Are NAS drives recommended for Unraid?

[rover87]

After having outgrown my Synology DS415 I just ordered the new components for my DIY NAS based on unraid. I have the option to get a few Seagate Barracuda Pro +Rescue, 12TB with a nice discount but I have some questions before purchasing.

Are NAS drives recommended for Unraid, if not, is it better to have spin down enabled or disabled?

[Hoopster]

8 hours ago, rover87 said:

After having outgrown my Synology DS415 I just ordered the new components for my DIY NAS based on unraid. I have the option to get a few Seagate Barracuda Pro +Rescue, 12TB with a nice discount but I have some questions before purchasing.

Are NAS drives recommended for Unraid, if not, is it better to have spin down enabled or disabled?

 

I personally have WD Red NAS drives in my unRAID arrays; however, unRAID will work with any drive whether or not it is a NAS-specific drive.  The decision to use NAS drives or others really should come down to things like manufacturer warranty, drive reliability reputation, power usage, intended use, and, yes, even price.  Whether or not the drives in the array are NAS drives or not makes no difference to unRAID.

 

There is a feature in unRAID called turbo write which will significantly speed up data writes to the array.  When turbo write is enabled, it causes all the drives to be spun up all the time.  If there are frequent and large volumes of data being written to the array (such as during a data migration to an unRAID array), this is a nice feature to have enabled.  For other usage scenarios with less-frequent, small-volume data writes, allowing the drives to spin down when not in use will save a bit on power consumption and heat. I let mine spin down as writes to the array happen sporadically.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Hoopster