• NAS drive

    From Theo@21:1/5 to Dave on Sat Mar 6 21:06:51 2021
    Dave <dave@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

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  • From Dave@21:1/5 to All on Sat Mar 6 20:20:31 2021
    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

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  • From Dave@21:1/5 to Theo on Sat Mar 6 21:49:32 2021
    In article <lqb*6Upey@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Dave <dave@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

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  • From Chris Hughes@21:1/5 to Theo on Sat Mar 6 23:09:45 2021
    In message <lqb*6Upey@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

    Dave <dave@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

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  • From David Higton@21:1/5 to Dave on Sat Mar 6 22:38:56 2021
    In message <590926a648dave@triffid.co.uk>
    Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

    In article <lqb*6Upey@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Dave <dave@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.

    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

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  • From Dave@21:1/5 to Chris Hughes on Sun Mar 7 07:19:42 2021
    In article <99fe2d0959.chris@mytarbis.plus.com>,
    Chris Hughes <news13@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

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  • From Steve Fryatt@21:1/5 to Dave on Sun Mar 7 09:40:27 2021
    On 7 Mar, Dave wrote in message
    <59095ad995dave@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/

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  • From Paul Sprangers@21:1/5 to Chris Hughes on Sun Mar 7 13:53:14 2021
    In article <99fe2d0959.chris@mytarbis.plus.com>,
    Chris Hughes <news13@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

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  • From Chris Hughes@21:1/5 to Dave on Sun Mar 7 14:17:32 2021
    In message <59095ad995dave@triffid.co.uk>
    Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

    In article <99fe2d0959.chris@mytarbis.plus.com>,
    Chris Hughes <news13@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

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  • From Chris Hughes@21:1/5 to Paul Sprangers on Sun Mar 7 14:21:12 2021
    In message <59097962a8Paul@sprie.nl>
    Paul Sprangers <Paul@sprie.nl> wrote:

    In article <99fe2d0959.chris@mytarbis.plus.com>,
    Chris Hughes <news13@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

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  • From druck@21:1/5 to Theo on Sun Mar 7 17:41:25 2021
    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

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  • From Theo@21:1/5 to Steve Fryatt on Sun Mar 7 22:21:16 2021
    Steve Fryatt <news@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

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  • From Dave@21:1/5 to Theo on Mon Mar 8 08:16:52 2021
    In article <iqb*3rvey@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Steve Fryatt <news@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

    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

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  • From Bob Latham@21:1/5 to Dave on Mon Mar 8 12:37:16 2021
    In article <590926a648dave@triffid.co.uk>,
    Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:
    In article <lqb*6Upey@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>,
    Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
    Dave <dave@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?

    Didn't I quote in the past relative speed of Synology NAS boxes doing
    a music index? A DS110J NAS crawls along, I know I have one. Like all
    of my NAS boxes it has a Western Digital Red lump of spinning rust
    but is nowhere near as fast as say my DS214+, massive difference. I
    would expect newer NAS boxes to see my 214 off. Yes, you may get a
    slight speed increase changing to an SSD but I'm sure replacing the
    NAS would give a much bigger speed improvement.

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

    A while back I noticed that 3TB RED was a good price point, 4TB a bit
    pricey and 6TB well.. A new NAS preferably one with a J on the end
    and a red drive would be my advice.

    Personally, I've never had a red drive give any issue even after
    years of use, though I'm backed up if they should.


    Bob.

    --
    Bob Latham
    Stourbridge, West Midlands

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  • From Dave@21:1/5 to Bob Latham on Mon Mar 8 19:11:11 2021
    In article <5909fbc294bob@sick-of-spam.invalid>,
    Bob Latham <bob@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

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  • From Nick Roberts@21:1/5 to Dave on Tue Mar 9 17:18:38 2021
    In message <590a1fd320dave@triffid.co.uk>
    Dave <dave@triffid.co.uk> wrote:

    In article <5909fbc294bob@sick-of-spam.invalid>,
    Bob Latham <bob@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.

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