Why Are Enterprise HDDs Sometimes Cheaper than Pro Drives? (Red Pro, Ultrastar, Irownolf and EXOS)

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Choosing the right hard drive media to go inside your Network Attached Storage (NAS) server can be a lot more complicated than you might think. A long time ago (about 20 years at least) buying hard drives was much easier, as the technology was significantly less evolved. The difference between one hard drive and another could be the capacity, physical, size or the interface - that is about it! But much like any other kind of technology, over time hardware designers were able to improve it, make it more efficient, increase the storage, speed up the access and all the while sticking with the same 3.5" physical scale. The result of all this development was that tailored/designed drives arrived that were geared internally towards specific tasks (thereby allowing designers to focus the HDDs development towards one specialization more than others). Fast forward to 2022/2023 and you find that the HDD market is considerably more diverse and brands have much more layered portfolios of drives and one big, BIG area of hard disk development was with NAS/Server HDD media. These are drives that are designed to be on 24x7, be prepared to spin up very quickly with little notice, be better suited to being deployed in larger quantities together (i.e RAID configurations made up of many drives) and all the while combating vibration and increased temperatures to maintain a healthy and stable level of use at all times. Today I want to look at three hard drives that are designed for large-scale NAS deployment (such as 8-24-bay rackmount and 8-12+ bays desktop NAS systems), as all three are the current popular choice for this kind of NAS system. There are the long-established HDD vendor drives, the WD Red Pro series and Seagate Ironwolf Pro range, and there is the NAS-brand labelled Synology HAT5300 series (built on Toshiba MG06/06/08 Enterprise series, but with Synology firmware in services included). With a new generation of NAS Hardware arriving from Synology in 2022/2023, as well as a change in support and compatibility listings by the brand in several of their releases, now is a very good time to take a look at how these three NAS HDDs compare in design, utility, performance and value. With WD and Seagate having a considerable amount of history in their Red Pro and Ironwolf Pro ranges respectively in the NAS industry, many users are still unsure about the Synology HAT5300 and whether they should make the switch, design its shift in architecture towards a more enterprise build (arguable closer to Ultrastar and Seagate EXOs, than Red or Ironwolf). Let's take a closer look at these three drives and hopefully help you decide which one deserves your data!

[kdw]

I started buying Enterprise drives a decade ago and couldn't be happier. They have been very, very reliable.

[studiogerk]

I think a lot of the enterprise drives that trickle into the consumer market can also tend to be in batches, i.e. leftovers, overruns, supplier cleanouts from warranty stock, etc. There are deals to be found on them often, especially the size down and the two size down slots. When they go out of vogue they get dumped like hot potatoes from the bigger distributors (whatever they don't clear from their main channels). Newegg, Amazon and any of the other physical storage connected resellers have clear advantages here as well as they get liquidated and surplus items as part of their business model.

[chifineart]

Good timing on this video. I've been doing research for months bouncing back and forth between the WD Gold (enterprise) versus the WD Red Pro (Pro level), the pros and cons, speed, etc and the one thing I notice that the Gold is always about 10% less in cost and I couldn't understand why. Thank you!

[tomaszgasecki]

I was waiting for delivery of WD GOLD 18TB but I cancelled immediately after checking power consumption in idle mode and noise level. In long term some extra Watts convert into some extra money to spend on electricity. Additionally dB level is significantly higher in Gold models in operation mode. 16TB RED PRO has best price per TB for whole lineup. Thank you for this video.

[ifneeded]

I'd suppose that the consumer drives are a little costlier to support, since they add on consumer friendly warranties like data rescue and also need to field phone calls for smaller volume purchases (ex. 5 drives vs 50).

[xeobit]

At around 8tb enterprise hdds overtake consumer pro drives for price per TB. Under 8TB consumer drives are cheaper which I find an interesting phenomenon. No questions that enterprise drives significantly cheaper for 10TB+

[noeldillabough]

Great video, I've often wondered what was going on beyond supply and demand

[reelintensity]

The real question I have is... WHICH ONE IS BETTER????

[MichaelAddlesee]

This vid is not lip-synced correctly. Is this just for me or do others see the same?

[Kamal_Chilaka]

Ok that makes sense. thank you for the informative video. Have been binding on your videos for the last few days. time to get a new storage solution.

[DJaquithFL]

There's a little more to it, for example the Seagate - IronWolf Pro includes **Rescue Data Recovery Services.**

[dbdarrough]

Informative video but in a few places you are not comparing apples to apples. The WD Ultrastar drives are comparable to the WD Gold drives but you were showing them compared to the WD Red drives. The Golds are based on the technology of the Ultrastars and are similar if not identical and both are optimized for both reads and writes although the Ultrastars come in more configurations for Enterprise like SAS instead of SATA, etc than the Gold drives. The Red drives are NAS drives, optimized for reads more than writes. The Purple drives are optimized for Video surveillance so they are better for writing than reading. Also be careful when buying drives to consider not only the interface and optimizations but whether they are OEM vs Retail and the warranties involved. I have bought multiple Ultrastars at significantly cheaper prices than their Gold counterparts so I agree with the point of your video but make sure the features are the same like Helium vs Air, EAMR and other technologies that might differentiate them when determining price and what matters to you.

[jorgemtds]

My Desktop computer only uses WD Gold drives. Love the damn things.

[tonyvalenti]

Interesting video and some great points of consideration.

BTW … Tutorial Suggestion … Using Tailscale to set up local to remote Synology NAS’s for scheduled offsite HyperBackups. 😎👍🏻

[premiumutube]

I contacted Toshiba for support questions for their Enterprise Line of HDD. They said they don’t provide support for Enterprise products and asked me to contact my Dealer or enterprise contact.

Avoid enterprise lineup if you are looking for warranty support.

[jGRite]

I just want to chime in on the prices I saw when I was buying 16 TB exos Seagate drives. I spent anywhere from $250 to 230 on five of them. I saw the equivalent Ironwolf drives for $50-80 more. Of course these are all on eBay some of them were either new or open boxed. They're all still working right now.

[VictorEdinovich]

Thanks for the video! Now I am really understand why Enterprise HDD a little bit cheaper than 'normal NAS' HDD.

Is possible to make similar nose comparison of the NAS & NAS Pro HDDs? 🙏

[stevenwaldstein]

Thanks for another great video. I was looking to get 5 x 16TB of disks for a new DAS/NAS system and the EXOS and UltaStar where both about $20 USD cheaper than the Ironwolf Pro and RED Pro per disk which for backup day were being offered at $249 each. Not sure if I made the right choice but I went with the EXOS. Hope it’s not too noisy. Plan to put these in a Synology 1522+. We will see. Enjoying your channel.

[ndandan]

🎯 Key points for quick navigation:

00:17 *🤔 Enterprise-grade hard drives can sometimes be cheaper than pro series drives despite better performance and durability.*
00:45 *💡 Pro series drives often have lower performance, durability, and sustained performance compared to enterprise drives.*
01:14 *🛒 Examples show enterprise drives often cheaper, e.g., 20TB WD UltraStar at £394 vs. WD Red Pro at £469.*
03:22 *📈 Pro series drives are subject to dynamic pricing based on demand and popularity of certain capacities.*
04:44 *📉 Enterprise drives' price per terabyte tends to decrease with higher capacities, unlike pro series.*
05:55 *🏢 Bulk purchasing by data centers leads to lower prices for enterprise drives due to high volume orders.*
08:41 *🔊 Enterprise drives are noisier and more power-hungry, designed for sustained industrial use, contributing to their cost efficiency.*
09:51 *⚙️ Pro series drives are quieter and consume less power, making them more appealing for home users despite higher prices.*

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[postandfly]

Hello, Can I use a Seagate Exos enterprise as a regular external drive i have a usb c 3.5 reader aconnected to my mac and i use barracudas.