Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/8794/hgst-deskstar-nas-6-tb-review
HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB Review
by Ganesh T S on December 23, 2014 11:00 AM EST
Introduction and Testbed Setup
The traditional market for hard drives (PCs and notebooks) is facing a decline due to the host of advantages provided by SSDs. However, the explosion in the amount of digital content generated by the households and businesses has resulted in the rapid growth of the SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market. Hard drive vendors have jumped on to this opportunity by tweaking the firmware and manufacturing process of their drives to create lineups specifically suited for the NAS market.
We have already had comprehensive coverage of a number of 4 TB NAS drives and a few 6 TB ones. Earlier this month, Seagate also introduced their WD Red Pro competitor, the Enterprise NAS HDD. We reviewed the 6 TB version and it turned out to be a great performer, albeit a bit costly for regular consumers. HGST aims to fill that space with the 6 TB Deskstar NAS. It falls in the same market category as the WD Red. However, the HGST Deskstar NAS drives have a 7200 RPM rating and the 5 / 6 TB variants come with 128 MB of DRAM cache. This is expected to make them perform closer to the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 and Enterprise NAS HDD drives. In the remainder of the review, we will try to determine whether that is the case.
The correct choice of hard drives for a NAS system is influenced by a number of factors. These include expected workloads, performance requirements and power consumption restrictions, amongst others. In this review, we will discuss some of these aspects while comparing the HGST Deskstar NAS against other drives targeting the NAS market. The list of drives that we will be looking at today is listed below.
- HGST Deskstar NAS (HDN726060ALE610)
- Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD 6 TB [ ST6000VN0001-1SF17Z ]
- Western Digital Red 6 TB [ WDC WD60EFRX-68MYMN0 ]
- Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 6 TB [ ST6000NM0024-1HT17Z ]
- HGST Ultrastar He6 6 TB [ HUS726060ALA640 ]
Prior to proceeding with the actual review, it must be made clear that the above drives do not target the same specific market. For example, the WD Red and the HGST Deskstar NAS units are for 1- 8 bay NAS systems in the tower form factor. The Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD is meant for rackmount units up to 16 bays, but is not intended to be a replacement for drives such as the Enterprise Capacity v4. The Ultrastar He6 is targeted towards datacenters where its storage density and power efficiency lead to a lower overall TCO.
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
Our NAS drive evaluation methodology consists of putting the units to test under both DAS and NAS environments. We first start off with a feature set comparison of the various drives, followed by a look at the raw performance when connected directly to a SATA 6 Gbps port. In the same PC, we also evaluate the performance of the drive using some aspects of our direct attached storage (DAS) testing methodology. For evaluation in a NAS environment, we configure three drives of each model in a RAID-5 volume and process selected benchmarks from our standard NAS review methodology. Since our NAS drive testbed supports both SATA and SAS drives, but our DAS testbed doesn't, only SATA drives are subject to the DAS benchmarks.
We used two testbeds in our evaluation, one for benchmarking the raw drive and DAS performance and the other for evaluating performance when placed in a NAS unit.
| AnandTech DAS Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z97-PRO Wi-Fi ac ATX |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4790 |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance Pro CMY32GX3M4A2133C11 32 GB (4x 8GB) DDR3-2133 @ 11-11-11-27 |
| OS Drive | Seagate 600 Pro 400 GB |
| Optical Drive | Asus BW-16D1HT 16x Blu-ray Write (w/ M-Disc Support) |
| Add-on Card | Asus Thunderbolt EX II |
| Chassis | Corsair Air 540 |
| PSU | Corsair AX760i 760 W |
| OS | Windows 8.1 Pro |
| Thanks to Asus and Corsair for the build components | |
In the above testbed, the hot swap bays of the Corsair Air 540 have to be singled out for special mention.
They were quite helpful in getting the drives processed in a fast and efficient manner for benchmarking. For NAS evaluation, we used the QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP. This is very similar to the unit we reviewed last year, except that we have a slightly faster CPU, more RAM and support for both SATA and SAS drives.
The NAS setup itself was subjected to benchmarking using our standard NAS testbed.
| AnandTech NAS Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L |
| Coolers | 2 x Dynatron R17 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30 |
| OS Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Tertiary Drive | OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88 (1.6TB PCIe SSD) |
| Other Drives | 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS) |
| Network Cards | 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter |
| Chassis | SilverStoneTek Raven RV03 |
| PSU | SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evolution 850W |
| OS | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| Network Switch | Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200 |
Thank You!
We thank the following companies for helping us out with our NAS testbed:
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E5-2630L CPUs and the ESA I-340 quad port network adapters
- Thanks to Asus for the Z9PE-D8 WS dual LGA 2011 workstation motherboard
- Thanks to Dynatron for the R17 coolers
- Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsZ 64GB DDR3 DRAM kit
- Thanks to OCZ Technology for the two 128GB Vertex 4 SSDs, twelve 64GB Vertex 4 SSDs and the OCZ Z-Drive R4 CM88
- Thanks to SilverStone for the Raven RV03 chassis and the 850W Strider Gold Evolution PSU
- Thanks to Netgear for the ProSafe GSM7352S-200 L3 48-port Gigabit Switch with 10 GbE capabilities.
Specifications and Feature Set Comparison
Prior to getting into the performance evaluation, we will take a look at the specifications of the 6 TB HGST Deskstar NAS and see how it compares against the other NAS-specific hard drives that we have looked at before.
The Deskstar NAS sports a SATA III (6 Gbps) interface. As is customary for the high capacity drives in this market segment, it can only emulate 512-byte sectors (natively 4K). The interesting aspect is the presence of a 128 MB cache similar to the Seagate drives, and unlike the WD Red. The obvious selling point for its price target is the 7200 RPM speed, which should easily give it the lead in most benchmarks over the WD Red. The other aspects (such as the URE ratings, MTBF, warranty etc.) are as expected. The table below presents the data for the drive against the others in our evaluation database.
| Comparative HDD Features | ||
| Aspect | ||
| DMA Setup Auto-Activate | Supported; Disabled | Supported; Disabled |
| Extended Power Conditions | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| Free-Fall Control | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| General Purpose Logging | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| In-Order Data Delivery | Supported; Disabled | Supported; Disabled |
| NCQ Priority Information | Supported | Supported |
| Phy Event Counters | Supported | Supported |
| Release Interrupt | Not Supported | Not Supported |
| Sense Data Reporting | Supported; Disabled | Supported; Disabled |
| Software Settings Preservation | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| Streaming | Supported; Enabled | Supported; Enabled |
| Tagged Command Queuing | Not Supported | Not Supported |
Performance - Raw Drives
Prior to evaluating the performance of the drives in a NAS environment, we wanted to check up on the best-case performance by connecting one of them directly to a SATA 6 Gbps port. Using HD Tune Pro 5.50, we ran a number of tests on a raw drives. The following screenshots present the results for the HGST Deskstar NAS. Corresponding images for similar drives that have been evaluated previously are also provided in the drop-down box for easy comparison.
Sequential Reads
Single Client Access - DAS Benchmarks
The HGST Deskstar NAS was connected to a 6 Gbps SATA port off the PCH in our DAS testbed. After formatting in NTFS, it was subject to our DAS test suite. While processing our DAS suite, we also recorded the instantaneous transfer rates and temperature of the drive. Compared to the Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD, the HGST Deskstar NAS remained at a lower temperature for the same access pattern.
The graphs below present the average transfer rates for the various workloads and how they compare against other HDDs of the same capacity that have been evaluated before.
The HGST Deskstar NAS turns up at the top of the heap in a few benchmarks, but mostly checks in towards the middle of the pack. Firmware optimizations as well as the extra cache (compared to the WD Red and HGST Ultrastar He6) help to pull the Deskstar NAS forward in terms of performance numbers.
Single Client Access - NAS Benchmarks
Evaluation of single client performance in a networked environment was done by configuring three drives in RAID-5 in the QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP unit. Two of the network links were bonded (configured with 802.3ad LACP). Our usual Intel NASPT / robocopy benchmarks were processed from a virtual machine in our NAS testbed. The results are presented in the graphs below.
For almost all workloads, there is no discernible difference between the performance of various drives, indicating that it is the network acting as a bottleneck for single client access. Differences start to appear when there are multiple clients accessing the NAS.
Multi-Client Access - NAS Environment
We configured three of the HGST Deskstar NAS drives in a RAID-5 volume in the QNAP TS-EC1279U-SAS-RP. A CIFS share in the volume was subject to some IOMeter tests with access from up to 25 VMs simultaneously. The following four graphs show the total available bandwidth and the average response time while being subject to different types of workloads through IOMeter. IOMeter also reports various other metrics of interest such as maximum response time, read and write IOPS, separate read and write bandwidth figures etc. Some of the interesting aspects from our IOMeter benchmarking run are available here.
We see that the sequential accesses are still limited by the network link, but, this time, on the NAS side. On the other hand, our random access tests show markedly better performance for drives such as the HGST Deskstar NAS. In particular, response times in the random workloads is almost 5x better over the WD Red when the disks are subject to simultaneous accesses from a large number of clients. Against drives such as the Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 or the Enterprise NAS HDD, the Deskstar NAS does manage to hold its own. Anyhow, the target market for those drives (and the firmware optimizations) are different enough to not make a big case out of the observed performance differences.
RAID-5 Benchmarking - Miscellaneous Aspects
Consumers are rightly worried about RAID rebuilds and the scope for drive failures during that process. As one of our evaluation aspects, we randomly yanked out a disk during operation and cleaned it up for rebuild. We recorded the resync duration (time taken to rebuild a 3-disk RAID-5 volume when one of the disks needs to be replaced) as well as the average power consumption during that process. The two aspects, considered together, give an idea of the efficiency of the hard drive. The graph below presents the total energy consumption (Resync Power Consumption (W) X Resync Duration (s)) for the resync.
While the energy consumption aspect provides a consolidated view of the various factors, it is still worthwhile to look at the power consumption and resync duration numbers separately. The table below provides the raw information behind the above graph. We had a brief inkling when the temperature of the Deskstar NAS remained around 40 C only, despite more than 240 GB of continous data traffic, but the above energy consumption numbers confirm the fact that the Deskstar NAS is indeed quite efficient. That said, the raw power numbers do not look good for the Deskstar NAS in the table below. However, by getting done with the workloads earlier, the drive can go to the idle state quickly and keep system energy consumption resonable in the long run.
| RAID-5 Resync Power Consumption & Duration | ||
| Drive | Power (W) | Duration (s) |
| HGST Deskstar NAS | 101.46 | 36981 |
| WD Red | 90.48 | 52072 |
| Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD | 101.91 | 37284 |
| HGST Ultrastar He6 | 95.36 | 45260 |
| Seagate Enterprise Capacity v4 | 105.42 | 37462 |
We also measured power consumption during the last stage of our multi-client test. With 25 different clients simultaneously stressing the NAS with different types of workloads, we recorded the power consumption at the wall for the NAS as a whole. The various numbers are presented in the graphs below.
As expected, the units providing better performance have higher power consumption numbers. Amongst the 7200 RPM drives, the Ultrastar He6 is the most power-efficient. This is due to the HelioSeal technology (disks spinning in a sealed chamber filled with helium). Amongst the conventional drives, the Deskstar NAS manages to be the most power efficient for a few of the access patterns.
Concluding Remarks
The HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB has been evaluated for both NAS and DAS applications and the numbers put up for comparison against other 6 TB drives targeting this market segment. As expected, there is no 'one size fits all' model in this area. The various hard drives in the comparison lot were launched targeting different markets and their resulting performance varies accordingly.
Thanks to the 7200 RPM speeds, the HGST Deskstar NAS does manage to acquit itself well in the overall performance category. Though it is not the absolute best, it performs admirably well in the random access patterns segment of the multi-client evaluation.
The HGST Deskstar NAS doesn't deliver the lowest power consumption. Those were recorded, as expected, with the 5400 RPM WD Red and the HelioSeal-technology based HGST Ultrastar He6. However, the Deskstar NAS manages to almost win the efficiency category - thanks to the great balance between speed and power consumption.
In terms of pricing, the HGST Deskstar NAS wins comfortably. It is, by far, the most price effective 7200 rpm 6 TB drive in this market segment. At $300, the Deskstar NAS is beaten in price only by the 5400 RPM WD Red, which currently retails for around $270.
There are plenty of options for NAS users looking to stock up their NAS units with high capacity drives. 6 TB drives represent the current bleeding edge, and consumers need to make sure that their NAS is compatible with the chosen drive. One of the unfortunate aspects with the 6 TB Deskstar NAS was that one of the four drives that we were sampled was consistently discarded with a 'Bad HDD I/O Access History' by our QNAP testbed. This was triggered by a sense key error at the beginning of the initialization process (similar to what we saw for the WD Red 6 TB version). The 'defective' drive, however, managed to pass extended S.M.A.R.T tests on our DAS testbed. We are chalking this down to compatibility problems for the QNAP testbed with these new drives.
4 TB drives offer an alternative to the potential risk in going the new technology route with 6 TB drives for cautious buyers. With the right data in hand, it's easy enough to find the best fit by taking into consideration the expected workload and desired price points.The overall verdict is that the 6 TB HGST Deskstar NAS is a cost-effective solution for SOHO / power user scenarios where storage density is of primary importance. One just needs to make sure that their NAS is compatible with the 6 TB variant before going ahead with the purchase.
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