HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB Review
by Ganesh T S on December 23, 2014 11:00 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
The HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB has been evaluated for both NAS and DAS applications and the numbers put up for comparison against other 6 TB drives targeting this market segment. As expected, there is no 'one size fits all' model in this area. The various hard drives in the comparison lot were launched targeting different markets and their resulting performance varies accordingly.
Thanks to the 7200 RPM speeds, the HGST Deskstar NAS does manage to acquit itself well in the overall performance category. Though it is not the absolute best, it performs admirably well in the random access patterns segment of the multi-client evaluation.
The HGST Deskstar NAS doesn't deliver the lowest power consumption. Those were recorded, as expected, with the 5400 RPM WD Red and the HelioSeal-technology based HGST Ultrastar He6. However, the Deskstar NAS manages to almost win the efficiency category - thanks to the great balance between speed and power consumption.
In terms of pricing, the HGST Deskstar NAS wins comfortably. It is, by far, the most price effective 7200 rpm 6 TB drive in this market segment. At $300, the Deskstar NAS is beaten in price only by the 5400 RPM WD Red, which currently retails for around $270.
There are plenty of options for NAS users looking to stock up their NAS units with high capacity drives. 6 TB drives represent the current bleeding edge, and consumers need to make sure that their NAS is compatible with the chosen drive. One of the unfortunate aspects with the 6 TB Deskstar NAS was that one of the four drives that we were sampled was consistently discarded with a 'Bad HDD I/O Access History' by our QNAP testbed. This was triggered by a sense key error at the beginning of the initialization process (similar to what we saw for the WD Red 6 TB version). The 'defective' drive, however, managed to pass extended S.M.A.R.T tests on our DAS testbed. We are chalking this down to compatibility problems for the QNAP testbed with these new drives.
4 TB drives offer an alternative to the potential risk in going the new technology route with 6 TB drives for cautious buyers. With the right data in hand, it's easy enough to find the best fit by taking into consideration the expected workload and desired price points.The overall verdict is that the 6 TB HGST Deskstar NAS is a cost-effective solution for SOHO / power user scenarios where storage density is of primary importance. One just needs to make sure that their NAS is compatible with the 6 TB variant before going ahead with the purchase.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
36 Comments
View All Comments
MamiyaOtaru - Tuesday, December 30, 2014 - link
it's mostly the "our" that immediately precedes it. Seems like it could be interpreted a couple ways. seems like it's a molehill though hehjardows2 - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
Great. Now every article comments section will be descending into a "anandtech is a horrible site now that they were bought by Purch." If this is such a horrible thing, just leave. Let those of us who still enjoy Anandtech be a part of the community, and make our own decisions if the quality changes over the next couple of years.I don't look to the comments section of an article to see the bickering of the business policies of the site. I want to see comments about the product being reviewed or the news being reported.
edzieba - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
Nope. Western Digital acquired Hitachi's 2.5" drive division. Toshiba acquired Hitachi's 3.5" drive division.Guspaz - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link
HGST is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital, not Toshiba. While HGST did divest some assets to Toshiba relating to 3.5" drives, the company itself went to Western Digital, and never stopped making 3.5" drives.Nocturnal - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
I do have a question, how much does that server run if someone was to purchase it put together like that?akula2 - Saturday, January 3, 2015 - link
The expensive component would be buying HDDs. E.g., for the latest requirement I should go for at least 12 HDDs (RAID 6, so I get 10). Now, each HDD will cost not less than $400 for sure.You can building you own custom NAS Server once you get a solid case with many HDD drive mounts. E.g., Cooler Master got Stacker 935. One can easily stuff 16 HDDs (RAID 6 max. limit) in that case by buying additional caddies. Not expensive at all.
Mobo? Go only for Server-grade model like Asrock C226M WS micro ATX board + DDR3 16GB 1600 MHz ECC (unbuffered) RAM.
CPU? For that HDD volume, I can go for Core i3-4360T or Xeon E3 V3 processor. Both support ECC RAM.
akula2 - Saturday, January 3, 2015 - link
I forgot to add -- you'll need to buy a PCIe RAID card too.It will cost $300 for a good model, say a LSI 12Gb/s MegaRAID SATA+SAS RAID controller card.
Note that 4360T has low TDP of 35W only.
iAPX - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
I like to see the NAS performances in RAID-5, they are just lulz!When will NAS performance be checked with 10Gb Ethernet link?!?
100MB/s or 120MB/s is what I expect from a single 2.5inch USB3 drive, not on a NAS that cost many grands!
Maybe it would be interesting to benchmark them on a Promise Pegasus2 R4, where you could obtain 5X to 6X more performances on the same hard drive through thunderbolt, to show their real potential???
Integr8d - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
It just depends on the model of NAS they use for review. Synology, QNAP, etc all have models w/ 10Gig-E or slots for 10gig nics. Some have dual slots.The Promise R4 is a different class of product. And Thunderbolt is irrelevant. All of these tests could've been done on a single SATA3 interconnect. 6Gbps is well-more than a single one of these drives will make use of (or, if we're talking external, the 5Gbps of USB3).
ganeshts - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link
The whole point of a NAS is simultaneous multi-client access. A Thunderbolt peripheral or a 2.5" USB 3 drive is not geared for that purpose.Home and power users run NAS units with two GbE ports link-aggregated.
As mentioned in the review, the main difference between the drives start to appear in the form of differing average response times as the number of clients increase. Please check the multi-client CIFS access section.
10 GbE is yet to go mainstream outside of SME environments. But, rest assured, we are looking at 10 GbE for our SSDs in NAS units evaluation.