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Archive 2022 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

Has anyone opted for low capacity SSD's to build/rebuild a NAS/DAS/RAID ? I was on the fence about it and almost went with 6 x 2TB SSD's for a 10TB RAID5 array. But I decided I couldn't stomach the cost, capacity and single disk fail point. Opted for spinning disks again in 5 x 6TB for 18TB RAID6.

There are some temptingly cheap 2TB and 4TB SSD's on amazon. But the sub-$99 Leven disks are cache-less and some of the other mystery brands are too sketchy for me to store anything I care about on.

Anyone tried the uber-cheap SSD's? Any failures?

Anyone gone all-in on name brand 4TB SSD's in RAID5 or 6? Is the cost worth the performance?

Oct 21, 2022 at 12:30 PM

sjms
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

i'm still using good spinners for a very long time. check out OWC products for enclosures.

Edited on Oct 22, 2022 at 06:45 AM · View previous versions

Oct 21, 2022 at 03:19 PM

schlotz
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I know the desire to use more affordable storage is strong but the demands placed on storage media in the NAS/DAS/RAID environments is significant. Even with spinners, the more prudent choice is to use drives hardened for that type of environment. There will always be the outliers providing singular data points where non-hardened storage media have been working fine for an extended period of time, but IMO using them is a Russian Roulette gamble. JMTC

Oct 22, 2022 at 06:28 AM

Flowernut
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I think it may depend on how much you use it. I've had a raid for many years and simply upsized the drives when I run our of space using the same raid chassis. I don't run it enough to really worry about life of drives. If one internal drive fails, it can be replaced. If two fail, I have a big single disk that contains a backup in a fire proof safe. So far no failures.

Oct 22, 2022 at 09:16 AM

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

sjms wrote:
i'm still using good spinners for a very long time. check out OWC products for enclosures.

Yeah, the OWC Express 4M2 is tempting to build a DAS local work drive. NVME is definitely the way to go for SSD. That may be my next project.

Unfortunately, their NAS lineup doesn't support RAID6 level fault tolerance until you get to the top two tiers. Pricey but very, very nice.

Oct 22, 2022 at 10:48 AM

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

schlotz wrote:
I know the desire to use more affordable storage is strong but the demands placed on storage media in the NAS/DAS/RAID environments is significant. Even with spinners, the more prudent choice is to use drives hardened for that type of environment. There will always be the outliers providing singular data points where non-hardened storage media have been working fine for an extended period of time, but IMO using them is a Russian Roulette gamble. JMTC

Agreed. Hence my reason for sticking with NAS rated spinning disks (WD Red Plus CMR) for this latest build.

Oct 22, 2022 at 10:51 AM

sjms
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

check the new software that supports it.

Oct 22, 2022 at 10:51 AM

Kyyyyyy
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

The problem I have with SSD's is just the hours of writing over and over again; I use it for home camera security in addition to everything else so it's a different beast than just storing files for me I guess.

It scares me that you're aiming for cheap drives too, like raid works OK but in the scheme of things your replacement cost may be offset by paying more. Of course, we're all just speculating unless there's been research put into it right?

Server HDD's just have so many years of technological development put into them. I use exos by seagate.

Oct 23, 2022 at 11:46 AM

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

Kyyyyyy wrote:
The problem I have with SSD's is just the hours of writing over and over again; I use it for home camera security in addition to everything else so it's a different beast than just storing files for me I guess.

It scares me that you're aiming for cheap drives too, like raid works OK but in the scheme of things your replacement cost may be offset by paying more. Of course, we're all just speculating unless there's been research put into it right?

Server HDD's just have so many years of technological development put into them. I use exos by...Show more →

I was not "aiming" for cheap drives per se. I was comparing relative $/GB for the necessary storage. Spinning disks still offer dramatically more GB/$ versus SSD. But I am wondering whether there is some argument to be made for using the "cheap-ish" SSD's in a configuration with high enough redundancy and fault tolerance to make it viable. I haven't decided what that setup might look like.

I've seen more mechanical disk failures in high stress environments than SSD failures. High quality SSD's can be as good or better than spinners. The mechanical components like the HDD motors seem to fail before the digital bits do. SSD's do have finite writable life spans. But I feel like the mechanical drives simply wear out in less time than it takes to reach the write limit on an SSD in similar use.

Trouble is the HDD has to spin to read. The SSD can be read without any wear to the device.

Oct 25, 2022 at 01:31 PM

elkhornsun
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

There is the false assumption that a SSD is going to last longer than a hard drive and for multiple reasons this is not the case. Segments fail and a mechanism is used to log them out of service and add in segments from the storage pool of the drive.

The point of a NAS with RAID is data redundancy. With my RAID6 NAS I would need two of the 5 hard drives to fail to lose any data.

If multiple people are accessing a NAS then the higher read rates of SSD drives is important. With QNAP some of their NAS units have both hard drives for primary storage and SSD drives as a high speed cache for frequently read data.

Oct 25, 2022 at 04:16 PM

AMD300
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

jeffbuzz wrote:
Yeah, the OWC Express 4M2 is tempting to build a DAS local work drive. NVME is definitely the way to go for SSD. That may be my next project.

Unfortunately, their NAS lineup doesn't support RAID6 level fault tolerance until you get to the top two tiers. Pricey but very, very nice.

May be a bad idea but I’m using one of these drives with 4 WD black 850 NVME 1TB SSD’s. I have it set to RAID 0 (and backed up by a spinner) and use it for my Lightroom catalog with my Mac Studio. It’s ridiculous fast and has worked great so far. May quit working tomorrow but I have it backed up to a spinning drive if it does. It was cheaper for me to add fast SSD storage this way than from Apple.

Oct 25, 2022 at 05:33 PM

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

AMD300 wrote:
May be a bad idea but I’m using one of these drives with 4 WD black 850 NVME 1TB SSD’s. I have it set to RAID 0 (and backed up by a spinner) and use it for my Lightroom catalog with my Mac Studio. It’s ridiculous fast and has worked great so far. May quit working tomorrow but I have it backed up to a spinning drive if it does. It was cheaper for me to add fast SSD storage this way than from Apple.

That seems totally reasonable to me as long as you're comfortable with whatever your backup lag time is. Are you backing up to the spinning disks asynchronously or mirroring changes in real time?

Oct 25, 2022 at 07:12 PM

AMD300
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

jeffbuzz wrote:
That seems totally reasonable to me as long as you're comfortable with whatever your backup lag time is. Are you backing up to the spinning disks asynchronously or mirroring changes in real time?

I use carbon copy cloner and i just back it up once I close the program. It never takes more than just a minute or two and then it’s done. So far it’s worked wonderfully.

Oct 25, 2022 at 08:07 PM

Todd Warnke
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

Backblaze just released their SSD drive summary and over a 5-year period they are seeing a fail rate of SSDs at about 1/4 that of HDDs.

If you aren't familiar with Backblaze, they are an online BU company that regularly releases reports of their experience with thousands of drives in their server locations. This particular report covers over 2300 SSD over 5 years (primarily Seagates with some Crucials, Dell, and WDC drives as well), with a conclusion that "At this point we can reasonably claim that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs, at least when used as boot drives in our environment".

Sure, this is not the same use case as is being described here, but I would bet their use case is likely more intense than that of the standard home NAS.

Oct 25, 2022 at 09:38 PM

Herb
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I don’t like to buy camera memory cards or SSD or electronics from Amazon, too many counterfeit products. I pay more, but don’t worry either and i get my stuff like the above from B&H.

Oct 29, 2022 at 05:17 PM

netexpress
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I basically I only use Intel SSDs or higher end Samsung SSDs for anything anymore. Years of experience tells me that durability and reliability are really what will make you happy in the long run. Spinning disks - only for removable backup disks. You'll hate me for saying this but I'd say pony up!

Oct 29, 2022 at 05:57 PM

jeffbuzz
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

netexpress wrote:
I basically I only use Intel SSDs or higher end Samsung SSDs for anything anymore. Years of experience tells me that durability and reliability are really what will make you happy in the long run. Spinning disks - only for removable backup disks. You'll hate me for saying this but I'd say pony up!

Like the man said . . .

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”
--- Benjamin Franklin

Oct 29, 2022 at 06:42 PM

clear831
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I buy the WD's that I can shuck and toss them into my synology NAS. Mission critical gets backed up to an off site location. SSD prices are slowly dropping which is good but they are just not at the price point for me to buy them for a NAS.

Oct 30, 2022 at 09:09 PM

EB-1
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

SSDs are quaite expensive for consumer use at high capacities. At some point you are better off buying a storage appliance. You can set up a low capacity "budget" array, something like 8x4TB NAS (SATA III) for about $5000. That will provide about 25TB in RAID 5 with good performance, but not equal to NVME on the motherboard.

EBH

Nov 01, 2022 at 09:55 AM

morris
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Spinning disks versus SSD for NAS/DAS/RAID

I'm using a pair of Crucial MX500 2TB SSD in RAID 10 in my True NAS build for applications that need snappy response times. I'm doing the same with a pair of older Samsung NVME drives.

You will need a very powerful controller or CPU to run RAID 5 or 6 and not drag the SSDs down to a crawl.

Morris

Nov 01, 2022 at 06:15 PM

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