Hi all,

Still playing with the idea of putting together a couple of NAS's, one
for me (because) and one for daughter as she want's to get all her
photos together in one place (or 'copies of' at least).

Trying to keep the power requirements and noise levels to the minimum
whilst providing a reasonable (sufficient) online capacity to do what
is required at the lowest possible cost.

To that end I already have a few of the slim line (Atom powered)
Shuttle PC's:

http://www.shuttle.eu/products/disco...bones/xs35v3l/

.... with low capacity SSD's and enough RAM (4GB) to run something
like Open Media Vault.

https://www.openmediavault.org/

I've been running OMV on a Raspberry Pi2b for some time now and it
seems pretty reliable and the performance sufficient to stream a video
etc. Not saying it's 'fast' as these things go, but it's adequate,
very very low power and nearly silent (you can just hear the 4TB
external laptop drive running now and then).

However, the Pi is a bit 'bitsy' to give someone as a working solution
compared with the Shuttle, because you can actually fit two 2.5"
drives in the shuttle, the additional one going on the SATA connector
for the slim line drive (that's not present). So, the small SSD on
that for the boot / system and 'something bigger' for the actual
shared storage.

Now, you can buy a 2.5" form factor WD Red drive in 1TB (max) and
whilst that would probably be sufficient for daughters needs, isn't
'big' as such. However, what it does mean is that a 2TB USB backup
drive would be adequate and that helps to keep the overall price down.

So then we come to drives, makes and reliability.

*Traditionally* we would have stuck 'a drive' in whatever we were
doing and that would have been it, but now we have different drives
for different roles ... laptop, desktop, CCTV, NAS, Server, DVR's etc.

But, I can get 2 x 1TB 2.5" 'std' drives for the price of one 'Red'
drive or 1 drive of 2+ times the capacity of the Red?

If said drive was in a Shuttle running OMV and the drive spinning down
when idle ... and assuming they were fast, quiet and cool enough in
use, mightn't std drives be better VFM, even in the long term?

Along those lines, over 10 years ago I built a Windows Home Server
using 3 x Hitachi 500GB laptop drives (providing 1.5TB via Drive
Extender) and fingers crossed, they still seem to be hanging in
there. I can't remember if the drives spin down when idle but they
certainly spin down when the server hibernates and it does that most
nights. I notice you can still get Hitachi (HGST) 2.5" drives in 1TB
(~£45) and assuming they were the same thing as I have in my WHS, then
I'd have to say I'd be inclined to get a couple of them.

Yes, I could get a Synology box (DS119j?) and a higher capacity 3.5"
drive but at a lot more cost and no way I could swap out the hardware
so cheaply (outside the warranty etc).

So, apart from the d-i-y focused thoughts above, can anyone say these
days that any make / model of hard drive is actually going to be
better or worse (from a reliability POV) or is it still mostly a
matter of luck how long they last?

FWIW, I believe 'heat' is a killer of some electronic equipment and my
WHS and the HDD's run very cool (I ducted the air over the HDD's
specifically).

We probably all have tales of drives that lasted for ever but the
Internet is now littered with people reporting drives dying pretty
quickly. ;-(

I notice you can now buy 1TB SSD's for under £100 but would that be
any more likely to last 10 years an a conventional drive in a NAS
role?

Cheers, T i m