What HD for a Synology DS211?

[kozmo62]

Hi, I purchased a DS211 for my home NAS and plan to run (2) 2TB drives in a RAID 1 config. I am running a 1TB physical network which I use to stream audio and video to a number of devices. I'd like to get the best performant hard drive, but also don't want to overpay and buy a drive that might be limited by some other factor, like my network. I see lots of different combinations of platters, cache, spindle speeds, eco models, etc. Any sugestions?

 

[Rusting In Peace]

First and foremost look up the supported hard drive list. Ideally you should pick drives from this list because if you have any support issues they may just pan you off with "you're using unsupported drives".

Your network will be slower than reading or writing from the hard drive.

Green drives can be useful for NAS boxes if you plan to keep the device on for long period of times but absolutely check that supported hard drives list because some green drives are particular.

 

[kozmo62]

Thanks for the reply. Buying from the supported list is definitely my first consideration. I have spent many years managing large IT infrastructures and understand the pains of incompatibility of drivers and firmware!

In reading your response, should I infer that it doesn't matter what hard drive I buy (from a performance perspective) as the network will be the limiting factor?

 

[Rusting In Peace]

Gigabit ethernet's maximum transfer is 128MBps. You are unlikely to see this speed in real life however. Obviously things only get worse if you use fast ethernet or wireless.

Average read benchmarks for a 2TB drive, say the Samsung F4 which is a green drive, come in around 100MBps. If you were to RAID these drives I'd expect to see an increased performance. How much will really be down to the raid controller.

So only in perfect network scenario will the network be able to keep up with the read speed.

My advice to you would to buy two 2TB HDDs from different manufacturers.

 

[kozmo62]

Thanks Rusting in Peace,

Don't know how much benefit I will get from the RAID controller, however the Synology DS211 has benchmarked very well in the performance tests I've seen. It was the best NAS I could get for around $300.

Why buy from different manufacturers? Worries me a bit with RAID 1.

 

[Rusting In Peace]

You should buy drives from different manufacturers simply to avoid both drives failing at the same time. It's just a diversification strategy.

Buying the same drive from the same place means you are likely to receive drives from the same batch. Drives from the same batch have a stronger probability of failing at the same time which is catastrophic for RAID 1.

So the probability of two drives failing at the same time from different manufacturers is less than two drives from the same manufacturer bought from a single place.

Does that make sense?

 

[jeroly]

you could buy the two drives from the same manufacturer and model, but from different vendors, so that you reduce the chance they're from the same batch.

 

[kozmo62]

Best answer selected by kozmo62.