Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB Review (Page 1 of 11) | APH Networks

When QNAP sent over the TS-559 Pro+ to us for review in September 2010, I decided it was a wise choice to buy a new set of hard drives to go along with the NAS. My requirements were simple; I wanted something reasonably power efficient, reasonably fast, and reasonably priced to run in RAID 5. As it turned out, my “simple” requirements were actually not as simple as I thought. Apparently, regular desktop drives may have problems in RAID, and I was not about to spend two to three times the price on enterprise grade hard disks just to reduce the risk of it dropping out of the array. After scuttling through conflicting opinions of many people online, and eventually consulting with engineers at QNAP, I decided to settle for a trio of Western Digital Blue 1TB hard drives. Sure, they did not support time limited error recovery, but at least it fulfilled all my other requirements. Two hundred dollars later, my 2TB RAID 5 array was built, and after all these years, I never had a single issue. Ahh, the wonders of life. Well, just because I had no real issues, does not mean the solution could not have been better. As dedicated network attached storage systems became more and more popular, disk manufacturers finally took notice, and began to release products to better accommodate the needs of the people. Earlier last month, we have reviewed the Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB, a drive that attempts to strike a balance between speed and efficiency. We have also covered HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB, which tips the scale more to the performance side of things. Today, we will take a look at the Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB, which is designed to undercut the competition in price. How well will it compete? Let the benchmarking begin.

via Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB Review (Page 1 of 11) | APH Networks.