Drive selection on NAS TS469Pro

I was getting me the Backup NAS TS 469 Pro last year because of a strong discount offer. Although at that time i had no need for, but i was aware that it will only be a matter of time for more storage and more backup. Now is the time i consider to make it ready for use with at least one drive or even more.

The thing is, i kinda crack my mind on what drive or drives to use. Im gonna need at least 8 TB space (the old 2-slot NAS only had a total of 7 TB, becoming short). Of course, i need it fully upgradable, 8 TB is minimum not maximum. In theory i would drive good using a single 8 TB drive and can upgrade slowly as soon as i have need for. So far no support has been validated for 8 TB drives but it should only be a matter of proper firmware to make it compatible i guess. Besides support list only means it is granted to run well on those drives, but it doesnt mean there is no other drives able to be run.

But it would also work using 6 TB drives, in that term i need 2 of them at once, and the possibility to upgrade will be lower because simply lesser total space for future upgrade.

So i am not sure what to do and what drive or drives to get... hints could be useful. I am not in a hurry, im gonna upgrade the next 1-3 months, but simply need to know how to solve it. I dont need special performance or whatever because once the data is stored i wont be moved around a lot. It is a backup NAS designed to be inactive and locked away as soon as monthly backup is done, the important specs is size and stability/endurance, nothing else. I dont care how much power the drive need, how noisy it is... as long as it can survive 10+ years it is the correct drive, even if it will use 1000 W and 60 dB noise... backup time is probably up to 12h a month, so it really doesnt matter. But in term the drive is enjoying going boom then i will become mad.

6TB HDD for NAS - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236737&cm_re=6TB-_-22-236-737-_-Product

WD Caviar Red.

I heard lot of bad stuff regarding this drive, and the stuff that did hurt my feeling is the "reliability spot".

I mean, it is no issue getting a new drive (sure it's simply time i dont have...) but what hurts me most considering unreliable drives is the possibly data corruption and i always need to "hunt down" the drives reliability, checking for failures... the more trust the better for me, so i need to spend lesser time for checks.

Check out HGST drives.

Well, they are expensive but i am not price sensitive when it comes to my backup NAS, just the best is good enough because it would be evil if i face any data corruption. As long as it truly is able to boost reliability, thats the question.

Ultimately, if you are wanting drives to last that long of a time, no matter who the company is you will be just crossing your fingers. I would possibly consider looking into a RAID setup so that you have some redundancy against failure (RAID1 at minimum, RAID6 preferable -- but I realize a RAID6 is quite overkill and would be large for what you are requesting, and would require a different NAS/external solution all together). RAID5 isn't really an option anymore these days because of the long time it takes to rebuild a RAID array with the larger drives if a drive fails you are (for the lack of a better term) screwed.

Well, the data is backup up 3 times, 2 PC and 1 NAS (a complete redundant copy, not fragmented or whatelse). But it doesnt matter how many backups, a screwed drive is always hassle and not something i want to deal with, it will take me a large amount of my limited time. A serious buisness man/woman may know, money isnt biggest value, the biggest value is time and the avoidance of hassle, hassle is creating stress... thus shortening the valuable lifetime and general potential even more...

Fact is, nowadays all the companies are producing drives that cant keep up with the reliability of some very dated drives (i have a 20+ year old drive that is still running properly). However, even if reliability is insufficient, there is still some clear differences between manufacturers and/or certain type of drives. Nowadays it is common that many drives fail "out of the box" or are going boom after just a few months. In our outside warranty... not a matter, it is always one of the biggest hassle having corrupted data and in many term the drive will produce corruption but is still "running" like nothing did happen at all. It will become hard to prove that the drive is truly damaged, while a manufacturer or vendor may say "no... all is fine", it is simply endless hassle. I have honestly hardest time turning in bad drives for RMA... a vendor is gonna test it 1 week in a row if it have to be, else they wont hand out a new drive. If they decide to turn it in the manufacturer may say "all fine... and your data is probably corrupt because your system is 1 year to old, wrong firmware/system" or whatever, giving it back and thats it... i really adore quality drives, it helps a lot.

Turning in my SSD for example took me 3 weeks for replacement..., yes 3 weeks no SSD because of warranty, and the vendor wouldnt even turn it in for RMA as long as he cant reproduce the issue. I just say... the problems the industry is producing by inferior drives is no sweet. My WD essential drive was producing corruption aswell... but i was throwing it away after because turning it in for RMA was just to much of hassle to me... industry simply fails. People have to understand that a drive is rarely just going boom and power is off... most of the time they produce slow issues but "pretend to work properly".

I just want to avoid hassle as much as possible, really... it would be worth lot of cash... cash is low rated compared to my time/nerves i could protect.

So far there is 2 options or maybe 3:
8 TB Hitachi: Highest price, question is if it could be worth it. Some interesting new 10 TB drives may be released too, optimized for cold storage (capacity/reliability is above performance) which is exactly the stuff i need.
6 TB WD RED: Many bad reputation on the net, seems to have a high failure rate.
8 TB Seagate Enterprise Archive: Good value, performance is low but reliability is the only thing that truly matters.

Btw: 10 year isnt much in my book, but i do understand that nowadays some hardware is terribly short lifed and usually made in order to pass the warranty period, not much more, a terrible development for sure. If i have to cut it down to only 5 years and maybe throw away after, i really feel like im a junk producer and a owner of junk... to be honest.

Ivy said:

I just want to avoid hassle as much as possible, really... it would be worth lot of cash... cash is low rated compared to my time/nerves i could protect.

So far there is 2 options or maybe 3:
8 TB Hitachi: Highest price, question is if it could be worth it. Some interesting new 10 TB drives may be released too, optimized for cold storage (capacity/reliability is above performance) which is exactly the stuff i need.
6 TB WD RED: Many bad reputation on the net, seems to have a high failure rate.
8 TB Seagate Enterprise Archive: Good value, performance is low but reliability is the only thing that truly matters.

Btw: 10 year isnt much in my book, but i do understand that nowadays some hardware is terribly short lifed and usually made in order to pass the warranty period, not much more, a terrible development for sure. If i have to cut it down to only 5 years and maybe throw away after, i really feel like im a junk producer and a owner of junk... to be honest.

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SO MANY WORDS.

You aren't thinking about this logically. You go on about how expensive your time is, and how much you cannot afford to spend any of your already limited time on drive issues, yet you want to go to a single drive system. this is the worst idea possible, and one that should not be considered. You should be buying at minimum two drives, unless you discard all your points on how important your time is should you run into issues.

I would buy 2x WD or HGST drives (which are the same, really). I have run Seagate, with limited success. I've owned a ton of drives, and have really only had issues with Seagate drives. Normally I run HGST or WD. To be safe, you could buy 1x HGST and 2x WD, in case one runs into a firmware issue.

I run the WD Red in my NAS and so far everything seems good (knocks on wood). Much like everyone above me has said, why would you not use some kind of dual drive setup? The point of backing up is to save the info, not put it another drive that could fail and lose it just like the first. Your unit has four bays, why not use them???

I'm sometimes selling QNAPs with WD drives and I had no issues with them. Generally it's not recommended to use "green" drive series in NAS but couple of my clients have TS469 and similar NAS series running with WDC Green for a long time without any issues.
Personally I found Purple series more reliable than Red and also cheaper ( actually the cheapest drives designed for 24/7 work ). I'm not sure how it will look in longer work but so far couple of QNAPs which I sold are running on WDC Purple 24/7 for couple of months ( 8+ ) without issues.
In the past I was offering WDC RE but price is too high while RMA rate is not much better than for some cheaper series. Cheaper drives are always easier to replace.