I want to build a 6-slot 18TB NAS in RAID 10 mode.
What is the forum wizdom on the best 3 TB HDD for audio streaming application?
I guess the key features are: reliability and durability (not the 7200 rpm speed).
I was thinking of Seagate Green lines or similar.
Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Adrian_P
AMA,
"Best" drives are usually constrained by the NAS manufacturer. For example, QNAP do not recommend the WD Green drives in their NASes due to problems with the power management on these drives. They (and other NAS manufacturers) publish a list of supported drives on their web site. Best to go with a supported option than take a chance on building and populating an 18TB array only to find you have problems later.
Adrian
Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Eloise
First off, is there any particular reason for RAID10? 6 3TB disks in RAID10 will give you approx 9TB; the same as 4 disks in RAID 5. Now for specific applications (databases primarily) RAID10 gives a significant speed boost when writing but assuming you are using them for music application I can't see any benefit.
As for what disks; you want to be looking at enterprise spec disks as these are designed for reliability. Seagate Constellation ES or Western Digital RE ranges would be good starting point. Also worth looking as most NAS enclosures will have a list of recommended drives.
Eloise
Posted on: 01 November 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
AMA, I agree with Eloise, check you are using a disk supported by your NAS manufacturer. Basically audio file streaming is a pretty trivial application for a NAS, and is probably one of the easiest applications to cater for (long, relatively slow retrieval rate files).
If your NAS was supporting multiple streaming applications and Mutiple concurrent streaming or hard disk play back, then disk buffer size and data rate starts to become more relevant. But for one streaming user then most disks are going to be fine. But to be sure check the max continuous data rate of the disk Redbook CD is 1.4Mbps.
Simon
