[juniorg]

Morning,

As usual when I have a technical decision to make, I reach for the AVForum community !

I've just purchased a QNAP TS412 Turbo, to replace a 2 bay LG Nas which just isn't big enough now that I'm a NAS convert and ripping like a maniac.

I've now got to make a decision about what HDD's to populate it with.

It will be sat under the stairs, so noise isn't too much of a problem. Ideally I'd like the maximum amount of size (2TB ?). Budget isn't too much of a problem, as I can populate it with 2 HDD's in the meantime if too expensive to buy 4 at once.

Any advice welcome.

Cheers
Steve

[Lancia34]

HDD prices are sky high atm due to the floods in Asia. If you're not bothered about money then why not go straight with 3Tb drives which the QNAPs support.
Other option would be to start with only 2 smaller disks to keep you going until prices drop and then upgrade them - you can easily upgrade the disks and change the RAID level with no loss of data at a later date (although always worth having a backup just in case)

[juniorg]

Thanks Lancia34.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent 3tb HDD ?

This is an area which I know verty little, the last HDD I purchased was a 500gb drive a few years back !.

[Lancia34]

I use 2Tb Samsungs in mine - work perfectly well with the QNAP. Have a look at the QNAP site as I think they have recommended hard drives on there.

Samsung, Seagates and even Hitachi's are all pretty good choices

[RichB14]

Mine's populated by 4 x 2tb Hitachi's, sits in the lounge and can't really hear them at all.
Can't remember the model code though

[juniorg]

Thanks.

I've jumped in and ordered 4 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda drives (ST30000DM001). If you see the missus, they are FREE. Completely and utterly FREE. No charge. Giving them away, capiche ?

Not sure what I'll do about RAID settings as yet as I ran out of space on the 2 TB LG Nas within weeks of buying it so am a little cautious about RAID'ing all of it.

I'm hoping it's possible to RAID 2 of the disks into one 3TB 'partition' for the stuff that I can never lose (pictures etc) and then leave the others as individual 3TB drives to give me 9TB storage in total. I'd imagine that'll keep me going for a while.

Any RAID suggestions welcome, I'm a novice when it comes to that level of technical detail.

Cheers

Steve

[RichB14]

Raid 5 then, that'll give you 9tb with a parity drive for redundancy, so you can lose 1 drive without losing your data.
I still backup my photo's though onto another drive as these are the only things i can't ever get back

[Lancia34]

Originally Posted by RichB14

Raid 5 then, that'll give you 9tb with a parity drive for redundancy, so you can lose 1 drive without losing your data.
I still backup my photo's though onto another drive as these are the only things i can't ever get back

+1
Raid 5 is the best way to go with no hot spare. I run that exact configuration with 2TB disks

As Rich said, keep a backup of your critical data.

[DJB77]

Originally Posted by juniorg

Thanks.

I've jumped in and ordered 4 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda drives (ST30000DM001). If you see the missus, they are FREE. Completely and utterly FREE. No charge. Giving them away, capiche ?

Not sure what I'll do about RAID settings as yet as I ran out of space on the 2 TB LG Nas within weeks of buying it so am a little cautious about RAID'ing all of it.

I'm hoping it's possible to RAID 2 of the disks into one 3TB 'partition' for the stuff that I can never lose (pictures etc) and then leave the others as individual 3TB drives to give me 9TB storage in total. I'd imagine that'll keep me going for a while.

Any RAID suggestions welcome, I'm a novice when it comes to that level of technical detail.

Cheers

Steve

Hi, apologies for hijacking the thread. I've also recently ordered a QNAP TS 412 and have been shopping around for HDD's. I was just about to order the Seagate ST30000DM001's but saw a discussion on at QNAP NAS Community Forum • View topic - Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 and 2TB ST2000DM001 Compatible? where people where complaining that the ST30000DM001 didn't work with the TS 412, even though the drive was listed on QNAP's compatibility list.

Steve, did you manage to get these drives to work in the TS 412?

[dante01]

Originally Posted by DJB77

Hi, apologies for hijacking the thread. I've also recently ordered a QNAP TS 412 and have been shopping around for HDD's. I was just about to order the Seagate ST30000DM001's but saw a discussion on at QNAP NAS Community Forum • View topic - Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 and 2TB ST2000DM001 Compatible? where people where complaining that the ST30000DM001 didn't work with the TS 412, even though the drive was listed on QNAP's compatibility list.

Steve, did you manage to get these drives to work in the TS 412?

QNAP have amended their list of compatible hard drives and the Seagate drive is one of those now listed as "Not Recommended":

QNAP - Products - Compatibility - 3.5" HDD

They also give the following note in relation to the drive:

Note15
According to stability issues reported by some users, we list the hard drive models in the Not Recommended List temporarily. We are investigating the reported issues and will move these hard drives back to the compatibility list once the problems are resolved.

Hitachi and Samsung drives seem to be the only manufacturers not in QNAP's incompatible list?

A comparable 3TB Hitachi drive costs considerably more than the Seagate option so I've opted to buy 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 (HDS723020BLA642) drives for use with a QNAP TS-412. I get the impression that Hitachi drives are generally regarded as being more reliable than either drives manufactured by Seagate or Western Digital? Of cause, in this instance we are talking consumer quality as opposed to server grade drives.

[dante01]

A further note about the choice of drives for use with a QNAP NAS. It is advised that non of the Western Digital drives with "Blue", "Black" or "Green" in their name be used. This advise is given as a result of QNAP's consultation with Western Digital who deem these drives not efficient enough for server use.

[dante01]

Seagate have released a firmware update for their ST3000DM001, ST2500DM001, ST2000DM001 and ST1000DM003 disks.

Barracuda (1TB/disk platform) Firmware Update

QNAP have now amended their list of recommend/not recommended drives and both the ST3000DM001 and the ST2000DM001 have been put back into the recommended SATA III (6Gb/s) section.

No indication is given as to whether Seagate's revised firmware has anything to do with this?