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I just ordered a NAS from synology and I'm looking at hard drives. What exactly are the benefits of NAS HDDs? I understand that they tend to be running at lower RPM to reduce heat, but obviously I can just buy a lower speed internal drive. Are NAS drives better for hot swappable applications? My NAS will be running 24/7 in RAID 1, but I don't expect I'll be accessing it a lot, it will be mostly for backups of pictures etc.

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    "What exactly are the benefits of NAS HDDs?" - The warranty otherwise they are exactly the same. "Are NAS drives better for hot swappable applications?" - This is entirely up to the controller not the HDD to support.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 9, 2017 at 21:18

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NAS drives are meant to be used in Network Attached Storage controllers. (Hence the name, NAS.) Therefore, they are designed to last longer than conventional HDDs. This, along with the extended warranties they include, is the advantage of NAS drives. Because you will be using a RAID 1, however, there is no need for this added life, because when one drive fails, you just replace it and keep going. So therefore, in answer to your second question, NAS drives are not particularly better for hot-swappable applications. NAS drives would be more helpful for extending the life of a single-drive application.

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  • Interestingly, a study by BackBlaze found out that reliability of consumer-grade drives running 24/7 is almost identical as with enterprise-grade ones (or even slightly higher).
    – gronostaj
    Jan 9, 2017 at 22:31

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