I’m not anywhere close to the point where I’ll be constantly transferring data. I’ll be using it mostly as a plex server, not yet remotely for other people or myself either. Is the premium for NAS drives truly warranted for the average user? Or at that point, are NAS rated drives more just the only way to get drives over 5TB~ capacity in the first place?

  • HTWingNutBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    WD Blue 8TB is a CMR drive and just as good as any NAS drive. But I’d avoid any consumer grade hard drives 8TB and under:

    • Seagate Barracuda / Barracuda Compute
    • WD Blue (except 8TB)
    • WD Red (Red Plus and Red Pro are fine tho)
    • Toshiba DT02
    • Toshiba P300
    • Far_Marsupial6303BEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      +1

      You’ve listed all the 3.5" consumer drives. Though WD Red is listed as a NAS drive.

      Barring an unfounded conspiracy, there is no >8TB DM-SMR drive drives. There are >8TB HM-SMR drives in the NAS and Enterprise lines, but they require specialized hardware and software.

      In addition for completeness, all consumer 2.5" Seagate and WD drive >500GB are SMR. The 9.5mm Toshiba L200 1TB is CMR, but the 7mm model is SMR.

    • Far_Marsupial6303BEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      For completeness, the external Seagate FireCudas, 3.5" 8TB and 2.5" 5TB are SMR.