Question Home DIY NAS SSDs: quality vs. quantity

[bhelhokie]

I'm in a process of building a (budget) NAS by repurposing existing PC parts but I will be buying new 2.5" SSDs. SSDs, I cannot decide which directions to go (been pondering for the last few months as I watch SSD price steadily going down). I'm wondering if guys here can help me decide what to do.

Here is the debate point: Should I go with 4 decent 2TB SSDs (MX500/870 EVO class, ~$100, 5-yr warranty) or 6 cheap SSDs (~$60-70, 3-yr warranty) + an SAS HBA?

These 2 options gives me a similar budget point (~$400 with a low-end HBA). I'm considering to use RAIDZ2 for the 6 cheap drive config, which still gives me a bit more total storage (7.7 GB vs. 4-drive RAIDZ 5.6 GB). This NAS will only be used lightly (primarily document + music files / PC backups).

Any insights would be appreciated. tia.

P.S., one other question. When I build a NAS box about a decade ago with HDDs, I mixed make/models so none comes from a same lot to minimize simultaneous failure. Is this something I should be concerned about with SSDs?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Depends how much writing you would be doing.

None of the SSDs you mentioned are certified for NAS usage. I would be wary of 870 EVOs. Samsung's quality control has been iffy in the recent past.

You want peace of mind? Just try to go with Kingston DC500M (or DC500R if you won't do much writing).

But if I were you and wanted to save money, I might go with mixing Silicon Power and Teamgroup SSDs.

 

[Tech Junky]

I've pondered the SSD option as well but, I would be going for 8tb models. My sticking point is whether to settle for sata or go nvme. Sata of course is cheaper.

Anyway... I would push more for just doing 2*8tb and mirror them instead of dealing with complicating things.

Quality SSDs will last and from the info provided the writes will be limited after the initial copy of data to them. If you were doing a lot of transactional data daily spinners would be the better idea.

Going big now means less issues later to deal with when you decide to expand the array. Adding 2*8 again to make it raid 10 would be simple and still wouldn't need to add a hba.

 

[bhelhokie]

@igor_kavinski & @Tech Junky - Thanks for your replies!

Yeah, I want to keep the storage budget to around $400 total (sticking to consumer grades and crossing my fingers). I was indeed looking exclusively at Silicon Power and Teamgroup SSDs at first, then a concern of "cheap=unreliable" hit me and trying to figure out how to balance the two.

Meanwhile, KISS with a 2x8TB mirror is an option never occurred to me [checking the prices...] well, never mind, it's a bit above my budget lol. But, I'm going to give some thoughts for a 2x4TB config instead. Since 2TB seems to be the current $/GB sweet spot, I never really looked anything above and beyond.

I've been pretty much set on 2.5" SSDs because of the space constraint (I'm modding a case to be fit in a small hallway closet, and trying to keep the footprint small). I gather 2.5" HDDs are a bad idea, and having many 3.5" spinners would take up too much space. However, with a mirror setup, I can do a pair of 12TB 3.5" HDDs, which would fit comfortably in the space...

Little I knew posting here ends up more options to ponder about... lol

 

[Tech Junky]

pair of 12TB 3.5"

Or bump them to 2*18TB for $400 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSZL39NH

KISS works well. I started with a single 8TB drive and then got clever and started looking at bulking things up and dove into Raid. Using Linux for multi function setup but, mdadm works well for setting things up. There's some options to grow / expand down the road when needed. Since you're mirroring you just take 1 drive out of the config and make the new expanded array and then copy the data over and add the original drive + the new expansion drives and let them sync. MDADM has been running for years at this point w/o any issues. Drives look good for health and bumping to R10 gets me over 400MB/s.

 

[bhelhokie]

18TB refurbs... I'd be a bit wary of using refurbs for NAS though, especially for a 2-drive system. Are you actually using refurbs?

KISS works well.

At the same time, it's fun to explore/experiment with something exotic.

 

[Tech Junky]

exotic

Nothing exotic about a HDD or raid. Refurbs in terms of Amazon are usually just returns that people changed their mind on. Some just can't handle the noise if it's sitting right next to them and they have no ambient noise. Take the hefty discount and compare the new reviews to get a sense of things.

 

[bhelhokie]

Nothing exotic about a HDD or raid

Ok, maybe a wrong word. Something that I can geek out about beyond necessity. (I was referring to building RAIDz1/2 vs. mirror. The latter is my current NAS setup.)

Refurbs in terms of Amazon are usually just returns

The keyword highlighted. I don't consider myself particularly lucky individual lol. Meanwhile, having zero mfr. warranty bothers me though for something that runs 24/7 in a heat-trapping environment.

 

[Tech Junky]

keyword

Well, the perk is you have 90 days to hammer them for testing and be able to return them for another one if there's an issue. IME if a drive is a dud it's either DOA or fails quickly. The risk vs paying 2-3x the price for new makes up for it.

My current set of disks was an ebay purchase about 5 years ago now and whether they were new or not doesn't really matter because they work and don't have errors on them running 24/7.

If it makes you feel better to have new and long warranty then do the new option. If you're comfortable testing and keeping a backup drive on hand then go the renewed route or secondhand somewhere else if the price is better. In the end it's all personal preference and being comfortable with the end results. Besides that it's not a question of if but when a drive will fail. Paying more doesn't mean it will last longer.

 

[bhelhokie]

Paying more doesn't mean it will last longer.

There certainly is truth in this statement. Consumer-grade HDDs in my current home NAS sure is outlasting a couple of enterprise-grade HDDs that I put in at work. I tend to agree with your strategy for many other things. It's just a mental roadblock for perceived higher-stake items like this case. Then again, I'm also contemplating about using cheap SSDs...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Regarding refurbs, hammer them with some intense simultaneous read/write workload (defragging while also doing a virus scan is one). If the drive makes a lot of seeking noise, there's some accumulated wear and tear on it. Return it. Relatively healthy drives don't make a lot of noise.

 

[beginner99]

I'm in a process of building a (budget) NAS by repurposing existing PC parts but I will be buying new 2.5" SSDs. SSDs, I cannot decide which directions to go (been pondering for the last few months as I watch SSD price steadily going down). I'm wondering if guys here can help me decide what to do.

Here is the debate point: Should I go with 4 decent 2TB SSDs (MX500/870 EVO class, ~$100, 5-yr warranty) or 6 cheap SSDs (~$60-70, 3-yr warranty) + an SAS HBA?

As someone else said, I would embrace KISS. RAID is NOT backup. It's either speed (RAID 0 but mostly pointless nowadays) or availability (RAID 1, 5 or all the custom versions). In a home NAS, you need neither.

Given it sounds like you will focus more on small files, go with a drive with good IOPS / good 4k read/writes. Which is anotherway of saying avoid budget SSDs. They don't fare well in that area. Budget also matters. Depending on amount of files I would go with a 2- 4 TB non-cheapish ssd (kingston KC3000 maybe?) and then a harddisk. A PC backup, I assume some form of disk image doesn't need ssd storage. totally fine on a hdd and you get a lot more space for much less money.

 

[beginner99]

Regarding refurbs, hammer them with some intense simultaneous read/write workload (defragging while also doing a virus scan is one). If the drive makes a lot of seeking noise, there's some accumulated wear and tear on it. Return it. Relatively healthy drives don't make a lot of noise.

If a hard drive survies the first couple months (consumer use) then it will probably last for years. In my experience they either fail quickly or not at all. I had a bunch of cheapo 2 TB WD green hdds. one of them was my "downloads drive". latest 10 years easily, then I had a feeling it's starting to have issues and wanted to go all ssds on my PC anyway.

But yeah also used enterpise ssds might be an option. can be dirt cheap.

 

[manly]

There certainly is truth in this statement. Consumer-grade HDDs in my current home NAS sure is outlasting a couple of enterprise-grade HDDs that I put in at work. I tend to agree with your strategy for many other things. It's just a mental roadblock for perceived higher-stake items like this case. Then again, I'm also contemplating about using cheap SSDs...

I think consumer SSDs will be fine for home duty; just choose carefully since there aren't a lot of SATA options remaining compared to NVMe. Assuming sufficient onboard SATA ports, skip the HBA.

I wouldn't object to the 870 EVO, but the current price seems too high relatively. Even Crucial MX500 is pushing it considering you want to buy at least 4 drives.
Although it probably won't affect you except for initial bulk data ingestion, Team Group SATA SSDs seem to have horrendous SLC cache implementation.

 

[Shmee]

Hello, what OS are you going to use on this NAS? TrueNAS, or something else? Remember that though you are talking about data volumes, you will want to have at least one SSD for the boot volume.

Depending on the motherboard you have, I would skip the HBA. So long as you have 6 or more SATA 3 ports, there is no need for a separate card until those ports are filled IMO.

As far as SSD type, I would go with consumer SSDs for this, no issue, just be careful and have multiple backups. I would recommend something like the MX500 or 870 Evo, (I have 4 2TB MX500 drives in my TrueNAS) or even something like the Micron 1100 or WD Blue 3D. I would recommend 5 year warranties, and staying away from QLC.

I personally would try not to mix models for simplicity sake, but if you want to or need to, I wouldn't worry about, as long as they are similar enough.

 

[bhelhokie]

Thank you for additional inputs!

either speed (RAID 0 but mostly pointless nowadays) or availability (RAID 1, 5 or all the custom versions). In a home NAS, you need neither.

It's not so much of the need, more of the want to check out RAID. Also, another reason I'm considering a RAID(z) is economy. A 4x2TB RAIDz gives me more storage than 2 2x2TB mirrors. So long as I have backups, I figure it won't be detrimental.

there aren't a lot of SATA options remaining compared to NVMe

This is a good point. Yeah, SATA is clearly on its way out from the consumer market. This may work against my long-term plan to gradually swap out for 4TB's in the future at a discounted price.

Hello, what OS are you going to use on this NAS? TrueNAS, or something else?

TrueNAS Scale is the current plan. I used/managed FreeNAS about a decade ago for work and amazed how much has changed since.

So long as you have 6 or more SATA 3 ports, there is no need for a separate card until those ports are filled IMO.

Right. I'm repurposing H87 mini-ITX board with only 4 SATA3 ports & an mSATA slot. I will put the OS on the mSATA drive. But, if I go with a >4 drive system, I need a HBA (the mobo has a x4 PCIe3 slot). But, your recommendation (along with manly's warning on TeamGroups' SSDs) makes me leaning towards a 4-disk system.

I would recommend ...

Thanks for the list. I think it was your earlier posts on your MX500s, which steered me to consider above the bottom SSDs.

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, that H87 isn't too bad, one benefit you do get is not needing a video card. Only drawback I can see besides lack of additional SATA ports is maybe the RAM limitation, depending on how much DDR3 it has or can take. I mention this as TrueNAS and ZFS really like extra RAM, though this may not be as important if you have an all SSD system.

As for running a volume of 2 mirrors (RAID 1+0 equivalent basically?) vs a 4 drive RAIDZ1, I don't have a good answer for that really. I have heard, I think, that the Z1 level prefers an odd number of drives, but I am not sure what reason that is really, and if it still applies to SSDs. Perhaps someone else can chime in about that.

One more suggestion I have is to check out our for sale section, if/when you have the needed post count to access it. There is at least one person there with some good deals on bulk SATA SSDs. Keep in mind the rules to participate there of course.

 

[Tech Junky]

RAM limitation

This isn't an issue if you don't use weird os/raid implementations. My system has 16gb in it for redundancy since it typically uses less than 25%. If you skip the parity bits and keep things simple you don't waste money on things just to experiment and complicate things.

SATA

It's not going anywhere. There's a new push though to put nvme protocols onto spinners though to make things simpler to scale different media types into a single management protocol. It will take years before this comes to market with decent penetration though. I would put it out 5+ years at this point before seeing consumer gear. HDDs last longer than that. SSDs last as long or longer.

The main issue is going to be build it today with enough capacity to last awhile. You'd be surprised at how fast you can chew through 8tb of space once it's there to be consumed.

 

[bhelhokie]

H87 isn't too bad, one benefit you do get is not needing a video card. Only drawback I can see besides lack of additional SATA ports is maybe the RAM limitation,

Yeah, I have maxed out RAM (16GB) so hopefully that's a plenty for our sparse use.

a volume of 2 mirrors (RAID 1+0 equivalent basically?)

I believe 1+0 is what Tech Junky was suggesting above, but I am considering 2 mirrored vdevs, each with 2 drives, and a zpool with these 2 vdevs to act as one big virtual storage... That is, if I'm comprehending the TrueNAS manual correctly.

Even if I'm correct, this setup is more complicated and moving away from KISS, so at this point raidz perhaps makes more sense...

Z1 level prefers an odd number of drives

Interesting. I did search and found an old TrueNAS forum thread on this topic. If I understood correctly, the zfs write block size is not integer divisible by modern HDD's 4k sector size. The SSDs are free of sectors, so perhaps it won't be as big of a factor. I am, too, curious to hear from someone in the know.

if/when you have the needed post count to access it.

Would love to get an access, but it'll take a while longer as I typically don't have much to contribute. I'm a long time lurker though.

 

[Tech Junky]

1+0

It's basically mirror + stripe in pairs of disks. You get the speed form the stripe and a backup through the mirror. Add a pair to expand.

I setup mine with 8tb drives and get 400MB/s wout of them and added a 5th drive to the array as a hot standby. Adding a 6th would bump the storage to 24tb and 600MB/s for speed.

Different raid types offer different speeds or storage configurations. Some will give you more space with a parity drive but will be single disk speed. Others will give you multiple disks speeds but no parity or shadow copy. No shadow copy means you lose everything if a single drive fails.

In the case of running a raid 0 for speed you would need a drive to backup to that is big enough to cover the array size. So if you did 8*2 you would want a 16tb to backup to. You would get the 400 speed from the array but only 200 from the 16tb. If you went raid 5 you'd get 200 for speed and 16 for size because one drive gets consumed for parity and rebuild.

 

[bhelhokie]

If you skip the parity bits and keep things simple you don't waste money on things just to experiment and complicate things.

I'd be 100% with you if it's a job related, but essentially this build is 99% hobby (NAS is not a hard requirement in my household). So, I'd argue this project as a whole is more or less my attempt to waste money.

I just need to make sure I won't lose my files in the process of having fun.

It will take years before this comes to market with decent penetration though. I would put it out 5+ years at this point before seeing consumer gear. HDDs last longer than that. SSDs last as long or longer.

I suspect both HDD and SATA/SAS SSD will live long in the enterprise sector, and I can foresee consumer 3.5" HDDs for NAS will stick around as well. It will be curious to see how 2.5" SSD's will fare, though. As more and more NVMe's hitting the market, it sure seems 2.5" SSDs days are limited. I cannot think of a device type which 2.5" SSDs excel in, well except for home NAS. But I suspect majority goes for capacity (3.5 HDDs) and NVMe for those pursuing speed... I hope I'm wrong here, and the form factor to stick around for another decade for my upgrade purpose lol

The main issue is going to be build it today with enough capacity to last awhile. You'd be surprised at how fast you can chew through 8tb of space once it's there to be consumed.

Considering my current system (2x3TB mirrored lasted 7+ years to fill up) my wife and I'm fairly certain additional 2-3 TB will serve us as much time. A chance for one of us to pick up the pace is rather slim, and if it happens, then I will then budget for a serious upgrade

 

[Tech Junky]

2.5" SSD's

Other than a NAS they were primarily for laptops until M2 format for adopted and OEM stopped leaving the room open for them.

If the mobo has M2 slots you could just bypass the HDD option and get some 4tb drives and mirror them. Even if it doesn't there are cheap pcie adapters you can get for more drives that way as well. Just depends on speed vs budget vs capacity. There are SATA and nvme options on that format.

If you have an AMD setup you have bifurcation options where you can get a 4 slot card for $100 and slap them into that.

Plenty of ways to get the same results.

 

[aigomorla]

I would not use SSD's for a NAS unless it was a brand new SSD and one that is enterprise grade at that.
That means like a Samsung PM1653, or a Toshiba Kioxia, or even Intel with 3dxpoint.

The only way id use a SSD for NAS is probably for a Cache.
But even then, unless your doing a lot of writes a cache drive is secondary to having more Ram.

Reason is NAS unless its for archival purpose do a lot of writes.
SSD's do not like writes... they love read's but you have a finite amount of writes.

Also having a FAST I/O doesn't mean much without a FAST ethernet to back it up.
So unless your running a 10gbe infrastructure, having fast I/O wont net benefit you.

In short, id rather have 8 SATA Spinners in like Raid 10 / Raid-Z2, more then 4 SSD's in Raid-Z, as you probably wont even notice the speed difference over a 2.5gbe network even.

Now if you have a 10gbe backbone, or greater, then we can talk about Raid with nVME's on NAS's.

Also for a NAS, Redundancy + More Redundancy + even more Redundancy is greater important then raw speed.
So having 8 drives in RAID 10, where your more then one drive to fail, unless its on the same array before the trumpets of heaven start playing to signal the end of the world for you, is a good insurance.

 

[bhelhokie]

Reason is NAS unless its for archival purpose do a lot of writes.

It is indeed more or less for archival purpose for me.

SSD's do not like writes... they love read's but you have a finite amount of writes.

This begs a question. Is this a relevant limitation for a home NAS? An SSD must be an adequately fast writer if it could be used in PCs, and definitely faster than a spinner, individually speaking. It's hard for me to see SSD's write speed being a detriment for a 2-user/5-PC house. No?

Also having a FAST I/O doesn't mean much without a FAST ethernet to back it up.

Right. We're using an arcane wifi, so I'm not looking to take advantage of I/O speed at all. My constraints are more on size & heat for my unique situation (replacing a 2-disk synology box in a tight space). As far as I know there aren't 2.5" HDDs that are suited for NAS, or am I wrong here?

Also for a NAS, Redundancy + More Redundancy + even more Redundancy is greater important then raw speed.

With you and Junky preaching on this and reading up more on the risk of raidz1, I'm now leaning towards a zpool of 2 mirrored 2-disk vdevs (4 2TB disks for 4 TB of storage space) and eat the mirroring capacity tax for better reliability. Also, it occurred to me that it's more cost effective future-proofing: buying only 2 disks to up the capacity compared to needing all 4 replaced for a raidz setup.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Maybe all you need is https://www.snapraid.it ?