Single Client Access - DAS Benchmarks

The HGST Deskstar NAS was connected to a 6 Gbps SATA port off the PCH in our DAS testbed. After formatting in NTFS, it was subject to our DAS test suite. The results are presented in the graphs below.

Photos Read

Photos Write

Videos Read

Videos Write

Blu-ray Folder Read

Blu-ray Folder Write

In general, we see that the HGST Deskstar NAS manages to beat out the contenders with lower rotational speeds (such as the 5900 rpm Seagate NAS HDD and the 5400 rpm WD Red). However, it loses out to the higher end drives (such as the WD Red Pro or the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 - which has extra cache). This performance difference is also brought out in the pricing that we looked at in the previous section.

Adobe Photoshop Light Read

Adobe Photoshop Heavy Read

Adobe After Effects Read

Adobe Illustrator Read

Adobe Photoshop Light Write

Adobe Photoshop Heavy Write

Adobe After Effects Write

Adobe Illustrator Write

Certain workloads seem to make the HGST Deskstar NAS perform well in the PCMark 8 storage bench, but, in general, we see the scenario from our robocopy benchmarks play out here too.

Performance - Raw Drives Single Client Access - NAS Benchmarks
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  • josue16 - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link

    So, which of the 4 TB drives are more reliable? Are there companies that report HDD reliability?
  • jota83 - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link

    Not really.... just MTBF and unrecoverable errors rate. The one that is collecting data since its foundation is, as stated multiple times along the comments, backblaze. They are collecting a lot of data and reporting those to the community in a periodic basis. They have surveyed several branched, and they have a pool of more than 30k disks and growing. Even if they are a very respectable firm, their strategy to offer unlimited backup for a very low feed lead them to look for a design that while being robust is very cheap... hence the NAS disks "consumer" grade. I find fascinating what they have achieved in no time! You might want to check at their blog, with plenty of nice information. Cheers!
  • Jeff Biscuits - Tuesday, December 9, 2014 - link

    Anyone happen to know when the 5TB and 6TB versions are due to hit UK? They're listed on the HGST website but when I look for them for sale I only find them available on US retailers
  • alecweder - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link

    The biggest issue with RAID are the unrecoverable read errors.
    If you loose the drive, the RAID has to read 100% of the remaining drives even if there is no data on portions of the drive. If you get an error on rebuild, the entire array will die.

    http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-mana...

    A UER on SATA of 1 in 10^14 bits read means a read failure every 12.5 terabytes. A 500
    GB drive has 0.04E14 bits, so in the worst case rebuilding that drive in a five-drive
    RAID-5 group means transferring 0.20E14 bits. This means there is a 20% probability
    of an unrecoverable error during the rebuild. Enterprise class disks are less prone to this problem:

    http://www.lucidti.com/zfs-checksums-add-reliabili...
  • hansmuff - Thursday, March 5, 2015 - link

    You can circumvent these issues by using ZFS. Put that on a box with ECC RAM and back it up online, and you've got a pretty reliable solution.
  • willis936 - Saturday, May 9, 2015 - link

    I've done receiver testing on sata drives before and I can tell you while drives are only tested to 10^-14 BER with 95% confidence that if the channel is clean and both the host and hard drive have good phys and you don't do something like put your phone on the hard drive then you won't see a single phy related error until something fails. A URE refers to a drive failure to read a bit. It's unrelated to sata as you implied.
  • comomolo - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link

    Is it really worth it to get these NAS drives vs their regular versions? My use case is a home NAS, Linux software RAID or ZFS (no HBA). Will I miss anything by not using the NAS version of the drive? The difference in price is not trivial in Spain (some 20% more for the NAS model).

    Thanks for any help.
  • Hisated936 - Saturday, June 9, 2018 - link

    Comcast won't send you your neglected password https://xfinitylogin.us/ On top of the homepage, you must see the Sign in link, Click it to get redirected.
  • ffarzan - Tuesday, June 29, 2021 - link

    I bumped into your web site checking spec. on Hitachi 4TB, and saw your comparison chart , extremely useful,
    do you have any such comparison table for Seagate, or by Model No. across any given brand, and manufacturer ?? , Thanks

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