NAS devices do have the disadvantage that they are often very expensive

Despite the emergence of many cloud services save it locally large amounts of data still faster, more convenient and cheaper. In this article we compare eighteen hard drives: the majority dedicated NAS drive, but of course we do not forget the PC.


Hard drives should not the cutting edge in terms of its computer technology, there is still no cheaper means of data storage. There are now affordable consumer models offer a capacity of up to 8TB. Who wants to keep large amounts of data locally, so can not go for this option. Read also: How to find the best hard drive.

Hard disk drives can be installed in a computer, but in addition it is also possible to place them in a NAS . The latter has considerable advantages. So you can use any computer on the network to the data on the NAS. The rest of the functionality depends on whether you want a cheap and 'bare' NAS takes pure for storage or a more expensive one with more possibilities. The more luxurious NAS devices can download independently and offer you the option via the Internet (or using some mobile apps) to get to your data.

NAS-terms
Not quite at home with the terminology associated with a NAS? In this article we explain to you all the common terms.

drive Positions
You have NAS devices with one, two or four drive bays (and even more, but they come in the consumer field less common). Most people take a NAS with at least two drive bays, partly because this RAID enabled. RAID is a technology that combines multiple hard drives to provide greater speed or reliability. When multiple hard drives in a NAS RAID 1 and RAID 5 are most often used to enhance the reliability. Many use RAID as back-up for data that is only on the NAS, but we do not recommend strongly. The primary purpose of RAID 1 and 5 is to minimize the consequences of the failure of one of the discs. A backup is certainly not. It is common enough to fail a RAID 5 array, or even your entire NAS fails and you still have lost all data. Prefer to make a backup on another system, and for really important data in a different physical location.

Most NAS devices have one or more drive bays so you can work together drives in a RAID configuration.
speed Bottleneck
NAS devices do have the disadvantage that they are often very expensive. Sometimes you pay more for the NAS than the hard disks you put into it, especially if you want a luxurious NAS with lots of features and a higher throughput. The throughput is the use of a single network connection, moreover, limited to a maximum of about 125 MByte / s. This is something to keep in mind when looking at the benchmark results. Many hard drives will because of this bottleneck not reach their maximum speeds of a NAS. The limited added value of additional rate applies to a PC. Today, the data greatly benefit from a high speed (operating systems and programs) on an SSD installed. Even the fastest hard drive is no alternative to an SSD. In large-scale storage is a higher speed or bonus, but not essential.

NAS drives
What to look especially when choosing a hard drive for a NAS? At first he was quiet and economical. It is useful as a device that basically 24 hours a day on, not tremendously loud. The economy speaks for itself: You want as little as possible spent on energy costs, but more importantly the hard drives will be less warm. Finally, the longest possible service life is important, although this of course is not to be tested. Manufacturers now make the choice easier by developing special drives for NAS devices . These differ in some areas of 'ordinary' disks. First, they have a feature that is most known by the term Western Digital used: time-limited error recovery (TLER). With TLER the hard drive will try less time to read a bad sector. This prevents the RAID controller has to wait too long for a reply from the hard drive. Too long wait is namely due to a disk in the RAID array is thrown. At least, in theory. Most modern NAS devices do not suffer from here. Without NAS or RAID you want to correct the disk does its best to correct errors and then you just do not TLER.

In addition, manufacturers claim that their NAS drives have several special features, such that they vibrate less and even that each disc has a different rotational speed to avoid resonance with other drives. This is not to test, so we can not say with certainty that this is actually true. However, there is an extended warranty: NAS drives have at least three year warranty, where usually two years and sometimes even one year in ordinary hard disks. Another important property is the speed of rotation. The products in this test come in three flavors: 5400, 5900 and 7200 rpm. A higher speed allows drives in the line faster, but the downside is that they also produce more noise and heat. Admittedly, you do not want in a NAS drive, which most have a relatively low rotation speed.

With all these features, you pay a little more for the special NAS drives. If, for instance, the price of the cheapest NAS drive of 4 TB (Seagate 4TB NAS HDD) compared with that of the cheapest regular hard drive (Toshiba MD04ACA400), we see an additional cost of two to three decades for the NAS drive . Not a huge difference, but when purchasing multiple disks may still seem expensive.