Selecting drives for a RAID
Selecting drives for a NAS or any other raid system is not as simplet as it first seems.
What drives to use in a RAID system.
So, you just bought a new RAID system, it may be a NAS box or any other type of RAID system. Now you need some drives to fill those slots and get as much storage as you can afford.
Selecting hard drives can be a nightmare, there are so many types and sizes that it’s easy to get confused and just go for the cheapest available. We regularly see drives from RAID systems that have failed, sometimes because they are unsuitable for the role.
What we first need to do is look at the two main types available.
What type of hard drives are there?
In modern drives, there are two drive types available, Shingled Magnetic Recording or SMR and Conventional Magnet Recording or CMR. At the outset we recommend using CMR type drives and I will explain below how both these types of drives work and how we come to our conclusion.
CMR – Conventional Magnetic Recording.
With CMR drives, the data is written in concentric tracks of the same width. Data can be written in a single pass, to each track. This is the simplest form and the most reliable when RAID systems are being used.