Network-Attached Storage (NAS) systems are a godsend when it comes to storing and sharing large chunks of data with all your devices. Most NAS enclosures have more hard drive bays than even a gaming PC because you may require a lot of storage capacity depending on your workload. Heck, even if you don’t need plenty of HDDs for your day-to-day tasks, you can still run some extra hard drives in RAID mode to improve the overall read/write speeds and protect your data from drive failure and corruption.
There are plenty of hard drives out there, and each company has multiple models that are designed for different workloads. So, I’ve selected eight of the best NAS-ready hard drives to help you pick the right one for your setup.
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Seagate IronWolf Pro
Editor’s choice
Built for heavy workloads, Seagate’s IronWolf Pro lineup of hard drives offers high transfer speeds and has an enormous workload limit of 300TB/year and a high MTBF value of 2.5 million hours. The IronWolf Pro hard drives provide up to 22TB of storage, and you can fit a maximum of 24 of these blazing-fast drives into your NAS enclosure.
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Western Digital WD Red Pro
Runner-up
$150 $170 Save $20
Western Digital’s Red Pro series of drives come with faster motors, utilizes a more reliable storage technology, and up to 24 can be installed inside a single NAS enclosure.
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Seagate Exos X20
Premium pick
$416 $500 Save $84
If you want a durable and reliable hard drive for your NAS, you should consider picking up the Seagate Exos X20. These hard drives leverage the SAS III 12GB/s connection to hit high read and write speeds. In addition to a 5-year warranty from Seagate, they have an extremely low annualized failure rate of 0.35 % and an MTBF rating of 2.5 million hours, so you don’t have to worry about losing any important files.
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Toshiba N300 PRO
Best for professionals
$128 $135 Save $7
Toshiba may not be as popular as Western Digital and Seagate, but it manufactures some top-notch HDDs, and the Toshiba N300 PRO is proof of that. Capable of spinning at 7200 RPM, the fast N300 PRO has a maximum cache size of 512MB and provides up to 18TB of storage. It features RV sensors to prevent rotational vibrations inside your NAS enclosure and includes error recovery control measures to retrieve important data.
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Seagate BarraCuda Compute HDD
Budget pick
$65 $73 Save $8
Hard disk drives are a reliable way to add more storage capacity to your PC. The Seagate BarraCuda Compute is a reliable 3.5-inch drive on the market with up to 8TB of storage.
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Western Digital WD Gold
Most reliable
The Western Digital WD Gold series is a premium set of HDDs that’s better suited for businesses than in everyday-use cases. WD Gold hard drives are extremely fast thanks to their high spin rates of 7200 RPM and up to 512MB cache. The drives are also very durable and feature vibration protection tech to automatically correct linear and rotational vibrations.
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Toshiba MG Series
Best for enterprises
$200 $230 Save $30
Best suited for large organizations and enterprises, you should go with the Toshiba MG Series if you want a high-performance hard drive that can work reliably 24/7. Aside from their 7,200 RPM speed and a five-year warranty from Toshiba, you also don’t have to worry about running out of space as these HDDs have a high storage capacity of 20TB.
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Western Digital WD Purple
Best for surveillance
The Western Digital WD Purple hard drives are designed for users who require high-capacity storage drives that can work 24/7 to store data from their security cameras. The WD Purple family of HDDs features AllFrame 4KTM Technology to decrease pixelation and reduce frame loss during recording. Moreover, each hard disk supports up to 64 cameras, and you can use a single 14TB model to save all your footage.
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Synology HAT3300 Plus
Perfect for Synology NAS
Although most hard drives on this list will work with the premium NAS enclosures manufactured by Synology, this particular HDD works exceedingly well with any 3.5-inch NAS from the company.. Apart from a 3-year warranty, the HAT3300 Plus has an MTBF rating of 1.2M hours and an annual workload rating of 180TB, making it a robust HDD for Synology NAS users.
A recap of the best hard disks for NAS
These are some of the best hard drives that you can get for your NAS system. Whether you want to back up important files or store surveillance footage, you’ll definitely find a hard drive that suits your niche here. The Seagate IronWolf Pro is my top recommendation for an all-rounder hard drive. With its high cache, quick read/write rates, and high durability, it’s a fantastic choice for most users.
For enterprises and large offices, the Western Digital WD Gold is an extremely reliable hard drive. It’s rather pricey, but you get what you pay for. Alternatively, you can go for the affordable Seagate BarraCuda 1TB hard drive. While it lacks the high reliability or better storage capacity of the other drives on this list, it’s an inexpensive option if you plan to use your NAS as a media server.
That said, if you’re planning to outfit your PC with a quick and snappy storage drive, it’s better to invest in a high-speed SSD instead. From ultra-fast PCIe SSDs to easy-to-carry external SSDs, there’s quite a lot to choose from, too.
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