NAS drive

[Dave]

Asking for a bit of advice please.

My DS110J Synology NAS needs a replacement harddrive, the existing slow
one is 500 Mbytes of spinning rust...

Is an SSD a possible replacement for the spinning rust?

Thanks
Dave

--

Dave Triffid

[Theo]

Dave <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> Asking for a bit of advice please.
>
> My DS110J Synology NAS needs a replacement harddrive, the existing slow
> one is 500 Mbytes of spinning rust...
>
> Is an SSD a possible replacement for the spinning rust?

No reason why not, assuming the capacity and price is to your liking.

If it takes a 3.5" HDD you'd need an adapter to fit a 2.5" drive - these are
cheap and readily available (just a piece of plastic/metal, nothing fancy).
It is possible the NAS already has suitable mounts so you can attach the
2.5" SSD directly.

Although that unit is now ~10 years old (and is only SATA 2), so it could
be worth looking at a replacement NAS which will be faster (although still
limited by the gigabit ethernet in terms of raw bandwidth).

Theo

[Dave]

In article <lqb*6U...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,

Theo <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Dave <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
> > Asking for a bit of advice please.
> >
> > My DS110J Synology NAS needs a replacement harddrive, the existing slow
> > one is 500 Mbytes of spinning rust...
> >
> > Is an SSD a possible replacement for the spinning rust?

> No reason why not, assuming the capacity and price is to your liking.

> If it takes a 3.5" HDD you'd need an adapter to fit a 2.5" drive - these
> are cheap and readily available (just a piece of plastic/metal, nothing
> fancy). It is possible the NAS already has suitable mounts so you can
> attach the 2.5" SSD directly.

Indeed, I had to fit adaptors to my Desktop computers when I updated the
3.5" spinning rusts to Samsung 2.5" SSDs.

> Although that unit is now ~10 years old (and is only SATA 2), so it
> could be worth looking at a replacement NAS which will be faster
> (although still limited by the gigabit ethernet in terms of raw
> bandwidth).

I hadn't thought about that aspect, and it is very slow, so you've set me
thinking...

Thanks for the advice Theo, appreciated.

Dave

--

Dave Triffid

[David Higton]

In message <590926a...@triffid.co.uk>

Just in case it's of any interest or use to anyone...

When my second NSLU2 failed, I replaced it with a Raspberry Pi 3B
running OpenMediaVault. I've got two spinning rust drives, which
appear as separate drives, but at the moment I'm considering buying
a set of three drives (still spinning rust) and setting them up as
RAID 5. This will mean that, instead of requiring the user to save
two copies of data for redundancy, there will appear to be just one
drive, with inherent redundancy.

The drives are USB interfaced; of course they are SATA inside their
boxes.

It's not the fastest, of course, but the point is that it's fast
enough for my requirements. And it's certainly cheap and low power,
a significant consideration for something that's on 24/365.

David

[Chris Hughes]

In message <lqb*6U...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>

Theo <theom...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> Dave <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
>> Asking for a bit of advice please.
>>
>> My DS110J Synology NAS needs a replacement harddrive, the existing slow
>> one is 500 Mbytes of spinning rust...
>>
>> Is an SSD a possible replacement for the spinning rust?

> No reason why not, assuming the capacity and price is to your liking.

> If it takes a 3.5" HDD you'd need an adapter to fit a 2.5" drive - these are
> cheap and readily available (just a piece of plastic/metal, nothing fancy).
> It is possible the NAS already has suitable mounts so you can attach the
> 2.5" SSD directly.

No adaptor is now supplied with the current models sadly.

> Although that unit is now ~10 years old (and is only SATA 2), so it could
> be worth looking at a replacement NAS which will be faster (although still
> limited by the gigabit ethernet in terms of raw bandwidth).

I have just done that decided to upgrade from a now rather slow DS110J, to
the much faster DS220J (twin drive unit) or 120j for single drive

Transferring a load of files from my old DS110J to DS220J was verrrrrry
slow, wanted 24 hours for nearly a Gb of data.

> Theo


--
Chris Hughes

[Dave]

In article <99fe2d09...@mytarbis.plus.com>,
Chris Hughes <new...@noonehere.co.uk> wrote:

[Snippy]

> I have just done that decided to upgrade from a now rather slow DS110J,
> to the much faster DS220J (twin drive unit) or 120j for single drive

> Transferring a load of files from my old DS110J to DS220J was verrrrrry
> slow, wanted 24 hours for nearly a Gb of data.

Oh yes... :-(

Decided to have a butchers on the Web and I see much contradictory
information.

While the Synology specs say the devices can be used with SSDs, some other
commentators say don't use SSDs, instead the advice seemed to favour "WD
Red" spinning rusts devices, which are apparently made for the Job.

I guess which-ever Drive is used to run the NAS OS (DSM), the fast SSD or
the slower Rust, the bottleneck of the LAN speed drags everything down.

Mmnnn! A lot to think about...

Dave

ATM. A single unit I quite like the DS118

D.

--

Dave Triffid

[Steve Fryatt]

On 7 Mar, Dave wrote in message
<59095ad...@triffid.co.uk>:

> While the Synology specs say the devices can be used with SSDs, some other
> commentators say don't use SSDs, instead the advice seemed to favour "WD
> Red" spinning rusts devices, which are apparently made for the Job.

You can presumably fit any device that you wish to fit, so long as it meets
the SATA spec. WD Red drives are designed for NAS use, though: that's their
whole point. They're not drives that you'd stick in your desktop machine.

The last time that I checked, the price of SSDs wasn't that inviting once
you got above "desktop boot drive" sizes, so using them as NAS storage
wasn't a sensible option. Checking on CCL now, they're still around three
times the price of WD Red drives of equivalent size, and WD Red are in turn
still around 50% more than an equivalent WD Blue "desktop" drive.

Then factor in the desirability of RAIDing the drives for reliability, and
the costs have suddenly gone up again. The elderly, custom-built 2TB RAIDed
and then mirrored setup that I have here contains around £225 of drives at
today's prices; it would be close to £600 if I went down the SSD route.

So yes, you /can/ use SSDs in a NAS, but money would need to be of no
object.

> I guess which-ever Drive is used to run the NAS OS (DSM), the fast SSD or
> the slower Rust, the bottleneck of the LAN speed drags everything down.

That, and the fact that you're not running an OS off them, so response times
are much less critical than for the drive that you boot Windows, Linux (or
even RISC OS) off.

--
Steve Fryatt - Leeds, England

http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/

[Paul Sprangers]

In article <99fe2d09...@mytarbis.plus.com>,
Chris Hughes <new...@noonehere.co.uk> wrote:

> Transferring a load of files from my old DS110J to DS220J was verrrrrry
> slow, wanted 24 hours for nearly a Gb of data.

That's horribly slow indeed. As a comparison, I did some tests and found
out that writing from my 4té to my 10 years old Lacy NAS takes 7.5 minutes
for 1.1 Gigabyte, spread over 2668 files (the timing is average - figures
tend to deviate up to 10 percent due to whatever).

Reading is much faster even: 3.6 minutes to HD and a mind blowing 1:06
minute to RAM disc. Anyhow, since my NAS is very old and rusty as well, I
tend to think that computer and switch contribute to most of the speed.

Kind regards,
Paul Sprangers

[Chris Hughes]

In message <59095ad...@triffid.co.uk>

Dave <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <99fe2d09...@mytarbis.plus.com>,
> Chris Hughes <new...@noonehere.co.uk> wrote:

> [Snippy]

>> I have just done that decided to upgrade from a now rather slow DS110J,
>> to the much faster DS220J (twin drive unit) or 120j for single drive

>> Transferring a load of files from my old DS110J to DS220J was verrrrrry
>> slow, wanted 24 hours for nearly a Gb of data.

> Oh yes... :-(

> Decided to have a butchers on the Web and I see much contradictory
> information.

> While the Synology specs say the devices can be used with SSDs, some other
> commentators say don't use SSDs, instead the advice seemed to favour "WD
> Red" spinning rusts devices, which are apparently made for the Job.

I have avoided WD Red drives at all costs. I used the superb Seagate Iron
Wolf NAS Drives. Reason being due to the different technology being used
now between CMR and SMR drives

https://www.buffalotech.com/blog-helpful-tips/cmr-vs-smr-hard-drives-in-network-attached-storage-nas

Explains some of it.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/311854-western-digital-sued-to-permanently-block-smr-in-nas-hdds

> I guess which-ever Drive is used to run the NAS OS (DSM), the fast SSD or
> the slower Rust, the bottleneck of the LAN speed drags everything down.

Yep LAN speed is the bottleneck and SSD are rather pricey at large GB
sizes.




--
Chris Hughes

[Chris Hughes]

In message <5909796...@sprie.nl>

Paul Sprangers <Pa...@sprie.nl> wrote:

> In article <99fe2d09...@mytarbis.plus.com>,
> Chris Hughes <new...@noonehere.co.uk> wrote:

>> Transferring a load of files from my old DS110J to DS220J was verrrrrry
>> slow, wanted 24 hours for nearly a Gb of data.

Actually I should have said a Tb of data not Gb. don't know my G from my T
! :-)

> That's horribly slow indeed. As a comparison, I did some tests and found
> out that writing from my 4té to my 10 years old Lacy NAS takes 7.5 minutes
> for 1.1 Gigabyte, spread over 2668 files (the timing is average - figures
> tend to deviate up to 10 percent due to whatever).

I still have an old 500GB Lacie network drive and that only has a 100Mb
network connection

> Reading is much faster even: 3.6 minutes to HD and a mind blowing 1:06
> minute to RAM disc. Anyhow, since my NAS is very old and rusty as well, I
> tend to think that computer and switch contribute to most of the speed.

> Kind regards,
> Paul Sprangers

--
Chris Hughes

[druck]

On 06/03/2021 21:06, Theo wrote:
> Although that unit is now ~10 years old (and is only SATA 2), so it could
> be worth looking at a replacement NAS which will be faster (although still
> limited by the gigabit ethernet in terms of raw bandwidth).

A Raspberry Pi 4B makes a very decent single disk NAS, as it USB3, and
true gigabit Ethernet. You can use either a bere 2.5 hard drive or SSD.

Standard Raspbian can be set up to serve the disc as both SMB for
LanmanFS/Lanman98 and PC's, but NFS for Sunfish works even better for
RISC OS. It's peak speed is a little down on Lanman, but for small files
Sunfish is faster.

Plus you can still use the Pi for other things. So there's no real need
for a dedicated NAS unless you need a multi-disk hardware RAID.

---druck

[Theo]

Steve Fryatt <ne...@stevefryatt.org.uk> wrote:
> So yes, you /can/ use SSDs in a NAS, but money would need to be of no
> object.

It really depends on how much you want to store. If the OP is replacing a
500GB HDD, a cheap 480GB SSD on Scan is £45. The cheaper HDD is a 1TB 3.5"
at £32 and a 1TB 2.5" at £38. (There's also a 2.5" 500GB enterprise drive
for £20, but that looks to be on clearance). So at that point there isn't a
lot in it if 500GB is good enough. You may decide you want to pay a few
pounds extra to have a silent drive that takes almost no power when idle.

When you go into many TB then I agree HDD is still substantially cheaper.
Although if you need to RAID to manage the inevitable mechanical failure
then it takes the edge off slightly.

Theo

[Dave]

In article <iqb*3r...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,

As the OP...

Our Home LAN requirements are not excessive, and my thoughts were of a 1TB
Samsung EVO 860 SSD. Which I can get from my usual supplier for 124 quid.

Yes, I've seen cheaper 1TB SSDs but as I already have a number of Samsung
SSDs as Boot drives in the PCs that would be my first choice.

That said, I'm still thinking... :-)

Dave

--

Dave Triffid

[Dave]

In article <5909fb...@sick-of-spam.invalid>,
Bob Latham <b...@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:

> I'm surprised you can manage with 500MB of storage?

Haha! That was a typo on my part it's actually 500 Gigs (Half a terrabyte).

Many years back when I set the NAS up 500 Gigs was a Large HD. ;-)

Dave

--

Dave Triffid

[Nick Roberts]

In message <590a1fd...@triffid.co.uk>

Dave <da...@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <5909fb...@sick-of-spam.invalid>,
> Bob Latham <b...@sick-of-spam.invalid> wrote:
>
> > I'm surprised you can manage with 500MB of storage?
>
> Haha! That was a typo on my part it's actually 500 Gigs (Half a
> terrabyte).

Erm... I'm surprised you can manage with 500GB of storage?

> Many years back when I set the NAS up 500 Gigs was a Large HD. ;-)

Indeed. My NAS is currently 6TB, and is about 65% used. Unfortunately,
I need to upgrade, not primarily because of capacity, but because of
performance - it currently around 24 hours for the poor CPU to
virus check the files, and while that is running the NAS is really
sluggish.

--
Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.