Best NAS Hard Drive 2024: Top Picks for Network Storage

Network-Attached Storage (or NAS for short) is a complex but highly lucrative technology investment, allowing you to bridge storage spaces across many devices for a shared database. But a NAS is only as useful as his storage capacity, so you’ll need to invest in one of the best NAS hard drive options to truly maximize your storage potential. With hugely accommodating drives, you can keep a huge archive of digital data.

Depending on your specific business needs, there are different NAS hard drives available. We’ve broken down our favorite options below, factoring in different budgets, respective strengths – and any weaknesses – that each HDD has. To ensure your business’ storage is up to the task, invest in one of these today.

How We Picked the Best NAS Hard Drives

Not every HDD is set up for NAS compatibility, so your selection is somewhat limited. There’s still an array of different manufacturers creating compatible drives, each with their own merits. We’ve assessed these NAS hard drives by their storage capacities, cache sizes and performance. RAID compatibility, which ensures optimized speeds, was also a bonus.

We settled on five products, across a range of budgets and suited to different use cases. Ranging from huge drives for entire office suites to compact ones for home use, you’re sure to find the best NAS hard drive to suit your needs.

Fast and reliable, the Seagate IronWolf Pro series of NAS hard drives easily take the top spot on our ranking. With sizes from 3TB up to as large as 20TB, any business should be well-serviced with this versatile HDD.

With a 7200 RPM spindle speed and 256MB cache, read and write speeds on the IronWolf Pro drives are super-fast. The hard drive has built-in rotational vibration sensors and an AgileArray firmware for boosted performance with no lag. Even if you reach its maximum workload, it’ll still perform excellently 24/7. The IronWolf Pro also comes with three years of Rescue Data Recovery Services to protect you from data losses in cases of errors, malware viruses, or power outages. Boasting a barebones design, the IronWolf prioritizes substance over style – avoiding flashy aesthetics and opting for built-in vibration compensation and device health management to optimize the drive for constant use.

That said, the IronWolf isn’t quite perfect. Configuring the drive, particularly for NAS setups, can be cumbersome – and may alienate those wanting a simple storage solution. It’s the only black mark against these stunning HDDs, however, and we’re happy to recommend the IronWolf as the best 16TB hard drive on the market today!

If you need the largest possible NAS hard drive for your business, consider the Western Digital Red series of HDDs. With sizes from 2TB to 24TB, storage is maximized on these stellar drives.

Rated for a 550TB/year work rate, the Red Pro is capable of being put through its paces. Installation is easy thanks to these drives being optimized for NAS systems. The Western Digital drive is equipped with the specifically designed firmware NASware 3.0. This firmware improves the drive’s storage performance and boosts its speed, which can reach up to 256MB per second. Using a RAID-optimized system structure, this unit can scale to fit your business needs. Given the scalability and value for money of this drive, there’s a lot to like about the Red.

However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to dislike. The drive does run more audibly than other hard drive options, which can be disturbing in certain environments. Though it’s not deal-breaking, it can prove problematic for some. As a budget 16TB HDD, it’s hard to beat the Red Pro.

Though you’ll struggle to find a reliable and cheap NAS hard drive, we think the Toshiba N300 Pro range offers the best value for money of the available options – hopefully you will too.

The N300 is rated for 300TB per year in transfers, ensuring longevity and reliability from your NAS network. The hard drive is also equipped with heat prevention controls to protect it against shocks and extreme heat. It also features built-in rotational vibration sensors and error recovery controls to reduce downtime and protect your data from unexpected losses. With sizes ranging from 4TB to 22TB, there’s a great array available for different use cases – and with dedicated options for small or larger businesses, Toshiba has a NAS for every environment.

However, one thing to be aware of is that the N300’s protectivity tools aren’t perfect, and the drives can overheat or be damaged by electrostatic discharge (ESD). If those risks can be mitigated, then the N300 drives are the best budget NAS hard drives on the market.

If you want to sync up your home office into a productivity powerhouse, then the Western Digital Gold range of NAS HDDs are the perfect fit. Though not capable of running a huge office, these drives are still incredible investments.

Whether you choose 1TB or 24TB of storage, Gold drives are great high-performance options. The HelioSeal technology means data transfers are fast and reliable. Designed to handle 550TB per year, these drives are tremendously powerful. To protect your data from losses as a result of power outages, the drive comes with an ArmorCache power loss protection technology. This way, if any unexpected error or outage occurs, your data will be safe. Overall, these are highly ranked Western Digital drives, ideal for NAS systems.

We should stress small NAS systems, however: the Gold’s major weakness compared to Red drives is they are only suited to smaller 4-drive NAS units, rather than the larger capacities of other systems. It’s why we recommend it for homes, however, for reliable home storage.

With sizes ranging from as little as 2TB all the way up to 18TB, the Seagate IronWolf series is our final pick for the best NAS hard drive on the market today. Boasting an array of professional storage features, including NAS compatibility, this range of hard drives is sure to suit every need.

Boasting a 7200RPM spindle and a 256MB cache, the IronWolf drives are responsive and fast-loading. Rated for a 2 million-hour mean time between failures (MTBF), these HDDs are sure to stay reliable in the long-run and can handle consistent long-term use. The multi-bay NAS compatibility expands this hard drive’s reach and makes it perfect for business or household storage. There’s a lot to love about the IronWolf drives.

However, there’s one aspect of the drives that we don’t love. Like the Western Digital Red range, these Seagate HDDs are noisy in operation, which can be frustrating in areas needing peace and quiet. It’s an issue, but one not big enough to make us avoid recommending the IronWolf drives.

Features and Considerations

If you’re looking to set up a NAS HDD with a different drive, it’s worth considering a handful of factors. Naturally, NAS compatibility is key – as mentioned, not all HDDs are NAS-compatible. Equally, however, is the ease of that NAS compatibility: we found that Western Digital’s NAS-optimized approach made for the easiest connection. You should also consider your prospective size requirements, factoring in how many devices will be on the network. HDDs such as these are capable of huge storage quantities.

For more specialized or high-pressure storage solutions, ensure that your choice of HDD is compatible with RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) for boosted performance speeds. Most drives come with a specialist feature, whether it is dedicated data recovery or vibration compensation (an essential given the spindle that an HDD operates by). So once you’ve considered all other factors and are stuck between two drives, consider the specialist feature.

FAQs

Verdict

Though they can be tricky to install, the Seagate IronWolf Pro range are our top picks for stellar NAS performance. If your business or home office needs a reliable network storage solution, then these drives – or any of the alternatives on our list – are sure to impress.

Interested in NAS units themselves? Check out our guide on the best NAS for small business today.