The best NAS drives depend on your needs. For home NAS (1-8 bays): WD Red Plus, Seagate IronWolf, or Toshiba N300. For business/heavy workloads: WD Red Pro or Seagate IronWolf Pro. For best value: Seagate Exos or WD Ultrastar enterprise drives often cost less per TB while offering superior reliability. Check compatibility with your NAS brand (Synology, QNAP, etc.) on their compatibility lists.

Not recommended. Desktop drives (WD Blue, Seagate Barracuda) aren't designed for 24/7 operation or multi-drive environments. They lack vibration sensors, have lower workload ratings, and may experience premature failure in NAS use. NAS drives cost slightly more but include: 24/7 reliability rating, rotational vibration (RV) sensors, error recovery controls, and higher MTBF. The small premium is worth it for data safety.

Both are excellent and very similar in specs. WD Red Plus: CMR technology, 3-year warranty, NASware firmware, slightly quieter reputation. Seagate IronWolf: CMR technology, 3-year warranty, AgileArray firmware, includes IronWolf Health Management. Performance and reliability are comparable. Choose based on current price — they regularly trade places on sales. Both work great in Synology, QNAP, and other NAS brands.

Enterprise drives (Exos, Ultrastar) are often the better value for home NAS. They offer: higher reliability ratings, longer warranties (5 years vs 3), higher workload ratings (550TB/year vs 180TB/year), and often lower $/TB. The only downsides: slightly louder operation and no NAS-specific features like IronWolf Health Management. For serious home servers, enterprise drives are the enthusiast choice — they're literally overbuilt for home use.

CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) writes tracks side-by-side — best for NAS, RAID, and write-heavy workloads. SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) overlaps tracks for higher density but has slower sustained write speeds. For NAS, always choose CMR drives. SMR drives can cause RAID rebuild issues and poor performance. Good news: IronWolf, WD Red Plus, Red Pro, and all enterprise drives use CMR. Avoid standard WD Red (non-Plus) which uses SMR.

It depends on your capacity needs and desired redundancy. 2-bay NAS: RAID 1 (mirrored) gives 1 drive of usable space with redundancy. 4-bay NAS: RAID 5 gives 3 drives of usable space with 1-drive redundancy. 6+ bay NAS: RAID 6 gives n-2 drives of usable space with 2-drive redundancy. Start with your target usable capacity, add redundancy drives, then choose the most cost-effective drive size. Larger drives (12TB+) often have better $/TB.

For best $/TB value, the sweet spot is typically 12TB-18TB drives. Smaller drives (4-8TB) have higher $/TB. Larger drives (20TB+) carry a capacity premium. Consider your NAS bay count: if you have limited bays, larger drives maximize total capacity. If you have many bays, smaller drives let you spread risk and add capacity gradually. For most home users, 8TB-16TB drives offer the best balance of value, capacity, and flexibility.

Quality NAS drives typically last 3-5+ years in 24/7 operation. Enterprise drives often last longer. Backblaze data shows annualized failure rates of 1-3% for most modern drives. Factors affecting lifespan: temperature, vibration, workload, and power cycles. To maximize life: ensure good NAS ventilation, use a UPS, avoid frequent power cycles, and monitor SMART data. Always maintain backups — all drives eventually fail regardless of quality.