Hard Drive Compatibility 

Our engineering team puts hard drives through a stringent battery of tests to ensure that they will function at high levels of performance and achieve expected longevity in ioSafe devices. We strongly recommend that you use only these qualified hard drives in ioSafe systems: using non-qualified drives may negatively impact performance and reliability.

Note that there are a number of classes of hard drive available, each designed for specific workloads and applications. We recommend whichever class of drive is appropriate given the way in which your ioSafe product will be used.

• Desktop drives. Desktop drives are the least expensive class of hard drive but are not designed for a constant usage and do not typically provide protection from vibrations that can be produced by a multi-drive NAS or RAID system. Consequently, desktop drives should only be used in NAS or RAID systems in cases where the workload will be relatively light – for example, where the system will be used lightly in a home or small office environment or used only as a backup target.
• Enterprise drives. Enterprise class drives typically use superior technology and components to provide functionality such as error correction and vibration protection and are the best choice for systems that will be subject to a heavy or constant workloads – for example, database servers or systems that will be used in office enviroments where multiple users will simultaneously access files throughout the day.
• NAS Drives. NAS drives can provide better reliability, durability and performance than desktop drives at a lower price point than enterprise drives. Some NAS drives are based on consumer drive architecture and do not provide vibration protection; others are based on enterprise drive architecture and do provide vibration protection. In both cases, the drives will have firmware that has been optimized for NAS systems.

For a list of older hard drives, click here to see our Qualified End of Life Drive List. 

* Note: This particular drive tends to run hotter than most drives during normal operation. Maximum environmental temperature is derated to 30°C (86°F)