Difference between NAS and PC drives, from perspective of *inside the drives themselves*

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RedKnight7

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Mar 16, 2014
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Hi folks!

NewEgg lists two HDDs as follows:

$200: HGST Deskstar NAS H3IKNAS40003272SN(0S03664) 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" High-Performance Hard Drive for Desktop NAS Systems Bare Drive

$320: HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 HUS724040ALE640(0F14683) 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Enterprise Hard Drive Bare Drive

You can see that they are practically identical, yet the NAS only costs 5/8ths as much. The descriptions don't indicate much difference, except that the more expensive one is rated for 2M hours MTBF, twice the NAS drive.

Be that as it may, it begs the question: What exactly is the difference in the drives themselves? They seem almost identical. Can't they be used interchangeably?

Yes, I know the definition of NAS, DAS, and internal drives, and that an NAS drive is intended for a dedicated network device. But when I google for info on what is different about the drives, all I can find is definitions of NAS, etc. I can't find what's actually different inside the drives.

And can a "NAS" drive be used as a regular (internal PC) drive?

Thanks in advance if you can help!

Mike
 
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RedKnight7

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Mar 16, 2014
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Ok. Although in this case, the NAS drive has worse parts.

So they ARE interchangeable? Cool! The NAS one is a lot cheaper, and 1M hrs MTBF is still great. I'll get it for an internal PC drive.

Thanks!

Mike
 
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Spectre694

Spectre694

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Thats because in this case the Ultrastar is a server/enterprise disk which has to be even better than a NAS drive hence the doubled MTBF

 
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RedKnight7

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Ah, I see what you're both saying, now. Thanks then - all is clear!

For what it's worth, I think it's a great drive for the reliability. BackBlaze found that the drive I had been intending to buy, the 4TB Seagate Deskstar, has considerably worse MTBF. http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
 
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Spectre694

Spectre694

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Ya MTBF is usually a pretty good sign of how good a drive is
 
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RedKnight7

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TyrOd

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Aug 16, 2013
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Backblaze was using consumer drives in a 24/7 enterprise environment. That tells you literally NOTHING about the reliability of those drives in a consumer environment.

That's not to say that Seagate doesn't have marginally higher failure rates in a consumer environment than WD and Hitachi, but nothing like 3-4X that Backblaze was publishing.
 
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TyrOd

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This is true when talking about relative failure rates.

In terms of absolutes ti doesn't mean that a drive with a rated 2m hours is going to last twice as long on average as a 1m hour drive.

I mean we all know it's absurd to think any of these drives are going to actually last the equivalent of 228 and 114 years, so you should take that with a grain of salt when applying it to the typical 5-10 year lifespan of these drives.

The warranty period is a pretty good indicator, though because those numbers have to be accurate or they risk losing money beyond the outlays they made for warranty replacement.
 
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