How to Choose the Best Hard Drive For Your NAS

Reliable data storage is a must for any business toolbox. Many small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have discovered that the network-attached storage (NAS) solution with the right applications can take their business to the next level.

    
NAS-optimized HDDs: The right tool for the job
Choosing the right hard drive (HDD) makes a huge difference when building a reliable NAS solution. Like hammers, wrenches, and drills in a toolbox, hard drives are designed for specific jobs. You can build a multi-enclosure NAS using low-cost desktop drives, but performance and user access will degrade over time. You can install expensive, mission-critical drives in your NAS box, but they may not be cost-effective for your SMB. And a large capacity, low-power profile 8TB archive HDD isn’t optimized for NAS, leaving you disappointed with data access time.

While great in certain applications, neither desktop drives nor archive HDDs are good long-term fits for NAS solutions. That’s where NAS-optimized HDDs come in.

What makes a NAS-optimized HDD different?
NAS-optimized HDDs deliver the right performance, reliability, and capacity for your business today—and tomorrow.

Performance
NAS applications for SMBs are most often used for backup, streaming, and data archiving. Many users will access the NAS system simultaneously. A desktop drive can deliver excellent performance to one person at a time, but you need NAS-optimized HDDs like the IronWolf and IronWolf Pro NAS to simultaneously stream data to multiple sources and deliver random data.

Reliability
Reliability is crucial in lowering TCO and achieving a positive ROI. When you build with NAS-optimized drives, you get a wide range of reliability benefits that help decrease outages and increase storage uptime.

For example, NAS-optimized Seagate HDDs feature firmware to improve overall reliability by 30% over desktop HDDs. Extended error recovery controls ensure that the drives remain active in a RAID environment, avoiding downtime and boosting business productivity. Advanced power management, low operating temperatures, and intelligent vibration tolerance in HDDs like IronWolf Pro NAS mean extended run times, no bay count limitations, and 5-year limited warranties with a 2-year data recovery services plan.

Capacity
NAS-optimized HDDs deliver capacities up to 14TB and can lower TCO by freeing up valuable storage space. That extra capacity can be allocated to data protection by implementing RAID.

Evaluating the costs
NAS solutions can be a substantial investment for SMBs in the short term, but low productivity and lost data are costlier roadblocks to long-term business growth. See what Justin Wojtczak from 375 Photography has to say about IronWolf drives in his studio.

Don’t compromise. Choose NAS-optimized drives when building your NAS system.

Learn more about the Seagate IronWolf NAS hard drives