Topic

Hard Drives & Storage

Best drives for NAS, SSD caching, RAID, ZFS and capacity planning.

Hard Drives & Storage· Jul 1, 2026 ·21 min

Best Hard Drives for NAS in 2026 (CMR vs SMR, Sizes & Reliability)

The best CMR hard drives for a NAS in 2026 — WD Red Plus/Pro, Seagate IronWolf/Pro and Toshiba N300 — plus the SMR models to avoid, the $/TB sweet spot, and what Backblaze's failure data really tells you.

Hard Drives & Storage· Jul 1, 2026 ·17 min

How Many Drive Bays Does Your NAS Need? (2 vs 4 vs 6+)

How many NAS drive bays do you actually need? A practical guide to choosing 2, 4 or 6+ bays based on capacity, redundancy and room to grow.