Storage System: HD Recommendation

M

MrHood22

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
4,312
Some of you might have participated in my other thread relating to what storage system I should go with (Drobo, Home built PC, QNAP, ect)

I think I have settled on getting a QNAP 410 (best I found was $420 on newegg). My question is what Hard drive should I get?

These hard drives will be used for playing movies, music, storing documents, and running software (various software titles like Photoshop, dreamweaver, office suite, ect). All of my games will run off of my internal hard drives (Sata 3.0gb/s).

The storage unit will hopefully be running off gigabit which should give me the least amount of speed bottleneck if I have my facts straight. I'm assuming I just do:

Router -> Q-Nap -> PC



I'm looking at 2TB hard drives and want to keep the budget low but I will pay a little extra if it's worth while.
 
Samsung HD204UI 2 TB drives are great. I have eight with no problems (knocks on wood)
 
I think the drives you'll be looking at are :
Samsung F4 2TB HD204UI
Hitachi 5k3000
WD20EARS

I've been using Samsung F4s and the Hitachi's as my storage drives & NAS with no problems. With all the sales, the prices have been floating between $60-80

Just a question, you're going to run programs(photoshop, office, etc) from the NAS? I think it'd be better to install on an internal drive.

Also diagram should be

Router -> Q-Nap
Router -> PC

No need to attach the NAS directly to your PC
 
Jonowxeno said:
I think the drives you'll be looking at are :
Samsung F4 2TB HD204UI
Hitachi 5k3000
WD20EARS

I've been using Samsung F4s and the Hitachi's as my storage drives & NAS with no problems. With all the sales, the prices have been floating between $60-80

Just a question, you're going to run programs(photoshop, office, etc) from the NAS? I think it'd be better to install on an internal drive.

Also diagram should be

Router -> Q-Nap
Router -> PC

No need to attach the NAS directly to your PC
Click to expand...

I was looking at 5 HD's in the $70-$100 range (newegg). I think it was 2 WD (green's), 2 Seagates, and a samsung.


The QNAP has 2 gigabit ports. It wouldn't be fast to go "router -> Q-Nap -> PC"? That way the data would only go from Q-Nap to PC instead of Q-nap to router, router to PC. Or is it one of those things where they're both quick and you won't really notice a difference?

So pretty much my pick is between WD, Seagate, Hitachi, and Samsung? There's no real difference in performance or reliability between the bunch?

I've had a few seagates and they've done well but it appears (from the reviews) their reputation is going down? I used to rank them with WD.

Currently I have 2 hitachi and 5 WD and they've all been good to me. Nearly 24/7 use for anywhere between 2 and 4 years.
 
Newegg has 3Tb hard drives for 130 bucks (well, 150, and I saw a promo code flying around in an email i think).

I think the QNAP supports online capacity expansion - 3 3Tb drives would give you 6Tb of usable space in a raid-5. Same as 4 2Tb drives in a raid-5. The 4 2 Tb drives, at 80 each, would cost 320. The 3 3Tb drives would be 390 - so more expensive - but you could upgrade your unit when you ran low on space to 9Tb usable - and at that point it's going to be alot cheaper than buying another unit.

Just something to consider.
 
ChrisBenn said:
Newegg has 3Tb hard drives for 130 bucks (well, 150, and I saw a promo code flying around in an email i think).

I think the QNAP supports online capacity expansion - 3 3Tb drives would give you 6Tb of usable space in a raid-5. Same as 4 2Tb drives in a raid-5. The 4 2 Tb drives, at 80 each, would cost 320. The 3 3Tb drives would be 390 - so more expensive - but you could upgrade your unit when you ran low on space to 9Tb usable - and at that point it's going to be alot cheaper than buying another unit.

Just something to consider.
Click to expand...

If I got two 3TB drives that would cost twice as much as two 2TB. I'm not willing to spend that much at this point. I prefer 2TB because it's enough to get me by until prices come down. I figure before no time 2TB drives will be down around $50.
 
I don't think you'll notice any difference connecting the QNAP directly to your PC unless your router is heavily taxed or you were connecting wirelessly with your PC. But if you have the QNAP next to the PC, you mind as well connect it and see if there is a difference but I doubt it.
I think you can team the two ports to your router, not sure if that would help speeds or not. There's probably a bottleneck somewhere.

As for hard drives, I think you'll be ok with any of those drives. Just remember to have backups for the important stuff.
 
MrHood22 said:
If I got two 3TB drives that would cost twice as much as two 2TB. I'm not willing to spend that much at this point. I prefer 2TB because it's enough to get me by until prices come down. I figure before no time 2TB drives will be down around $50.
Click to expand...

I honestly doubt we wil see 2tb @ $50 soon, samsung seem to be skipping 750 platters in favor of 1TB for the ends of the year, this would probably draw the 1tb around $50 (aka the F3/F2 500gb were), maybe 2tb between 60-70, but $50... Not this year.
 
MrHood22 said:
If I got two 3TB drives that would cost twice as much as two 2TB. I'm not willing to spend that much at this point. I prefer 2TB because it's enough to get me by until prices come down. I figure before no time 2TB drives will be down around $50.
Click to expand...

Thought you were buying all 4 at once. I was going to flag you on potential issues with capacity expansion not letting you move from a mirror to raid-5, but looks like the QNAP also has raid-level migration and supports going from raid-1 to raid 5 (i.e. when you go from 2 disks to 3) so looks like you are okay there.

That said I wouldn't expect 2TB's to hit 50 each soon - but if you don't need the space you can of course wait. The only opportunity cost comes if you ever need more than 6Tb usable. (Then you have to replace all the drives or buy a new unit). If you don't think that's likely within the lifespan of the unit than no worries.
 
ChrisBenn said:
Thought you were buying all 4 at once. I was going to flag you on potential issues with capacity expansion not letting you move from a mirror to raid-5, but looks like the QNAP also has raid-level migration and supports going from raid-1 to raid 5 (i.e. when you go from 2 disks to 3) so looks like you are okay there.

That said I wouldn't expect 2TB's to hit 50 each soon - but if you don't need the space you can of course wait. The only opportunity cost comes if you ever need more than 6Tb usable. (Then you have to replace all the drives or buy a new unit). If you don't think that's likely within the lifespan of the unit than no worries.
Click to expand...

I was going to buy the QNAP and all 4 (x 2tb) at once. However, That comes out to about $750. I'm not trying to spend that much (unless it's a really good deal) so I decided to scale back to just 2 hard drives. I already have 5TB in my desktop now, I have about 700gb left (spread throughout the 6 hard drives). So I think 4TB can suffice for now. By the time i'm running low on free space hard drives will hopefully be cheaper.

In regards to the prices, I still think we will see $50 2TB hard drives this year. It might not be weekly but i'm sure they will drop to $70 (Which is only $10 cheaper then they are now) and then eventually we'll start seeing weekly sales with $20 off instantly or through rebate. But no one can tell the future so I guess we'll just wait and see.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top