Nevertheless, you can still push through this warning and proceed to testing the performance of the WD Red Pro 22TB HDD from within the Synology Storage Manager. Here was the results. If you want to have a PCIe drive instead, expect to pay a significant premium although the difference in speed will be one magnitude higher thanks to the use of PCIe Gen 4 protocol. Other 8TB SSDs include The Seagate 60TB SSD that was launched in 2016. It was a prototype but we don't know whether it was sold. I approached Seagate in May 2023 to find out what happened to it. Our sequential figures, while at the point of 10GbE saturation for our two links, are also pretty close to what eight HDDs can push out if they are running with 290MB/s each. The Seagate Skyhawk AI HDD is designed with “AI'' firmware to improve the drive’s ability to handle recording, video analysis, and GPU analytics workloads. This includes up to 64 HD video streams and 32 AI streams with zero dropped frames. This is combined with a robust warranty, including a high workload rate and Seagate’s three-year data recovery service.

One common question is, " Is an SSD a hard drive?" While many might call an SSD (Solid State Drive) a hard drive out of habit, an SSD is quite different from a traditional HDD (Hard Disk Drive) with spinning platters in terms of design and performance. Without going too deep into the ' SSD vs HDD' debate, in essense, SSDs offer faster data access and are more durable due to the absence of moving parts, but typically have lower maximum storage capacities than HDDs and are more expensive. For instance, finding an SSD over 8TB can be challenging, while HDDs, while slower, can have capacities of 20TB or even more.

For our standard deviation latency results, the 22TB Gold model hit 0.09ms through 4.97ms (SMB). The 12TB WD Ultrastar fell behind in the terminal queue depths again, posting a range of 0.05ms to 7.22ms. Now, before I move on to the NAS testing. It is worth highlighting a couple of important factors with regard to the WD Red Pro 22TB and the support available from each NAS brand I am focusing on for the testing. Now, Synology is the ONLY NAS brand in the market that also has its own first-party HDDs available to users too. These are Originally Toshiba Enterprise-grade produced hard disks that have had a Synology-specific firmware applied to them. Now, why is this relevant? Well, because some larger-scale Synology products in 2022 onwards do not list other 3rd Party HDDs as compatible. Even then, if you look up some of the older 2020 released NAS drives currently in the market (such as the DS920+ for example), they DO list HDDs from the likes of Western Digital (and their WD Red, Ultrastar and Gold series) BUT they do not list drives larger than 18TB at the time of writing. This is an odd stance by the brand, when larger-scale 20TB and 22TB hard drives are available in the market and designed for NAS.

material/labor costs worldwide have spiked also which keeps cost up a but. Ssds have less material overall. Specifically designed for use in enterprise-grade storage systems and data centers, WD Gold HDDs are broadly compatible with major enterprise operating systems. If you install an HDD or SSD inside a Synology system with the latest version of their software platform DSM, but the HDD in question is not on the compatibility list, you are greeted by a message that will detail that the drive is not recommended in the storage manager. The uncompetitive (only three manufacturers globally) HDD market is doing what the GPU market is. Old capacities are keeping their prices years after release and newer higher capacities are pushing prices ever higher.While many think that SSDs are the better storage option, HDDs still have a lot of life left and truth be told, power the cloud. Tossing 100 of these drives in a JBOD for instance will show some pretty impressive performance (roughly 30GB/s). As a result, the WD Gold 22TB HDDs are ideal for MSPs, cloud providers, and enterprises that need to have a massive amount of data conveniently available. For our first test, which measures throughput, the WD Gold had a range of 14,333 IOPS to 26,882 IOPS in SMB while 12TB WD Ultrastar posted a range of 16,872 IOPS to 18,789 IOPS. WD Gold drives have sophisticated monitoring electronics that help correct linear and rotational vibrations in real time using enhanced vibration protection technology for improved performance in high-vibration environments. Improved metadata efficiency is only part of what OptiNAND can provide. Using some of the flash, 128MB, to store data from DRAM during emergency power off (EPO) can improve drive performance without a corresponding risk of data loss. This is the crux of the ArmorCache feature. With ArmorCache and the write cache disabled (WCD), which has no data loss risk by nature, random write IOPS can reach the same level as write cache enabled (WCE) mode on normal drives. At the same time, data is safe from power loss if the drive is used in the WCE mode. This is of significant value for some use cases.

For performance, we installed eight of these drives in our 36-bay Supermicro Storage SuperServer (configured in SMB) and compared them alongside a set of WD’s 12TB Ultrastar HDDsfor reference. We saw some pretty great throughput across our benchmarking, including 107,303 IOPS in reads and 4,730 IOPS write in random 4K, 109,454 IOPS read, and 105,577 IOPS during our 100% read and write activity at 8K sequential workload, a range of 14,333 IOPS to 26,882 IOPS for our mixed 8K 70/30 workload, and 2.31GB/s in both read and writes. WD’s unique OptiNAND-enabled ArmorCache technology combines the performance of write cache enabled mode with the data protection of write cache disabled mode without having to compromise by choosing between the two. And here is how the WD Red Pro 22TB sounds when the HDD is being HEAVILY accessed. using a benchmarking tool and extensive random 4K IOPS in read/write testing. Note, the higher the frequency of files, the noisier it will be, as the actuator inside will be working considerably hardware to allocate the small size/high frequency of data to the platters): The company's publicly available roadmap indicates that Seagate intends to deliver 50+ TB hard drives in calendar 2026, so the HDD maker has plenty of time to polish off its 50TB media for mass production. 22TB and 24TB HDDs Due Shortly It is important to be aware of the drive’s form factor, with 3.5” being the most common for the best HDDs (this is the only type we cover). If you need 2.5”, your options are more limited, especially for capacity. Otherwise, your computer case’s ability to house a certain number of 3.5” drives might be your primary limitation.Available with a SATA or SAS interface, it offers an unlimited drive write per day for five years (the length of the warranty) thanks partly to the use of SLC technology (which explains the price as well). A cheaper version of the Exadrive, the EDNLT064, is also available and is the second largest solid state drive on the market with a capacity of 64TB but swaps TLC for QLC. Formerly FreeNAS, TrueNAS CORE (which is what we used for our WD Gold 22TB Supermicro configuration) is the comprehensive storage OS that allows users to build professional-grade storage systems themselves. As a result, you can a TrueNAS-powered server in a range of data-intensive use cases without having to worry about software costs. All you need to do is install it onto the server (or a VM) and you’re all set. Solidigm and its two 30.72TB SSDs: The D5-P5430 (coming later this year) and the D5- P5316 , as well as the 61TB D5-P5336

The next test was using ATTO disk benchmark and this one was using a 1GB and 4GB test file in the same windows PC test environment. However, this test was focused more on the IOPS. The random 4K operations of a hard drive will typically be hugely dwarfed by those of HDDs, but enterprise HDDs and pro series drives still tend to rate noticeably higher than domestic HDD and standard class NAS HDDs on this score.With average latency at 8K 70/30, the 22TB Gold model saw great overall results again; it posted 0.27ms through 9.51ms in SMB, while the 12TB Ultrastar recorded a range of 0.23ms through 13.62ms. For standard deviation, the WD Gold hit 1.853ms read and 27.13ms write, while the Ultrastar recorded reads and writes of 2.114ms and 9.76ms, respectively.