Even a few years ago, enabling easily-accessible storage space on your home network was a cumbersome exercise. The simplest way to go was probably taking old, leftover hardware and building a minimalistic server with sufficient storage capacity and using some preferred flavor of Linux as the OS.
With this being the case, Samba, the open source interoperability suite that adds Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, was needed for Windows computers to be able to access the server. Luckily, those days are over. Today you can buy ready-made NAS servers that satisfy the needs of the home office (or even small companies). Some come with storage built-in; others give you the opportunity to pick your favorite hard drives.
NAS Devices for the End User
For a while now, storage companies like LaCie, Promise, QNAP, Synology, Thecus, Western Digital, and even Intel have been offering network attached storage devices that are easy to configure, targeting small home and office audiences discussed above. Those NAS boxes are enjoying increasing popularity, since they offer users the simplest way to provide storage space on the home network (and despite the fact that many enthusiasts would prefer to roll their own storage box). Again, the majority of these devices employ some flavor of Linux, but rather than forcing users to enter cryptic commands on the command line, they offer a comfortable Web-based interface that can be configured through a GUI.
Simple, Easy to Use, and Fully-Loaded
The majority of NAS devices are much more than just a networked location used to dump your data. Thanks to the modular nature of Linux as an operating system, which makes adding functionality quite simple, the current crop of appliances also doubles as print, Web, DLNA, and iTunes servers. Actually, the only thing holding back the inclusion of even more features is the fact that testing and validation takes such a long time, and no company is especially keen on releasing a half-baked product.
Choosing the Hard Drive: Performance or Efficiency?
NAS boxes might share very similar feature sets, but when it comes to hard drive options, their manufacturers go in distinctly different directions. On the one hand, there are units that come pre-equipped with hard drives and are thus ready to use right out of the box. On the other hand, you find models that follow the BYOD philosophy; build your own device.
This second class of storage products lets users choose the hard drives themselves. The upside to this is that you can also think about what you’re looking for in a drive (aside from capacity, of course). In general, a drive’s efficiency should rate higher than its performance. This may sound counter-intuitive. After all, higher performance is always better, right? Well, almost. In most cases, it’s not the drives that bottleneck performance. Rather, it is the NAS device itself.
That’s why we found ourselves wondering about the sort of difference we'd see if we equipped a NAS with energy efficient drives rather than fast spinning models. Samsung kindly provided the drives for our little experiment. Representing the eco-friendlier option, we have the Spinpoint F2 Eco Green with a capacity of 1TB spinning at 5,400 RPM, while the T166 drive with a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM and 320GB of storage space represents the speedier alternative. A Synology NAS server with four drive bays serves as our test bed.

Also I would like to mention from my own experience that heat can be a problem. I have a D-Link DNS323 and it cannot handle two server edition WD drives - it overheats.
- Bertus.
Other drives may experience RAID problems, burnout problems, etc.
If you want to salvage a NAS hard drive, you may be dealing with a Linux type partition.
What is the expected result? Yes, we guessed right, the new eco drive is outperforming the old performance drive in a NAS environment.
Unfortunately that comparison does not allow any conclusion whether a NAS needs a performance drive or not, it only tells us that a new eco drive is better than an old performance drive.
Sad...
otherwise NAS would think the drive is dead and give error if the drive went to sleep...
is this wrong?
the WD greens are not recommended for linux, which is used in most NAS. the greens still have a head parking issue, they have masked that issue with the latest firmwares, but not corrected it.
There are still no decent eco drives for NAS in the 2tb space.
Really, You don't have a 7200 RPM 1TB drive laying around to test?
The majority of these features that are mentioned (with the notable exception of print serving, which can be added) can be had by installing FreeNAS. I took an ancient comp, slapped a SATA PCI card in it, and had it running in 10 minutes doing everything. Including serving my xbox 360 with music!
I then proceeded to install linux instead so I could do crazier things like make the scanner accessible on any computer and of course printing too. It seems to be doing a pretty admirable job for what it is.
Far as I know, all Synology products use the same version of operation system. A scaled down, specialized version of Linux. I've had a 407e for about a year and it has worked flawlessly and is so easy to manage.
For those that don't want to spend the money on a cage, and have an old machine kicking around there is always the Freenas option (http://www.freenas.org/) which I hear works well.
As for this review... Mixing old and new drives in a comparision not designed to see the difference in old and new drives seems... Well pointless.
"If you're in the market for a storage upgrade, you have some important decisions to make. First off, there's the choice to build your own solution or buy one from an established vendor. If you choose the former path, know that there are tons of options, which we'll explore in a future story. Here, we'll be going down the latter path."
How far into the future are we talking? Obviously longer than six months. That would be an article I'd like to read.