will just give up on it and mark the drive as failed.  With TLER, this doesn't happen.

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DevTech

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On 6/12/2017 at 10:12 PM, jnelsoninjax said:

I have seen a deal for a 4TB internal Western Digital HDD labeled as NAS for ~$120. My question is what (if anything) if different between a NAS drive and a standard drive? I know NAS is network attached storage, but beyond that is there a physical difference?

Depends on what you are imagining when you say "standard drive"

 

Assuming a NVMe boot drive, the Seagate IronWolfs are freaky fast and make a great 2nd drive for large storage. In this case, the Seagate IronWolf NAS drive has enough of a performance gain to avoid a 3 tier setup of A) NVMe Samsung 960 plus B) Western Digital Black 7200 and C) any large 5400

 

Always depends on your specific usage scenario of course.

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Jason S. Global Moderator

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Keep in mind that there are NAS drives that run at 7200rpm. Most of the 'consumer' models run at 5400 or 5900rpm. the main difference b/w NAS drives and regular drives is the firmware.

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DevTech

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5 hours ago, Jason S. said:

Keep in mind that there are NAS drives that run at 7200rpm. Most of the 'consumer' models run at 5400 or 5900rpm. the main difference b/w NAS drives and regular drives is the firmware.

The latest generation of NAS such as the IronWolf are actually differentiating into a kind of "mid-performance" drive, and it is not just the Firmware and Vibration Resistance anymore...

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Grand Master

Jason S. Global Moderator

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9 minutes ago, DevTech said:

The latest generation of NAS such as the IronWolf are actually differentiating into a kind of "mid-performance" drive, and it is not just the Firmware and Vibration Resistance anymore...

can you elaborate?

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DevTech

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11 hours ago, Jason S. said:

can you elaborate?

I have a bunch of WD Reds and they have been reliable large storage drives and otherwise unremarkable. I have avoided Seagate for many years due to reliability issues, but I have been using a Seagate IronWolf 4 TB drive and it performs like a WD Black. Not talking about benchmarks but in actual day to day usage it keeps making me do a double take and thinking "that was freaky fast"

 

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Jaybonaut

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15 minutes ago, DevTech said:

I have a bunch of WD Reds and they have been reliable large storage drives and otherwise unremarkable. I have avoided Seagate for many years due to reliability issues, but I have been using a Seagate IronWolf 4 TB drive and it performs like a WD Black. Not talking about benchmarks but in actual day to day usage it keeps making me do a double take and thinking "that was freaky fast"

 

Why don't you run a benchmark - I think many of us would like to know how it turns out.

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Grand Master

+BudMan MVC

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do you have the PRO or just the normal ironwolf?  The pro is 7200 rpm, while the non pro is only 5900.. 

 

The wd red vs the wolf seem to be exactly the same on bench

http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/WD-Red-4TB-2013-vs-Seagate-IronWolf-4TB-2016/3525vs3906

 

Both scoring 56

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DevTech

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1 hour ago, BudMan said:

do you have the PRO or just the normal ironwolf?  The pro is 7200 rpm, while the non pro is only 5900.. 

 

The wd red vs the wolf seem to be exactly the same on bench

http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/WD-Red-4TB-2013-vs-Seagate-IronWolf-4TB-2016/3525vs3906

 

Both scoring 56

I will try to find time to benchmark the two drives I own. 

 

Normally a large storage drive is just a large storage drive, but that Seagate continues to amaze me, particularly when copying files from my Samsung NVMe SSD.

 

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