About nasdrives.ca
Why this site exists
If you want to know how much storage is left after parity — and you want the answer for Canada, in Canadian dollars — you hit a dead end surprisingly fast. The vendor calculators are locked to their own brand: Synology shows you SHR but not RAID-Z; UGREEN shows you standard RAID but not SHR, because UGOS Pro has none. And the strong general calculators (raidsize, thediskguide, the vendor tools) are not localized for Canada — search them for "Canada" and Google returns "Missing: Canada."
That is the gap this site fills: cross-vendor calculators that show every RAID type for the same set of drives, priced to fill in CAD from live Amazon.ca listings, plus buying guidance that says which drive belongs in which device and why — for a Canadian buyer.
Who writes here
nasdrives.ca is written by a small Canadian team: three writers and two editors. Every guide is read before it publishes; every data page is checked against the manufacturers' own specifications.
What we deliberately do not do
We are not a price comparison site. The aggregators do that well and know every Canadian retailer; we do not try to beat them. We show prices because buying advice without prices is useless, but the question we answer is a different one: whichdrive, how many, and what is left at the end?
How our numbers are worked out
- Capacity is shown twice: in TB the way the maker sells it, and in TiB the way your NAS reports it. The gap is about 9 percent and it is the most common source of disappointment after unboxing.
- The formulas are stated openly on every calculator page. SHR is the sum of all drives minus the largest; RAID 5 is (drive count minus one) times the smallest drive. You can re-derive every figure.
- Device specs come from the manufacturers' datasheets and knowledge bases. Where a maker does not publish a figure, we say so rather than inventing one.
- Prices are reconciled with Amazon.ca every six hours, in Canadian dollars. Accessories, cables and enclosures are filtered out; listings well away from the usual price of the same drive are labelled a bundle or marketplace offer, or not shown.
- CMR or SMR is claimed only where we can establish it for the family. A drive whose recording method we cannot confirm does not appear in our CMR tables.
- Data checking: the technical specs of devices and drives (bays, maximum capacity, RAM type, RAID types, CMR/SMR, workload ratings) are checked by Owen Nakamura against the manufacturers' figures; his name is on the data and calculator pages.
- Editorial review: every guide and explainer is read by Claire Bergeron before it publishes — for clarity and to make sure estimates are labelled as estimates.
How we make money
Through Amazon affiliate links and advertising. If you click a product link and buy on Amazon.ca, we earn a commission; the price you pay does not change. That is the only reason this site is free, and it is why we say so openly. The calculators themselves are unaffected: they compute what the formula gives, not what the most expensive drive would sell.
Found a mistake?
Storage is a topic where the details decide, and manufacturers change their figures. If you spot something, tell us through the contact page. We would rather correct than be right.