Should You Use SSDs For Your NAS?

[@laknicks]

Save yourself and watch at 1.75x speed

[@leexgx]

Think 1.5x is fast enough

[@CameronIzac]

Thanks for the tip. You were right.

[@lukastemberger]

It depends on what your reason for watching the video is. If you want just quick data, it's easier and faster to read through a text article. He has a calming voice and a non-typical inflection and I enjoy listening to him.

[@mrmotomoto]

2x with all his videos since he repeats himself constantly

[@guidobyfredo]

I like to take it slow 0.75 for me

[@synologyonline]

As a Synology Service Center. We don't recommend Sata SSD's at all. Unless the SSD is rated for a NAS. Or a Video Surveillance drive. Or if used as a Cache drive. Mainly the reason why we don't recommend them here is the controller chips on them. They die fast. The controller chip. Be it Phison, USBEST, SMI, or Samsung. They can only handle so many 100's of thousands read writes before they start to break down. And can die suddenly. Not the ram on the SSD's that dies. Its the controller chip that has to pass all those ram chips info to you. Usually its slower as it dies. But can be overnight dead. Now you might think read writes are only from what you send and receive from the NAS. But no. Internally in many certain raid configurations. The drives are also passing data between themselves. Like internal integrity checks, SMART data updates, parallel data movements and whole lot more you don't interact with. On mechanical drives. There is no main central controller to pass through. There is, but its not like a SSD controller. And with mechanical you kinda get a warning of it breaking down. At least so you can react asap to change that. Hope this helps too. Great Video here!

[@j.d.3269]

What's the lifespan of a controller chip?

[@synologyonline]

Depends on drive use. As controllers can only handle so many 10's of 1000's read write cycles. Since NAS's use raid and other formats. And many left to run 24/7. There is a constant juggling of data between drives and externally too. Like redundancy of files. So an average SSD Controller with get you about 1 year. Higher end SSD's you get more time. Kinda works like a standard Drives or PC drives.. If you put a standard pc drive in a NAS. It too only last about a year. All depends on the amount of data to be passing around between drives and user. And standard drives don't wear out from the controller side as much, but first more from head use, and Head ribbons, etc. Those usually go before the controllers go.. Why drives must be specific for NAS. There are other drives that can handle so much reading and writing. Like surveillance drives can be used in a NAS. As those like NAS drives are designed to handle alot of data 24/7.@@j.d.3269

[@j.d.3269]

@@synologyonline Interesting! What about a 5 year 300 TBW warranty? Does it matter whether it's being used in a NAS or in a laptop/desktop?

[@synologyonline]

Your warranty is still valid. Well you get so many times you can return it. Just don't tell them its in a NAS. Just say PC. LOL!@@j.d.3269

[@regwatson2017]

That is not what was being stated here. So either you or SpaceRex is talking through a hat.

[@alozborne]

The performance bottleneck for many of the 4 bay and smaller Synology NAS units is the network. Synology really needs to standardize on 10G NICs, or at least 2.5G

[@0bsmith0]

It should be at least 5 GbE NICs. 2.5 is just not enough.

[@EsotericArctos]

When you go to the Rack mount, Enterprise versions, they have 10G NIc's. The desktop NAS's are aimed at consumer and "prosumer" markets or small business. Most small business and consumers still only have gigabit switches. Why make an already expensive product even more expensive making the NIC's on consumer or small business devices 10GB when most people don't have the switches to handle that. You may like 10gbps, but majority of small business and consumers are using gigabit still, and some even fast ethernet. The tinkerers and homelab guys may make 10gbps look common, but honestly these are very much the minority of NAS users. Most people wanting that sort of speed from storage are building their own NAS using a proper server.

[@EsotericArctos]

@@0bsmith0 Gigabit is plenty for most small business or consumer markets. 2.5gbps is really not that common, unless you are a home lab guy. In that case you are using a server, not a NAS. You can stream several 4K streams over gigabit.. Hard drives are the main bottle neck, as most hard drives cannot saturate gigabit LAN. Put an SSD on standard gigabit ethernet, and compare it to a spinning disk on the same connection. The SSD will blow it away every time.

[@alozborne]

@@EsotericArctosMany small businesses have a managed switch with at least one GBic slots, which would support 10Gig connectivity for the Synology NAS. So, it's not necessary to have all ports 10Gig on the office switch, which I agree would be too expensive for many SMBs (and overkill for most user devices anyways)

[@Gruuvin1]

Synology should stick with 1G and keep their costs down.

[@keithmiller9665]

Yep, I have switched to all SSDs. I have a Lenovo 1L 7500T with a 4 TB SSD, a 2 TB NVME and and external USB hub (Sabrent) with 4x2TB SSDs. Here in the UK SSDs seem to be about double the price of HDDs. Power consumption and noise were both factors in my choice in switching to all SSDs.😊

[@Apollo_GodMode]

If price isn't an issue then SSDs are worth it long term?

[@mglaqft]

@@Apollo_GodMode just watch the video, he addresses this point specifically

[@Apollo_GodMode]

@@mglaqft what’s the answer

[@sylvainHZT]

Switched to full SSD's on my DS1019+ 3 years ago, i totally love it ! My NAS is a 14W beast, in a total silence 😜

[@nickquik]

What's the tb you have for each ssd?

[@sylvainHZT]

@@nickquik i choose WD RED NAS 2TB 2.5

[@sylvainHZT]

2TB . Total volume size is 7TB@@nickquik

[@paulfox9694]

That other commenter said they would die after a year. Have you experienced any failures of them?

[@sylvainHZT]

@@nickquik 7TB

[@rachaelpreston8976]

Power consumption, physical size, and heat is much better with SSDs than HDDs too. I was able to take an old small form factor desktop (Lenovo E73), install a 6-bay Icy Dock enclosure with 2TB SSDs, TrueNAS Scale, and a LSI controller card and have a reasonably inexpensive NAS that is fairly compact and doesn't consume that much power.

[@mitchross2852]

wont LSI slow down ssd rate?

[@andreas5384]

And noise. Accessing the NAS can easily become annoying, when it is in the same room. Even when not in active access, almost every off the shelf NAS with spinning disks starts maintenance jobs regularly, or is not configured to spin down reliably. That, and due to generally lower heat, you might get away without a fan, or at least with moving way less air.

[@pikaskew]

Actually power consumption is higher on average with SSDs per mb than spindle. Only exception is idle draw which is a slight higher draw for spindle

[@ToomsDotDk]

I do IT forensics, so alot of data and need speed, we use 8 bay Synology NAS with 10gbe and drives as 8x 4TB SSD + 2x 2TB nvme for RW cache. I burn many SSD and we started with the Samsung EVO, but they are really bad as there controller dont seems to handle the load and gives many CRC errors and then the SMART data says the drives are bad... So we have changed to Samsung 4TB PRO that just works and stabile but it seems that Samsung dont make that any more, so now we have changed over to WD Red NAS 4TB SSD and they work very well... So SSD in an NAS 🙂depends on your use case and see then as disposable IT, meaning that we know it is limited time before the are dead in the way we use them. Then we have other NAS for Slow storage where we archive data and they are running with normal harddisks+ssd-cache, because cheaper, bigger and works fine for archive data where we dont need the high random IO and speed. So yes my use case is not normal and can not be compared to others, but what i will says is that not all SSD work well in NAS and dont buy Samsung EVO SSD

[@FerTechCH]

Synology is shooting themselves on their foot by prohibiting to use other drives than theirs. They are also not adding the 18-20-22 TB spinning drives to the compatibility list to push for their own Toshiba Synology branded drives. Also, they are including quite old processors to their NAS models instead of using modern ones with better performance to run containers and other things.

[@devincurrie4145]

Well my interpretation is that Synology is ensuring quality control making sure that the selected drive will work properly as designed. I agree that it's not great being locked in so would be great having an option warning user that using third party drive is untested by Synology and can fail so that's on the user to accept that risk if s/he decide to use the third party drive.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@devincurrie4145they're ensuring that people are forced to buy their drives and ram and network cards at a significant premium. There's not much variability between hdds so testing them should not be a big issue. Lack of it is not so much cost cutting as vendor locking

[@cryMoreLoL]

@@BoraHorzaGobuchul You don’t know what you’re talking about.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

@@cryMoreLoL of course I don't. Care to elaborate?

[@ThomasOatman]

I re-created my DS1621 a few months ago. I added 2 SSDs in SHR as the system volume. So all apps are installed here. The Syn Drive database. The Plex database and temp files. Photos DB. Etc etc It is blazing fast compared to before 👍🏻😁🤓 And sooooo much quieter.

[@lxjilyfe]

can one ssd get the job done or it has to be two?

[@ThomasOatman]

@@lxjilyfe I’ve had a hard time finding real numbers…. i.e. can the bus/OS really utilize/benefit from parallel SSDs….. but at least with 2, and with SHR, you also have some redundancy

[@einekleineente1]

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 💰 *SSD prices have significantly dropped, making them a viable option for NAS setups.* 03:11 🔄 *SSDs outperform hard drives significantly in random read and write operations, offering a massive performance advantage.* 05:41 📊 *While hard drives currently offer higher storage capacity, SSDs excel in power efficiency, silent operation, and faster RAID rebuilds.* 08:52 ⚙️ *SSD longevity concerns have diminished; calculating terabytes written and RAID configurations can ensure their durability.* 11:02 🔄 *NVMe SSDs can be used for caching, enhancing NAS performance, but Synology restricts their use as main storage due to pricing and compatibility.* Made with HARPA AI

I wish synology would release a NVME NAS as the asustor ones.

[@scottsettemeyer2875]

In 1997, I paid $500 for a 5Gb HDD, and I thought that was the bees' knees. My oh my, how far we've come!

[@lowpinglag]

In the 80s I owned an Amiga 2000 computer, and bought a 20MB HD for it, I think I paid around $500 for the thing.

[@MarkWebbPhotography]

Just had two 970 Evo Plus 500gb drives go “critical” on my Synology due to hitting the manufacturer defined lifespan. They still functioned perfectly but they would no longer mount. They lasted about 3 years so I popped in 1TB versions so I can get 6 years of use. Keep in mind these were for caching a dedicated backup server with a lot of reads and writes every day so most folks can expect more life than that. Just keep an eye on the SMART data

[@leexgx]

Not recommend to use evo and qvo under linux and raid they seem to wear out quickly (some don't last a year at times) samsung enterprise ones working fine

[@j.d.3269]

300 TBW already?

[@MarkWebbPhotography]

@@j.d.3269 yeah it can go fast when active backup, snapshot replication, drive cache are working all the time I suppose. I can’t see my SMART data on these cache drives anymore for some reason. Synology really wants you to use their drives. I did pick up a pair of used SNV3510-800G to use in a E10M20-T1 and they are performing very well in another system. I can see all SMART data on those at least.

[@j.d.3269]

@@MarkWebbPhotography It seems HDD's lifespan is around only 25,000 hours if running 24x7. I have a 860 EVO 500GB SATA with 45,880 hours (24x7 more than 5 years), 20 TBW, 104 wear level, 0 error/failure/reallocation etc. In the long run, I think SSD cost less than HDD for the same NAS capacity.

[@MarkWebbPhotography]

@@j.d.3269 25,000 hours sounds like a lemon, I have quite a few 12tb drives at 60,000 hours. Definitely had a number of 12TB drives fail but I also had a 4TB Samsung 870 EVO drive fail on me as well. Both Seagate and Samsung were easy enough to get warranty replacements and the new models of both with updated firmware have been solid performers. Definitely look at the warranty of your drives because they aren’t all equal quality.

[@starfoxBR77]

And I also aim that using SSDs for the more I/O intensive applications can extend my HDDs lifespan.

[@PaulNtabuyeButera]

@10:27 - cudos for the realistic audio fx and beat boxing skills 😂

[@cinemaipswich4636]

I have just built a TrueNAS Scale server with a new XL case and PSU, second hand Xeon, Supermicro MB, and 128 GB ECC RAM. The 8x 4TB Red drives are still half the price of the latest SATA HDD's. When I need an extra pool in a year or two, they will probably be the same price by then. When it comes to NVMe's, I'm looking at the "now older" PCIe Gen 3's. They are very cheap for things like ZIL, L2ARC, DeDup, and all those other Pool add-on's.

[@birch3607]

Good thing this didn't come out yesterday when I purchased my first setup 😅 Definitely considering this down the road, especially since I'll still have 4 open bays. Thanks for all the info, Will! 🙏

[@azwb]

Well you probably were looking in SSD vs HDD - Storage Space is huge with HDD by 4x or More. Thats why you may have went with HDD?

[@andreas5384]

If you consider mixing magnetic and SSD, you do not benefit that much from the advantages of SSD drives. But for performance, there are configurations that make use of SSD in mixed setups, for things like caching, etc. KZbin has tons of videos, with I think, e.g. TrueNAS being configured in this way. Other than that special use case, I'd probably switch all to SSD, or stay with magnetic.

[@taggerung890]

I was not expecting to find you here !! -glidiator

[@birch3607]

@@taggerung890 lol man, from one setup to the next! We're just two niche hobbyists cut from the same cloth I guess xD

[@royzderich]

great video, my experience with storage is very long, i can tell you that SSD`s are great for hot data and consumer grade devices work well in less dense or intensive environments with not much io transactions , lets say a personal or small group NAS. When you move to a very dense and intensive IO such as production VM clusters, consumer grade ssd become very difficult to evaluate in terms of durability. Solid state drives improve a lot over the years but they are still less reliable, overall life time measure in total io transactions. I think long term storage or "cold" storage will be ok in HDDS and can provide a multi decade lifetime. Best solution for General use in my opinion is hybrid, HDD array accelerated by an ssd Array working as a cache. In busy systems you can kill consumer ssds in weeks or months, hdds can last years. In the other hand Datacenter level HDDS can last decades on constant operation with a fail rate of 1% to 2% per year. I recommend long term storage to be on hdd or tape. The reason is we don't know how long will an ssd survive even offline. I don't have that experience yet, HDDS are proven tech in this area, i'm 51, some customers keep data on hdd's for over 20 years and they work well, CDS in the other hand (CDR or DVDR) don't last as longer, the material fall apart over the years at least you store it in controlled conditions. Simple solution for a NAS desktop can be hybrid, 2 hhd's for cold and long term data and 2 SSD's for hot data, best of 2 worlds. Best Regards

[@devincurrie4145]

Sensible approach! 👍

[@dixienormus8097]

Perfect video, exactly what I was looking for.

[@damianlopez9493]

You missed a BIG point: Data recovery. In any case, any type of failure, physical damage, logical damage, voltage troubles, external or environmental troubles, if somehow the units get compromised and maybe you have RAID or mirror setup, but if all your disks get this damage, SSD and NVMe are dead, the data is lost for sake, it's a 0% chance to recover the data, with HDD you have about 90% chances to recover the data. I liked your video, as far as you tried to give a good comparison you missed that little big point, remember technologies as SHR, JBOD and RAIDs born because: Storage units are disposable, data IS NOT.

[@starfoxBR77]

I do. I changed from a DS720 to a DS923 exactly to be able to use the M.2 bays as storage pools. There I let databases, containers and VMs.

[@voievidko]

Is it possible to use M.2 only for storage and not for cashing? I also need a good performance for my docker containers.

[@starfoxBR77]

@@voievidko Yes but only in selected models. That's why I changed from a DS720 (supports M.2 only as cache) to the DS923 (suports M.2 as cache or volume, BUT (and that's a big but lol) it only enables the volume function of you purchase the Synology brand (very expensive) . I love and hate them.

[@voievidko]

@@starfoxBR77, they are definetly not chip. I have the same feelings to SSD/RAM Synology politics, lol. Only one bright side on this - I think, I will need only 400GB SSD like SNV3510-400G has.

[@starfoxBR77]

@@voievidko Agree. That's the one I have.

[@enoynaert]

One thing that I like about SSDs is that if they fail, they usually fail to read-only mode. The data will not be lost.

[@1nf0fr34k]

Super useful, still on the fence for adding an SSD for cache due too usage patterns and I suspect running the week long analysis will prove it. I see the SSD cache being really useful for multiple users r/w'ing small files and not so much for me with iSCSI for a home lab and meanwhile watching videos stored on the unit. I looked at a lot of upgrades for my 923+ including memory but the 4GiB of ECC memory seems to be doing fine for the purpose, possibly cache would be improved but I don't really need it and I don't run any VMs on the NAS as all my workload is either on various Macs or K8S nodes. Great video again, allows me to make informed decisions based on speculation about some of the options :)

[@0bsmith0]

I'd love all SSD setups but until there are 8TB 2.5" TLC SSDs and ones that don't cost an arm and a leg they don't provide enough space and still way too expensive even for 4TB drives. After many many years 8TB TLC NVMe drives only started to appear from 2-3 vendors recently and at 1,200 - 1,500 per drive that is insane.

[@marijanWS]

I went all SSD with the DS620slim from Synology some years ago and while I can't use the full speed because of just 1 GB connection limitation I am still loving it because it's so dead silent (working remote from home) and very responsive. But all the ssds were f**king expensive (6x 4TB drives) I have to say and it's sure not worth for everybody

[@azwb]

I'm leaning towards SSD because they are silent like you state. Are 5 12TB HDD very loud??

[@truckerallikatuk]

@@azwb Depends where you put the unit. If it's in a room you barely use, you won't notice them. If the NAS is by your desk you may.

[@andreasherz5797]

You can use a 2,5gbit or 5gbit USB3-to-RJ45 Dongle to make it faster. Instructions can be found here on KZbin. :-)

[@noobydoo]

5 12TB HDD is crazy loud. Gotta need to store it away from where you are working. @@azwb

[@DanieleInaudi]

How would you update an existing NAS / storage pool from HDDs to SSDs?

[@NeilBradleyMS]

Very helpful thank you, I’m now considering Sata ssd’s as I’m approaching near the time to upgrade. 👍

[@chrisjohnson9070]

I agree with you about SSD longevity. However, while their lifespan may be much longer now, their lifespan is still finite. IF you bring a new NAS online using all SSDs, and every one of those SSDs begin their life together, and the writes that are imposed on them are almost exactly the same throughout their lifespan, then when they DO finally fail, they will likely all fail at or around the same time. That's something you want to keep in mind with a RAID because if you have only one drive for fault tolerance and you happen to lose two or more drives in rapid succession, then you've got a real problem. If I were to configure an all SSD RAID, I would plan on preemptively replacing drives well before they got close to the end of their lifespans.

[@RealLordy]

When SSD s are EOL they become read only. So you dont necessarily loose data

[@The-Cat]

@@RealLordy exactly. as opposed to HDD where data becomes corrupted

[@nickquik]

​@@RealLordy good to know

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@RealLordydepends on the controller. Good ones behave like that.

[@shadowr2d2]

Thank you for posting this video 📹. You have a new subscriber. Keep up the great work. This was a very informative video 🎥.

[@TheThinkersBible]

Incredible information. Great to know how far SSD technology has come. And drives, to be honest. Do the Synology drives allow hot swap of SSDs too?

[@MJFleming-pp9dc]

I think complaints about QLC are overblown. I was playing with a 2TB QLC drive from teamgroup last night and I found it pretty impressive in terms of performance as compared to the usual suspects.

[@96indashade]

I was told (after one of my HDD's failed and I needed it recovered about 6 yrs ago) that it's almost impossible to recover data from a SSD that has corrupt data or fails. HDD's have more options when it comes to recovering data, since it's a physical disc. Something to keep in mind.

[@ThomasOatman]

The biggest disappointment for me with the new NVMe support is the Syn drives are SOOO darn small. Like I said, I made the system volume as two SSD. But that ate two slots 😞 If I can get 4 (or 8) TB NVMe drives to work as a volume, I can get my slots back 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[@lukastemberger]

Yup, Asustor is a way better choice for that kind of use case. 4 NVMe slots that can be used with any drive and any cache/storage configuration. Plus a 2x2.5G connection. No-brainer.

[@themrgumbatron]

great video. been thinking about swapping out my old 3.5" to 2.5" ssds

[@bobbymoss6160]

Having recently setup my new NAS with SSD cache, the transfer/write speed is limited not just by the NIC you're using, but also the drive speed. I can get up to mid to high 500 MB/sec between my Asustor AS5404T using a pair of SK Hynix P31 Gold M.2 in RAID 1 configuration as cache, going to my PC's OS drive, which is a WD SN850, using 2.5 Gb NIC and switch with Cat 5e cables with SMB multi-channel activated in ADM. If the file is transferred from my PC from a mechanical internal HDD, the speed is reduced to high 100 MB/sec. I have 4x Seagate Exos Mach.2 HDD in RAID 5 as main drives in the NAS.

[@alexclifford2485]

My use case for personal files and media server is: SSDs are great for the OS, game files, or any video editing but can be overkill for the whole system. HDDs are great, cheap and huge, and are good for my backups and archiving. They will last a long time if they're just used for the monthly backup or archive and kept offline and if I do want to hook them up to my network, their throughput is more than enough. I can see in enterprises or bigger businesses you may want to use an SSD where there are lots of random read/writes or virtual machines. HDDs do have a place and can diversify from a bad batch of drives or if ssds do fail all at once, they are there. The HDDs tend to have more recoverable data, whereas the SSD will and can die suddenly and that's it. And also great for a backup. Spending a few hundred dollars on HDDs that are offline and manual backups, could save a business thousands or millions in the case of a hack or ransomware or if a drive or provider fails. I'm not an expert but these are my impressions. There's also something I quite like about the HDD that makes me feel like the computer is humming and thinking. But I'm weird like that. Anyway thanks for the video

[@lchaffinii]

GREAT video! I have been looking for this information. I have a DS923+ using Toshiba N300 14tb drives; sounds like it is ready to take off. I want to switch this over to Samsung 870 8tb drives. Can you share how to migrate old hard drives to the new SATA SSD drives on an existing system? I am running a 2.5gb network. Thanks!

[@truckerallikatuk]

Of course, for an enterprise solution, you just add more memory. ZFS cache is amazing.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

It may be. But the video concerns Synology, which doesn't have it )

[@mmdday]

It seems that there's no easy way to switch from hard drives to SSDs on synology? Seems that synology does not support mixed SSD and hard drives on a single pool, therefore you cannot organically switch to SSDs by swapping one drive at a time. Is my understanding correct?

[@awesomearizona-dino]

Hello, i tried just as you say, swapping in an SSD for a failded HDD, found out the hard way Synology does not allow that. Its probably better for Synology considering their focus is reliabilty. I find Windows filessytems much more user friendly.

[@northislandnow8858]

Problem with SSD drives are that they fail way faster than a standard drive. More read and write you do to them the shorter the lifespan. If you value your data. You need to archive your data on traditional hard drives.

[@leexgx]

Note Synology ssd cache caches random read and write io (not often accessed data) sequential data will not get cached (dsm6 did let you do it had a tick box to cache sequential as well but was removed in dsm7 because why cache sequential io, hdds do it plenty fast enough)

[@PH03N1X88]

One downside I would think about is the recoverability of data (let's say both drives in a raid burn out due to some power issues). HDDs would be easier to recover (replacing the board or using professional services) than SSDs. Am I wrong?

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Easier but extremely expensive Running a backup will be much cheaper

[@_starfiend]

We had an SSD storing an Oracle database. We killed it in about 6 months. This was back in 2019.

[@jbrenes]

Thanks for the video, it was really helpful! I appreciate the effort you put into creating content. One small suggestion for future videos: consider using a script or talking points to help streamline your presentation. This might help in avoiding repetition, making your videos even more engaging. Keep up the great work!

[@azwb]

Was looking for THIS video - Only because I have no idea how LOUD 5 Ironwolf 12TB drives would be on a desk 6 feet away. I dont mind some noise but not looking to be hosting a loud server room.

[@BLKNJ]

I’m running 4 8TB drives and they are clearly audible 6 ft away. I have my nas in a cabinet and can still hear them. Seagate ironwolf drives too

[@Rene-kg7pf]

Need 80TB of storage.... SSD has gotten cheap ? 😂😂😂😂

[@droneforfun5384]

Hi Will, thanks a lot. Perhaps some videos comparing performance differences in different applications for future videos! For example ds photos browsingetc etc. Keep it up, great videos! /from sweden🎉

[@lukewatson1926]

Informative, as always, Thank you for the content. Regarding using m.2 ssds for caching, would you suggest it if users are caching large files (4-10gb / each) and the files are not always the same? Example: Users watching video lectures stored on the NAS, but every user is watching a different lecture simultaneously? I'm not sure if this makes sense, but any advice would always be appreciated. Thanks again. Keep up the good work!

[@daillengineer]

I picked up 4 crucial 4TB MX500’s and have them in a pool in my 1621+ in raid5. Love it. The other two disks are 16TB iron wolf for data i dont access that much. I use the SSDs as backup for my TrueNas all NVMe machine. I think the 4TB mx500’s are like $210 now. Cheap.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Its absolutely nuts how cheap SSDs are

[@azwb]

Im researching SSD and Crucial was in the race but I noticed that 360 TBW vs Samsung 870 EVO 2400TBW at $240. Thoughts?

[@daillengineer]

@@azwb either is fine for the average user that’s not writing data constantly day and night for years

[@lucacolombo8676]

​@@azwbthe 4TB MX500 has 1000 TBW. I just bought 2 of them for ~195$ each.

[@stevee2095]

I run 6 of the Crucial 4TB MX500 at R5 and 7 Seagate 22TB at R5 on my Synology 1621xs+. 2 Crucial P3 NVMe at R0 for the HDD read cache. I put common fast stuff on the SSD array and my Sonarr/Radarr/Sab/Plex media on the HDDs. All is quiet when Sonarr/Radarr/Sab is calm. 😊 All is backed up to a server with 150TB of SAS for CYA peace of mind, and critical SSD data goes to Backblaze via Cloudberry Backup. Note: Synology DSM as of now will not use any HDD drive space over 20TB, so my 22TB HDDs might as well be the 20TB models. 😢 Synology, please lift this arbitrary limit. Fyi: Adding a 22TB HDD for capacity takes 6 days if all is idle (safest). That's only a little slower than rebuilding the array and restoring from the SAS server backup, via 10gbe (riskier).

[@bb55555555]

Yes this was very helpful. Thank you

[@byrnhard]

Very informative, thank you! 🙂

[@Life.After.Retirement]

I started using SSD exclusively over 9 years ago, for price performance reasons. All Servers were build on Samsung SSDs in Raid 10. I installed my first Synology NAS about 7 years ago, again with Samsung SSDs. What's taken you so long to get on board?

[@kweinberg34]

A 3 minute presentation jam packed into 15 minutes. This guy repeats himself. A LOT.

[@DaystromDataConcepts]

I recently bought my second Synology NAS, a DS223. I decided to populate it with a pair of Crucial MX500 2.5 inch SATA SSD's. Within the space of about a month my NAS experienced crashes on both storage pools (one for each SSD). I lost all data on my 4Tb drive the first time around. Then, just a couple of days ago, I receive two emails. The first informs me that the /swap partition has degraded. A few seconds later the second email tells me that my root partition has degraded. Then, storage pool 1 crashes. I am forced to wonder if the use of SSD's is causing these frequent, and catastrophic, crashes. My other Synology, A DS1821+, with six HDD's has never given me a problem in the 14 months I've had it. So ... is there a problem with using unsupported SSD's? Or, is this a symptom of Synology continuing to reduce the choice of compatible drives to the point where, for the DS223, the only HDD's/SSD's listed in the NAS's compatibility list are those from Synology. Could these failures be a form of artificially induced problems due to lack of compliance? Hmmm ... I've just ordered a Synology HAT3300 6Tb HDD and will install that instead. I wonder if all my crashes will mysteriously stop.

[@bertrammoshier8770]

Unfortunately my NAS has 80TB (~39TB RAID 10) and only 4 drive slots WD PR4100 (WD My Cloud Pro Series 4-Bay NAS). I got the WD Red Pro 20TB for a bit less than $1600. My NAS is sitting at around 75% full. I LOVE SSD and look forward to 20TB SSD for about US$400, as I'm sure we all are - some day.

[@ags911]

Right now you should be able to get 2x8GB in SSD's = 16GB for around $800? or 32GB. The Samsung 870 QVO 8TB 2.5” in the UK is around £340 right now. By my calculations the same 80TB config would cost £3300, so around double of the HDD price. If you need that much storage the profession you have must be able to afford that type of storage.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@ags911qvo or even Evo drives are not something I'd ever put in my NAS

[@regwatson2017]

To be honest I am surprised Synology isn't already phasing out the 3.5 hard drive NAS.

[@kdw75]

I kept asking why the Fiery RIP servers didn't use SSDs since the technicians spend so much company time waiting on them when reloading or even rebooting. They were telling me last year that they weren't durable enough. Then this year they are offering new models with SSDs. LOL

[@Jet00Boy]

Hi SpaceRex I have just brought: Synology DiskStation DS1821+ 8 Bay [under your inspiration = thx man]. If I was to to set it up this way: I put two 4TB SSDs in Bays1 and 2; in RAID-1. And I put six Ironwolf 22TB HDD in Bays 3 thought to 8; in RAID-5 Could I label (or effectively use) this configuration as two “separate” NAS; where I use the 4TB for my current work files [giving me speed]… And, I use the RAID-5, containing the Ironwolf 22TB HDDs, for archive storage [giving me size]. Is this even possible (within the same DiskStation Unit)? Is this a good idea? Can I move the files internally, from the RAID-1 to the RAID-5 (and vice versa), within the DiskStation? What are the unknown “newbie” problems with doing this? Cheers JetBoy

[@alfiet23]

Very interested to see if you ever found out about this

[@wertigon]

Actually, HDD capacity is already overtaken by SSDs, SSDs have started to trickle out 64TB SSDs now with, for instance, the Solidigm D5-P5336 and Samsung recently announced a 256TB SSD on the horizon. HDD manufacturers, meanwhile, are stuck at 40-50 TB HDDs at their theoretical high end. With the U.2 and E3.S form factors / connectors, it is shaping up to be an interesting alternative with a street price below $3.4k. That is a price of ~$55 per Terabyte. Yes, compared to the cheapest consumer HDD, that is waaaay behind a $100 12TB HDD for roughly $9 per TB. And similarly, the cheapest 4TB SSD costs $150 now, which is $37.5 per TB. However, it is cheaper per TB than most 8TB and 16TB SATA SSDs out there. Also, compared to the biggest HDDs at 26TB, and you can easily see why it is game over for HDDs now. SSDs just cornered them out completely in 2023 and now it's just a race to the bottom and then HDDs will be forever unprofitable to make. By 2026, I would not be surprised to see 64TB SSDs costing below $1500, or below $25 / TB. I do not think latest HDD technology can beat that cost per TB, and they already lose on everything else. Also on your point of Synology NVMe NAS equipment being expensive, Asustor recently released the Asustor Flashstor, which is a 12 bay NVMe m.2 NAS for home consumer use and costs only $800 for something that. Fully loaded with 12 SSDs, it draws roughly 25W idle and 50W at full speed from the wall socket. Can't see how HDDs will compete with that once 16TB SSDs creep below $300. Thanks for a good video!

[@veeclash4157]

HAMR HDDs coming out soon will change the ceiling of traditional HDD capacity limits. At the moment HDDs still win in the important price to storage capacity ratios.

[@wertigon]

@@veeclash4157 HAMR theoretical maximum is 120TB or so. SSDs can easily reach 1PB before 2030. HDDs cannot compete on price anymore and 3.5" SSDs will probably overtake HDDs soon, too. I just do not see any way that HDDs can stay cost competitive long term. Even if they do long term, transfer speeds will be like reading a CD-ROM at 72x speeds today (roughly 10MB/s). Your data is just not fast enough anymore.

[@69elchupacabra69]

holy fuck this guy loves the sound of his own voice

[@EuroPC4711]

Hi Eill, thank you very much for the video.

[@malcdickinson06]

i really enjoy your videos I have a Kingston NVME 1 TB and put it into a usb c enclosure. When I plug it into then USB 3 port it’s only transfers @ 30MB/sec it’s a synology DS214+ I just wanted to use it as a Time Machine backup. Thanks Malc

[@TheJoaolyraaraujo]

I wish Synology sell a NAS a 1U all 8 bay NVME. Not locked to symbology LOL

[@JonatanCastro-secondary]

Wow honestly pretty shady Synology won't let you use your own NVME drives!

[@phdnk]

On a NAS with 2.5" bays, can one transition to SSDs gradually, one bay at a time ? Can a btrfs volume be hosted on a mixed hardware (HDD + SSD) ?

[@cashnelson2306]

There's no technical reason why not.

[@awesomearizona-dino]

Hello, i found out you canNOT mix HDDs and SSds in same pool, i tried swapping 1tb SSD for HDD on a mirror of 2 HDDs, the system refused to allow it.

[@claystudiofx]

I used synology for doing vfx production using 4K footage , 8 bay sata. Enough for me. If you can add additional 10Gbps network, it would be great.

[@DanWi90]

6:11 the ultrastars apparently go up to 28TB according to the WD Website.

[@bilmantender5812]

Can you gradually upgrade a Synology with HDDs to an all SSD setup?

[@supasye]

You recommend the samsung evo but i read everywhere that they fail often. Any opinion on this?

[@tuapple1138]

im from ksa... ur channel is very useful, keep it up

[@theshuff]

Great video ! I'm currently planning to upgrade my 8x2TB raid 5 array with ssd. By the past, i was worried about price and endurance. That's not th case anymore ! Waiting for a good deal and i go on with ssd. The major concern, for me, about my "old" hdd is electrical consumption. Should drop 24/7 electrical consumption from 80 to 30w. that's a huge difference. Planning to keep hdd only for my backup storage array which is spinned down most of the time ;)

[@hoishum2555]

Running 4x 4TB SSD on DS620slim over a year. Small form, Silent, quick response for file storage, iPhone backup. Now, I am planning add two more 4TB or 8TB SSD to complete the 6-bay setup. Also, expecting new DS6XXslim may coming soon.

[@nicholasnormanholland5338]

May I ask what model of SSDs you are using and are you having them in a RAID5 envorement?

[@hoishum2555]

@@nicholasnormanholland5338 Sandisk Ultra 3D SSD 4TB (approx. $2xx/ea) ordered directly from Western Digital official website. The NAS is running Synology SHR which allows one SSD not working.

[@nds6767]

just a heads up, sometimes i run the nvme option for caching... Amazon likes to pull fast ones and samsung I refuse to use anymore because they sell the "international" ones and getting support for them in the states is not gonna happen. Had this issue with a customer.

[@ivosarak959]

NAS is still sata hdd only because of size benefits, but I have been on SAS SSD RAID mirrors on systems for ages for the speed benefits.

[@devincurrie4145]

I'd be hesitate to go all SSD for NAS as I have had a few brand new SSD drives (Silicon Power) failed on me under normal non-NAS use. I do have one SSD drive (HP) lasting me for more than five years and it's still running reliability today; and just bought another SSD (Samsung) for normal use as well. SSD and M.2 / NVMe is certainly much faster than old mechanical drives however reliability is still questionable. I have had a few old spinning HDD failed on me as well so perhaps the failure rate between HDD and SSD is probably comparable except that SSD failed instantly without warning; and providing read-only access (after failure) is not guaranteed.

[@andreas5384]

Keep in mind that statistics paint a different picture. It is almost certain that you just had bad luck so far. SSD are, for almost all use cases - more reliable and forgiving than magnetic storage. The only thing - different from magnetic - to keep in mind is the amount of data being written. But this is relevant in edge use cases only.

[@jonathanhirschbaum6754]

@@andreas5384 I think not. My dentist runs old PC that remember win98 with obnoxiously loud hard disk for 2 decades now. I dont see any SSD living that long

[@claywhitenack]

What about having an SSD as your main system drive and then an HDD for your backup drive in a Basic setup?

[@Jasonerickson309]

I had no idea that Synology limits what type of NVMe you can use. That is inappropriate for a company to do that. The Type of SDD I use, is my business and no one else.

[@ronwatkins5775]

Im a little confused about the throughput of HDD vs SSD when you use RAID to protect your data. Im really needing a high level of data protection, so im looking at options like Raid-6. I don' t want to get caught in a Raid-5 rebuild which itself causes another drive failure due to the high workload rebuilding the Raid-5. When running Raid-6 on HDD vs SSD, can you stil maintain high throughput levels? Our office servers have 10GB SFP+ and im looking for a NAS which can support 25GB SFP28 so that multiple servers can access the NAS with only small impacts. I need to be around 20-25TB total storage. Ive heard of NVMe being used as a cache for the HDD/SSD in some systems. Im just looking for some good options to consider.

[@Bokgat]

Thankyou. Exactly what a dummy like me needed. Much to consider. Regards

[@Silverwing_99]

Thanks, buddy, for another excellent review! Will, you truly are a NAS oracle. Your videos have helped me every step of the way of getting my dream Synology setup I was initially leaning towards the WD red since it was reputed for high endurance. I have the 6bay synology nas, with approx 2.4 tb used, with wd red spinning 2tb hardives. WD red sata nas are 2500, and was tempted to replace all my drives with the wd red stata ssds. However, wd red sata ssds are quite expensive, for example, Samsung 870 qvo are significantly cheaper and are 2880 TBW for a 2tb ssd, cf 2500 wd red. Thus, I may be looking to go towards Samsung 870 QVO 2 TB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-77Q2T0). what the best way to repalce these, can i remove one drive at a time and let the system rebuild each time. Or, should i backup onto 6tb external drive and then replace them all, and rebuild from the external drive.

[@JosephHawkins]

What are your thoughts about an OWC Thunderbay 4 mini with SSD for direct attached storage ( DAT allows Backblaze backup ) - i am using Lacie BigDoc currently - and backed up on site to SYNOLOGY NAS

[@simon359]

The only problem with Nas drives or any raid drive, is will the company keep up the firmware updates??? If not, you’ve got yourself a brick!

[@ElectroOverlord]

I have a 1522+ fully loaded with the 22TB's for storage but would consider another for 1522+ for SATA performance on Docker and such.

[@ElectroOverlord]

What about NVMe as cache for SATA drives?

[@daillengineer]

What I’ve been building out is using my devices for more SSD storage that’s used and then the spinning rust just for backups.

[@azwb]

I was thinking the same thing. 3 SSD 8TB and 2 HDD 18TB for archival storage. If I use the setup 3/2 and only use the HHD for archive are they spinning constantly? In affect the NAS would be silent for most of the time??@@daillengineer

[@daillengineer]

@@azwb people act like HDD is loud. I can’t hear them but yea they’re always spinning. That’s why they use more power to use. If you won’t need a ton of space then i like that idea. You don’t necessarily need NVMe. Sata SSD should be more than adequate.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@daillengineerdepends on where you live, where your nas is located, and what drives you run. I have my NAS in a separate room but would definitely NOT want it in, say, a single-room apartment.

[@andreutaberner8175]

Thanks for all the content. Don’t they need to be synology ssds nowadays? Can you still add samsung ssds? Their website says it will not work. Thank you.

[@SpaceRexWill]

They will still work!

[@andreutaberner8175]

Thanks Will for such a quick response! Great channel with great content. @@SpaceRexWill

[@TazzSmk]

here in mid Europe, 16TB IronWolf Pro costs bit more than 8TB QVO, so it's barely twice, not 4 times the difference per capacity :O

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Wouldn't want an Evo/qvo in my NAS though. Reliability sucks.

[@S9__]

Just purchased my first synology 1522+. I’m looking at what hard drives to get and still might be a little confused. Based on performance and let’s say money and not having huge amount of storage isn’t a issue is there much of a difference to buy all SSD for the slots vs all HDD with the NVME caching.

[@dohadeer8242]

Me too. I loaded my new 1522+ with 5x12TB HDD, which really only yielded just on 39TB of actual usable space (under an SHR filestructure). I couldn't locate any suitable 16 or 20TB HDD here, seems to be a bit of a shortage atm so I'll upgrade to them over time as they become available again. For me SSD's aren't an option because their capacity, while better than it oonce was, is still far too tiny for my needs, the largest capacity option I can find is 4TB here. Based on that sort of capacity I'm only going to end up with 18TB.

[@jordanm2984]

Sounds like I should do it with SSDs.

[@Alex9000-Paris]

Hi Will. Thank you so much for all the videos you post on your channel, so helpfull, so well done! I use multiple Synology's in different places and I'm looking for a way to upgrade my all network : Would it be possible to publish an explanation oor overview on How to go from Microsoft active directory Server to Synology Directory Server. Thanks a lot - Alex, from Paris, France

[@andrebrait]

I use a pair of mirrored SSDs as a manual cache, a pair of mirrored SSDs for applications and VMs, and 5 HDDs in RAIDZ2 for long term storage The main advantages for me are no spin-up time, low power consumption, and leaving the HDDs to only be used when I actually need them to.

[@jesmonda]

Thank you for the great review and insights on the NAS products. I've been planing to upgrade from my current DS220+ to DS1522+, however I'm concerned that according to Synology compatibility lists, they no longer support any third-party 2.5 SATA SSD drives! Do you know if I can still use other SATA SSD brands with the DS1522+?

[@pk6016]

@jesmonda hey, were you able to find out if this is true?? this is a huge dealbreaker and i would have to return my DS1522+

[@MattKurkowski]

I have intel SSDs from 2010. Still working and their software says they still have 95+% life.

[@user-qk3ss4jz9u]

How to setup the NVMe ssd as a disk cache?

[@mrsietsch]

Hello, super cool video. Just one question. I have a DS923+ and installed 3 HDDs in SHR. Now i want to install 1 SSD in the 4th slot. The reason why I wanna do this ist to install the DSM just on this one SSD an use the 3 HDDs just for storage. Is it possible to install the DSM just on this one SSD? The reason for this is most of the time I don't use the NAS for Active working so the HDDs could go into supsend mode. But because the DSM is installed on the HDDs it nearly never happens.

[@adamwinn80]

DSM is installed on all drives across the RAID

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

What's your objective? You want to save power? Even in countries with expensive power the savings would be insignificant. Noise? That's valid. But the only way to really minimize noise is too get a purpose-built SSD-only nas. If you want to improve HDD life, that's definitely not what you want to do to achieve that - hdds prefer running 24/7 with no extra spin up / spin down cycles

[@vlads420]

you are waving SAMSUNG 870 EVO around Synology DS1522+ and that disk is not even on compatibility list for that NAS

[@davidnewall1571]

Upgrading Process? I have watched this channel a lot and learned a lot. I bought a DS923+, and set it up with 4 off 8TH hard drives. The setup went well with help from this channel. But I'm moving the unit into a small office, with good battery backup. however, the noise from the Mechanical drives is too much. So I'm definitely looking to invest $2000 AUD. to upgrade to 4 off 4TB Samsung EVO drives. the drop in capacity is no issue. I currently run SHR and have 21TB available, but I'm only up to 3.5 TB. So the approx 11-12TB I will end up with is plenty. my biggest Question is what's the best method to change over the drives. do I swap 1 at a time letting it rebuld 1 drive at a time, thus no setup again required. or do I do a Hyper backup to an external drive, and swap all at once, then try to restore? I have no Idea, there may be other ways? a reply with advice would be appreciated.

[@the_bogeyman.]

I have 4x16TB HDDs + 2x1TB nvme cache in a DS920+, SSD only would never work for me, I should get a NAS with way too many slots and 4-8TB SSDs, very expensive. I am used to my Ultrastar HDDs noise, it’s like music to me. DSM latest update broke my ”unofficial” nvme storage pool so I turned it into cache as they want to. I use 10+ TB Nvme+Sata SSDs only on PC.

[@james8449100]

No one has ever explained how the read right limit works compared with HDDs moving parts failing

[@Backjack31]

If I don’t have raid and JBOD spinning disks I.e bay 1: movies hdd bay 2: music 3: security camera and if I add a NVME to my 923+ I can’t work out with this video if it would help

[@minekey29348]

Does the speed really make a difference for those of us with typical home 1gbps wired networks? Wouldn't that be the bottleneck?

[@marc3793]

For large file copies, yeah possibly / probably. Although bear in mind a lot more people are starting to get WIFI 6, 6e or even 7, which changes that a bit. Also 2.5Gb NICs are becoming quite common, my latest Intel NUC (to my surprise) came with a 2.5Gb NIC instead of 1Gig. For random reads and writes or multiple users, probably not. Even the latest NVMe drives can have less than 100MB performance at low queue depths.

[@gbass7328]

My use case is just an Apple Time Capsule HDD to SSD replacement for future reliability. Your brand and type recommendation?