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!
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[@kdw75]

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

[@NipkowDisk]

Same here. I don't mind the extra noise and (perhaps) higher power consumption; I'll trade that any day for higher reliability.

[@NicolasSilvaVasault]

@@NipkowDisk how noisy compared to pro?

[@xeobit2781]

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+

[@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.

[@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.

[@tonyvalenti6614]

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. 😎👍🏻

[@ifneeded1]

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).

[@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!

[@noeldillabough]

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

[@DJaquithFL]

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

[@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.

[@Zero2Ryu]

I bought 2 16TB Exos on Amazon recently, the warranty started on June 2022. And I noted DS1821+ is cheaper than DS1621+ on Amazon Singapore.

[@squidben5780]

Very good video and explanation.

[@SuperKotatube]

thanks ... well explaining

[@jorgemtds]

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

[@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.

[@josvanderspek1403]

Sooo,,, would you say that for my first NAS (Syn 220+) with one bay already filled (Seagate Ironwolf) 4TB drive, it would be absolutely fine _if not superior_ to instead of adding a 16 TB IronWolf Pro I get the Exos one of the same size? (Noise won't make thát much difference for me, but it is in my room.) My two goals of the NAS are: storage (of currently about 6 TB video + 1 TB backup history), and connecting my LG C2 (OLED 4K 48" 120 Hz) TV to it to watch videos (often 4K) from it?

[@Leroy_allen]

good videos, but i like it short and simple

[@pOssEidO21]

my 4tb seagate barracuda went out, so im intrest in Xeos 8tb, im not using this for interprice but the cost of this one think is good, do you recomend this one, just for storage and game.....

[@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? 🙏

[@chrishalle1982]

They are not cheaper a seagate exos 2tb hdd costs 117€ while a seagate ironwolf nas hdd costs 70€

[@josephromano6168]

TLRD; Because economy of scale. They make more enterprise drives over consumer NAS drives.

[@UrielVentris1984]

i love them i use them for my digital dvds.

[@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.

[@PoeLemic]

So true. I've been buying enterprise drives, and there is a lot to learn. But, for me, I just wanted drives with longer warranties than consumer drives. And, I don't mind refurbished.

[@paulclarke5420]

Seagate recovery on iron-wolf pro is not available on their data centre version I think. That is another reason (for seagate only)

[@premiumutube9674]

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.

[@delboyg01]

I know I'm late to this thread, but I have replaced maybe 5x of the Toshiba 8TB N300 series drives, although Toshiba don't process the warranty through retail channels, they do have a European service centre, which will replace the drive when faulty.

[@MatteoFerreccio-1]

What happens if one buys enterprise class hard drives because of the lower price for external storage backup? You plug them once a month in on a SATA docking, update the backup and the let them sit for a month. By logic, being them more rugged they should last fine, is that so? I never understood if being engineered for 24/7 becomes a problem when the drive is used only occasionally

[@jbizz1320]

Thought about this too. My NAS would only be turned on once a week or more to transfer files over and off

[@MichaelWebMason]

Great video but one thing I think you might like to cover in an update video is WARRANTY. I recently had a pro drive frail (when I say fail I mean the cat knocked it off the shelf) and luckily it was under warranty, just. Since then I am looking at enterprise drives as they come with a longer warranty.

[@reelintensity3263]

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

[@thegeforce6625]

Enterprise drives pretty much hands down, designed for maximum reliability and performance, with low cost not really being a factor in their production.

[@stevenwaldstein2249]

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.

[@onesteeltank]

So how is everything?

[@brianburch3317]

Yeah how noisy is it?

[@stevenwaldstein2249]

So far everything is working out great but ended up going with the QNAP TS664 instead of Synology because it was difficult to tell exactly which drives were improved for their system.

[@luisgray9912]

​@stevenwaldstein2249 sorry for the late reply, but how do you find the noise ?

[@MichaelAddlesee]

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

[@MP-vg7ug]

Yes it's slightly off

[@GroundDwellerStudioS]

It's not just you, some of the recent videos have the same issue throughout part or the whole of the video.

[@Cristian-pw1iv]

i like to think he forgot to record audio and he’s doing his best to voice over afterwards

[@Carittech]

Same issue for me

[@tonyvalenti6614]

Hmm. Worked find for me on my AppleTV 4K. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@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.

[@ajsajs7451]

Nice video, I got a question. I have a 4bay nas synology, can I mix my 16tb enterprise with my 10tb iron wolf?

[@ryanjames2962]

Depends what RAID you are running. Something like the Synology Hybrid RAID will allow you to do what you are asking

[@aaron1728]

Do look up "Synology RAID Calculator" and you will have an idea of how it works

[@eduardoig17]

i would have assumed that the enterprise drives would use less energy since energy consumption is very important to data centers

[@BigBahss]

Having those hard drives standing upright and waving your hands around is making me so nervous lol

[@TheophilusEmmanuel]

LOL. I thought i was the only one! 🙂

[@CupidFromKentucky]

Are the consumer drives expected to last longer since the enterprise drives are expected to be replaced every few years?

[@Xfade81]

In most cases the enterprise drives (in Seagate's case at least) have double the Mean Time Between Failure and are rated for a higher TB/Year too. So, not really.

[@dataandroid2036]

Hallo, im looking vor TS-464. You have it without using it. ?? Can i buy this from you? Regards

[@badviemy]

Don't think he'd be selling it

[@HereAfterNow]

are regular consumers allowed to buy just one enterprise drive? where can I get those???

[@SasaErkic-xy2ps]

Can i use exos drive like normal drive in pc for storage?

[@adrianandrews2254]

Yes, but check its a SATA drive. All my enterprise drives are SAS which don't work in PCs. I would however recommend a small SSD for the system drive. With a single data drive you won't notice any more noise or increased power consumption

[@ultraali453]

I wonder how much more noise enterprise drives make.

[@adrianandrews2254]

I have three EXOS in a standard PC. I don't notice any motor noise. What they do is emit lots of clicks which I think is head load or step related. Far from bothering me I find it reassuring to know when they're in use.

[@ChargedPulsar]

I didn’t notice anything weird with microphone.

[@gvidas7333]

Right now EXOS 18TB is at 300 euros. Ordered two of them...

[@kingneutron1]

When 18TB drives hit the $200 mark, a lot of people are going to be upgrading their NAS and ZFS servers ;-)

[@li5668]

Make the comparisons on graphs and show the differences in value. The waving hand is a bit boring.

[@bobbrown8661]

I only find the seagates enterprise drives are cheaper than the NAS drives, WDs seem to have it other way around, at least where Im at.

[@iankester-haney3315]

Bulk purchases make little sense. For that to be the case, there would be a minimum buy or lower pricing at minimum order quantity.

[@dr.peterscroll422]

👍

[@jec_ecart]

Hard drive prices haven't been making sense since many years now

[@Xfade81]

At the moment i can buy a Exos 16tb for 299,- whilst the ironwolf pro's are 399,-. Ouch.

[@ErraticPT]

I find 10TB drives often cheaper than 8TB and 14TB less than 12TB. 18TB too occasionally can be found cheaper than 16TB. These sizes from I've heard are the drives that often use odd number of heads, ie atleast one platter uses only 1 head (often to use up platters that are defective on 1 side).

[@YouTubeGlobalAdminstrator]

They should do away with pro series and just make the DC drives cheaper like they are.

[@chrishalle1982]

I dont know seagate exos 2 tb costs 117€ seagate ironwolf 2tb costs 70€

[@Theoverthinker81]

I feel like I'm watching a Chinese film.

[@justinknash]

Buy Exos. I just picked up (2x) 8TB Exos for $281.10 total - tax.

[@5520211]

I can't hear you even with the volume at 100 it sounds like whispering.

[@paulz4632]

Its all about speed if your running a buisness who gives a shit if you need to spend a further 5k to get 10gbe with ssd or nvme with 10gbe nas.. Mech drives are 10 year old tech which are ok if you raid them but you need a nas with 5gbe or 10gbe to be serious. Oh look Nas makes 2.5be a standard, like 10 years too late. Ive run mech NAs drives for over 10 years they alway corrupt.. soon as i went sdd or NVme with 500-1000mps zero errors in 3 years.

[@MariusIhlar]

That's interesting! Looking into buying my first raid setup now. Got a small business and loads of footage

[@adrianandrews2254]

Agree. A large NAS without 10GBe is a pain. Upgrading to 10GBe is cheap now with cards fron China at under £20 for an X540.

[@Termit2009]

Why is it you have been making NAS news for so long and your microphone is still so terible...

[@nascompares]

Why have you go to be so negative in your messages to people? What happened to you in your life man? Its a small channel and this is a hobby. Constructive criticism is not the same as just being actively negative... though, do fire me over your video when it's done!