Hard Drive, Recommendations?
 

I'm thinking about purchasing a NAs device, and it so happens that it requires you to choose the HDD of your choice to use. So I'm wondering whats one of the best choices out there. If somebody could give a specific model, that would be greatly appeciated.

I'm looking into something that meets these credentials 7200 RPM, 16 MB cache perferred or 8, 300 GB and above, Serial-ATA I or II, 0-$250.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...SubCategory=14

Take your pick. :)

(In other words, Western Digital Caviar FTW)

What NAs are you thinking about getting?

Hitachis and Western Digitals tend to be a bit faster than the other makers, which makes them my favorite drives for desktop use, but that doesn't amount to much in a NAS box, so I'd definitely go for a Samsung drive...quiet, cool (important in something like a Netgear SC101), reliable, and pretty quick. Maxtors and Seagates run pretty hot, and I've been a bit nonplussed by their manufacturing quality as of late, so I wouldn't bother with them.

I currently own 3 Western Digital HDD's. I highly recommend them, you can't go wrong.

I've no trouble with Maxtor or Samsung drives i've had. But if your going to use your drive in NAS box then i'd have to go with Relic.

Make sure to check what the NAS device your going to be getting will support, otherwise you might find yourself with a HDD which may not be compatiable.

As for recommendations, try looking at Seagate first and then Maxtor since I've used lots of different Seagate HDD types and non have failed me yet.

While I know your just after HDD recommendations, I would think about getting a complete NAS device, e.g. Buffalo TeraStation Network-Attached Storage.

All those brands seem to be very reliable. But I'm trying to find out which models will perform the best in the server environment, and I want to take advantage of the Gigabit Ethernet. I've seen benchmarks and they seem to beat each other by small margins.

I don't like most of the NAS devices availible because they are very similar to the one I currently own, and I'm looking towards upgrading.

GBE has a theoretical network speed of 125MBps, far faster than any 7200RPM PATA/SATA HDD on the market (only with 10000RPM+ HDDs or RAID 0 Arrays are you going to come close to 125MBps). Just go for the Western Digital 320GB 7200RPM SATA, it should be able to pull around 50MBps, more than enough for all but the most demanding read/write tasks.