Buy The Right Hard Drive For Your Diskless Ultra NAS
Some people will buy a Diskless ReadyNAS Ultra 4 or Ultra 6 home NAS so that they can save money, others so they can get the hard drives they want, and others simply because you cannot currently buy an Ultra with all 4 or 6 hard drive bays populated!
So what hard drive should you buy for your Diskless Ultra or to add to your Ultra?
Jump to 2TB NAS Hard Drive List
Jump to 1TB NAS Hard Drive List
If you already own a ReadyNAS Ultra, I would suggest matching the hard drives already installed. Otherwise, you definitely want to buy NAS hard drives that are on the Netgear hardware compatibility list (HCL).
On this particular post, I am only going to cover the 2TB NAS hard drives and 1TB NAS hard drives as I feel those are going to be the most appropriate and most popular.
If you can afford it, it’s always nice to spend a little more now and avoid having to upgrade later, even though Netgear ReadyNAS X-RAID2 technology makes upgrading hard drives in your NAS device as easy as it can possibly be.
High Speed, High Quality, High Price
While I am tempted to just have you buy the best, enterprise drives running at 7200rpm with 64MB cache, rotational vibration safeguard and 5 year warranty; those drives are pretty pricey. Buy them if you can, but I understand if you can’t.
Just do not make the mistake of thinking that since RAID is protecting your data against hard drive failure that you can buy cheap NAS hard drives and not worry about if they fail.
Not only is it possible for two hard drives to fail within a short time frame – they are probably the exact same age with the same amount of wear and tear, but going through the warranty replacement process is not only a big hassle, it can take a couple of weeks before you get the replacement drive.
Saving Money On 5900rpm NAS Hard Drives
The new “green” hard drives that are spinning at 5900rpm instead of 7200rpm (although faster than the older 5400rpm pieces of .. junk) will save you some money.
According to one of the Netgear ReadyNAS “guru’s”, expect to lose about 10% or so in performance. For some, that tradeoff in cost saving may be appropriate and appreciated.
Understand, though, that you may lose 2 years of warranty for that price break also.
Checking on warranty policy ahead of time can be a wise thing to do.
How We Chose These Particular NAS Hard Drives
These NAS hard drives are from companies that I have bought product from and been happy with the performance and reliability. I have had failures with all of them and had to deal with tech support and exchange drives under warranty. Each of these companies I can recommend and will work with again.
Where all of these manufacturers fail is not providing basic information under the “specifications” for the drive on their websites. Are you more interested in knowing that non-operating low frequency of the drive is 0.05 g(2)/Hz (from their website) or that the warranty is 3 years and the rotational speed is 5900 rpm?
In the consumer hard drive realm, it appears the most vendors are more interested in flying the “green” flag than they are giving you straightforward basic specifications about the product they want you to shell out your hard earned money on. They must have all hired unemployed politicians to run the PR department.
(All of these drives are 3Gb/s SATA)
2TB ReadyNAS Ultra Hard Drives from the ReadyNAS HCL
| Vendor | Class | Model # | RPM | Cache | Vibration Safeguard |
Warranty (Years) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate | Constellation (Enterprise) |
ST32000644NS | 7200 | 64MB | Y | 5 | |
| Western Digital | RE4 (Enterprise) |
WD2003FYYS | 7200 | 64MB | Y | 5 | |
| Hitachi | UltraStar A7K2000 (Enterprise) |
HUA722020ALA330 | 7200 | 32MB | Y | 5 | |
| Seagate | Barracuda LP Consumer |
ST32000542AS | 5900 | 32MB | N | 3* | |
| Western Digital | Caviar Green Consumer |
WD20EADS | # | 32MB | Y | 3 | Drive firmware upgrade may be required |
| Hitachi | DeskStar 7K2000 Consumer |
HDS722020ALA330 | 7200 | 32MB | N | 3 |
Footnotes: Some information taken from Netgear HCL and NOT Vendor’s incomplete website or product specification pdf
* Seagate consumer drives have a 3 year warranty if bare drive, 5 year if purchased as drive “kit”
# Western Digital claims “Intellipower” for rotation speed. Translation: “We care more about your impact on the environment than we do your satisfaction with our product” or “So slow we don’t want to admit it“. Take your pick.
After reading the footnotes (*, #) above, do you see why I like enterprise drives?
1TB ReadyNAS Ultra Hard Drives from the ReadyNAS HCL
| Vendor | Class | Model # | RPM | Cache | Vibration Safeguard |
Warranty (Years) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seagate | Constellation (Enterprise) |
ST31000524NS | 7200 | 32MB | Y | 5 | |
| Seagate | Barracuda ES.2 (Enterprise) |
ST31000340NS | 7200 | 32MB | Y | 5 | Double check firmware, RAIDiator version |
| Western Digital | RE3 (Enterprise) |
WD1002FBYS | 7200 | 32MB | Y | 5 | |
| Hitachi | UltraStar A7K2000 (Enterprise) |
HUA722010CLA330 | 7200 | 32MB | Y | 5 | |
| Seagate | Barracuda LP Consumer |
ST31000520AS | 5900 | 32MB | N | 3* | |
| Western Digital | Caviar Green Consumer |
WD10EACS | # | 16MB | Y | 3 | |
| Hitachi | DeskStar 7K2000 Consumer |
HDS721010KLA330 | 7200 | 32MB | N | 3 |
Footnotes: Some information taken from Netgear HCL and NOT Vendor’s incomplete website or product specification pdf
* Seagate consumer drives have a 3 year warranty if bare drive, 5 year if purchased as drive “kit”
# Western Digital claims “Intellipower” for rotation speed. Translation: “We care more about your impact on the environment than we do your satisfaction with our product” or “So slow we don’t want to admit it“. Take your pick.
After reading the footnotes (*, #) above, do you see why I like enterprise drives?
Conclusion
Buying NAS hard drives for a Diskless ReadyNAS Ultra or adding hard disks to the NAS you own can be frustrating in addition to the expense. Why these manufacturers cannot clearly state the hard drive specifications in clear, concise and readily visible format is beyond me.
I have done my best here to dig through the confusion and lay things out as clearly as possible.
Keep in mind that these are not the only hard drives on the ReadyNAS hardware compatibility list (HCL) but they are the ones I find most appropriate. Hopefully that helps you pickup some NAS hard drives that will work well for you.
