SSD Prices seem to be competitive with HDD for higher capacities, NAS options?

[japers]

Ive noticed that 2tb SSDs from crucial or even samsung are around the $120 mark in the UK which is a pretty recent drop i think.

Backblaze recently released some data around drive longevity that showed their SSDs needed replacing 50% less frequently than HDDs.

I imagine they are using datacenter spec drives too which are usually rated for longer service life than a normal desktop drive.

 

It seems viable that I could build a 16TB SSD DIY NAS for the same price you could buy a 16TB Synology at this pricepoint and the drives would be more reliable, have lower power consumption, be quieter and also way faster. Given a NAS isnt likely to be constantly read or written to, the longevity should be pretty high.

 

Aside from buying an 8 bay RAID enclosure, are there any other options for a DIY SSD NAS on the table? I have an old NUC ive been looking for a use for. Anything i can do with that and some drive docks perhaps?

 

EDIT: People seem to be focussing on the price of High capacity HDD vs SSD, Yes that make sense if youre going for a massive amount of raw capacity. But if you want the speed and don't need a a massive amount of storage then the SSDs in a DIY solution are clearly competitive with a synology of the same capacity. My use case is based on multiple devices pulling the same files across the network and the HDD is often the bottleneck when pulling several gigabytes of files.

[BondiBlue]

I really wouldn't consider a 2TB drive to be "high capacity" these days, and the prices for SSDs are still nowhere near the prices for high capacity mechanical hard drives. A while back I bought three 12TB 3.5" SATA hard drives from eBay (yes, they're used, but they're all low hours, and one was basically brand new) for $130 USD each. That gives me 36TB of raw storage space for only $390 USD. If I put those three drives in a RAID 5 array I'd have 24TB of fast, usable space for less than the cost of a single 8TB Samsung SSD (an amount I'd consider to actually be "high capacity"). 

 

For example, here's my current setup with the three 12TB drives I mentioned above: 

• 3x 12TB 3.5" SATA hard drives ($130 USD/each)
• Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q ($100 USD)
• TerraMaster 4-bay USB-C drive enclosure ($135 USD)

For roughly $630 USD I've got a 24TB array (36TB raw) that's plenty fast enough for a gigabit network, and I didn't pay a bunch of money for a Synology NAS. This is only $100 more than a single 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD, and that's just a bare drive. The power consumption of a 3.5" hard drive at idle isn't very high, and the computer I'm using these drives with has a low power CPU installed. It's not as quiet as a fully solid state setup, but it's not loud either, and at idle it can't be heard from more than a couple meters away. 

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, japers said:

Ive noticed that 2tb SSDs from crucial or even samsung are around the $120 mark in the UK which is a pretty recent drop i think.

Backblaze recently released some data around drive longevity that showed their SSDs needed replacing 50% less frequently than HDDs.

I imagine they are using datacenter spec drives too which are usually rated for longer service life than a normal desktop drive.

 

It seems viable that you could build a 16TB SSD NAS for the same price you could buy a 16TB Synology at this pricepoint and the drives would be more reliable, have lower power consumption, be quieter and also way faster. Given a NAS isnt likely to be constantly read or written to, the longevity should be pretty high.

 

Aside from buying an 8 bay RAID enclosure, are there any other options for a DIY SSD NAS on the table? I have an old NUC ive been looking for a use for. Anything i can do with that?

From what I can find, 2tb harddrives are about a third or less of the cost of a 2tb ssd in the UK, so comparing a 16tb NAS based on SSD to a 16tb NAS based on hard drives should have the hdd option being much cheaper.

[Lurking]

You also need less cooling and power. And will have more speed, obviously. And no noise. Even if they cost more, SSD will be nice. 

 

A lot of life depends on cooling, so in a given case and fan, the SSD should be much cooler. You also have good overview of the remaining life based on wear. I know, it can fail with 99% life left...   but assuming you are a private person and don't run AWS on the side, they likely last longer than you need them to. 

 

Just spec and price out what you need. No one ever regretted getting faster drives. 

 

 

[BondiBlue]

11 minutes ago, Lurking said:

You also have good overview of the remaining life based on wear.

Mechanical hard drives often give indications of possible failures before they're completely dead, so that's definitely an advantage they have. The cost alone of an SSD-based NAS just doesn't make much sense for most people, and if you're wanting to take advantage of the speed then that's yet more hardware you'll need to buy. 

[Lurking]

1 minute ago, BondiBlue said:

Mechanical hard drives often give indications of possible failures before they're completely dead, so that's definitely an advantage they have. The cost alone of an SSD-based NAS just doesn't make much sense for most people, and if you're wanting to take advantage of the speed then that's yet more hardware you'll need to buy. 

You mean noise before failure? What if the NAS is tucked away where they don't hear it? They also have controllers that can fail. Ultimately any drive can fail, even the best and most expensive drive can fail on the first day. Backup. 

 

Prices are what they are, no argument there. OP has to weigh if the added small upcharge is worth the speed/noise/power/thermal advantage. 

[BondiBlue]

10 minutes ago, Lurking said:

You mean noise before failure? What if the NAS is tucked away where they don't hear it? They also have controllers that can fail. Ultimately any drive can fail, even the best and most expensive drive can fail on the first day. Backup. 

Absolutely, any drive can fail, and any important data should be stored in more than one place. Hard drives can give other indications of failure though, not just noises. 

 

11 minutes ago, Lurking said:

Prices are what they are, no argument there. OP has to weigh if the added small upcharge is worth the speed/noise/power/thermal advantage. 

I completely disagree about the price difference being small. On Amazon right now a single 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD is nearly $100 more expensive than a 22TB WD Red Pro 3.5" hard drive. If you're buying multiple drives for redundancy you can get a lot more storage for a lot less money, and with multiple drives you're going to be limited by network speeds anyway (unless you're running 10GbE). Personally I'd gladly take the slight increase in power consumption in exchange for more storage space. 

[NobleGamer]

44 minutes ago, Lurking said:

You also need less cooling and power. And will have more speed, obviously. And no noise.

Less power, yes. Does it outweigh power costs? Doubtful unless high runtime per day, in a country with stupid high power rates, and maybe considering entire lifetime of drive - But that's a lot of ifs.

 

Less cooling, I mostly disagree, with the exception of if an HDDs placement blocks substancial airflow in a case.

 

I have seen pcie 3 SSDs with a basic heat sink exceed 60C or sometimes more with sustained reads/writes, and pcie 4 SSDs get even hotter especially without specialized heat sinks.

 

Do HDDs get that hot, all else constant? I sure haven't seen that in all my years with HDDs. Remember, NVME SSDs have WAY less surface area than standard size HDDs, and even SATA SSDs are considerably smaller. So even if power savings of lets say NVME is best case 10x smaller than HDD, that isn't enough to counteract the more than 10x smaller surface area.

 

Therefore there will be more power (and heat) by surface area.

 

I care only because I don't want OP to be misled.

[Lurking]

3 minutes ago, NobleGamer said:

Less power, yes. Does it outweigh power costs? Doubtful unless high runtime per day, in a country with stupid high power rates, and maybe considering entire lifetime of drive - But that's a lot of ifs.

 

Less cooling, I mostly disagree, with the exception of if an HDDs placement blocks substancial airflow in a case.

 

I have seen pcie 3 SSDs with a basic heat sink exceed 60C or sometimes more with sustained reads/writes, and pcie 4 SSDs get even hotter especially without specialized heat sinks.

 

Do HDDs get that hot, all else constant? I sure haven't seen that in all my years with HDDs. Remember, NVME SSDs have WAY less surface area than standard size HDDs, and even SATA SSDs are considerably smaller. So even if power savings of lets say NVME is best case 10x smaller than HDD, that isn't enough to counteract the more than 10x smaller surface area.

 

Therefore there will be more power (and heat) by surface area.

 

I care only because I don't want OP to be misled.

I stand corrected on the cooling since with lots of use, you need the heatsinks. But if the NAS really only stores data, most the time, and then at some point OP watches a movie, and then backs up a 6MB picture, that really would not heat up. Really depends on the use. Obviously the case will be nicely empty for good airflow. 

[BondiBlue]

2 minutes ago, Lurking said:

I stand corrected on the cooling since with lots of use, you need the heatsinks. But if the NAS really only stores data, most the time, and then at some point OP watches a movie, and then backs up a 6MB picture, that really would not heat up. Really depends on the use. Obviously the case will be nicely empty for good airflow. 

Idle hard drives don't need much cooling either. I've currently got five different hard drives in two different machines (both being used for NAS purposes, one of them will soon be retired), and none of the drives have any sort of airflow over them at all. Two of the drives are stacked on top of each other in the older machine, and one of the drives in the second machine is basically mounted inside a box inside the case. Every one of these drives has been running 24/7, and even with active use not a single one is any higher than the upper 30° range. So unless you've got a lot of high performance drives stuffed right next to each other they'll be fine. 

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Lurking said:

You mean noise before failure? What if the NAS is tucked away where they don't hear it? They also have controllers that can fail. Ultimately any drive can fail, even the best and most expensive drive can fail on the first day. Backup. 

 

Prices are what they are, no argument there. OP has to weigh if the added small upcharge is worth the speed/noise/power/thermal advantage. 

The failure is why smart data exists. It gives you insight into drive health.

 

As for the cost, going ssd vs hdd is easily 3x for similar capacity. It would take many years of power saving to make up the difference. In my opinion,full ssd nas are for companies that need the iops. The vast majority of home users would be fine on hdd, or hdd with ssd cache.

[japers]

On 3/14/2023 at 10:41 PM, Blue4130 said:

From what I can find, 2tb harddrives are about a third or less of the cost of a 2tb ssd in the UK, so comparing a 16tb NAS based on SSD to a 16tb NAS based on hard drives should have the hdd option being much cheaper.

A 16TB Synology is about 800GBP. I can buy the same SSD storage capacity for the same price.

 

 

[japers]

On 3/15/2023 at 3:12 AM, BondiBlue said:

Absolutely, any drive can fail, and any important data should be stored in more than one place. Hard drives can give other indications of failure though, not just noises. 

 

I completely disagree about the price difference being small. On Amazon right now a single 8TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD is nearly $100 more expensive than a 22TB WD Red Pro 3.5" hard drive. If you're buying multiple drives for redundancy you can get a lot more storage for a lot less money, and with multiple drives you're going to be limited by network speeds anyway (unless you're running 10GbE). Personally I'd gladly take the slight increase in power consumption in exchange for more storage space. 

On UK Amazon the 8TB 870 QVO is over 200GBP less than the 22TB drive you mentioned so clearly theres some discrepancy on pricing in different territories. Yes cost Per GB is still higher but it depends entirely on your needs.

[Blue4130]

24 minutes ago, japers said:

A 16TB Synology is about 800GBP. I can buy the same SSD storage capacity for the same price.

 

 

Unless you are comparing a 16tb ssd synology it's not a fair comparrison. You can't get a 16tb ssd based synology for 800 GBP . Build two systems using the same components other than the drives, which one is cheaper? Hint, it isn't the SSD based system.

[japers]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

Unless you are comparing a 16tb ssd synology it's not a fair comparrison. You can't get a 16tb ssd based synology for 800 GBP . Build two systems using the same components other than the drives, which one is cheaper? Hint, it isn't the SSD based system.

How isnt it a fair comparison? Im comparing a potential DIY NAS solution with the same storage capacity but in SSD, with an off the shelf NAS with the same storage capacity but in HDD...

 

Thats what this whole thread is about. So in this case the DIY SSD NAS would be MASSIVELY cheaper than a 16TB synology NAS WITH SSDs (which afaik doesnt even exist). So i dont see what youre getting at. At All. 

 

My specific use case for faster NAS storage is that im a professional 3D Artist and have several terabytes of assets like textures and model files that i use. Every time i hit the render button, those assets get pulled into memory on either my desktop, or on my render farm.

 

Pulling lots of files from a HDD is noticeably slower in the rendering process than an SSD and ideally i want them all saved on a network device rather than the render farm needing to pull directly from my Workstation SSD over the network.

 

So in my specific use case, SSDs not only are worth the slight price increase over comparable drive size, but they have a noticeable performance impact.

 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, japers said:

How isnt it a fair comparison? Im comparing a potential DIY NAS solution with the same storage capacity but in SSD, with an off the shelf NAS with the same storage capacity but in HDD...

 

Thats what this whole thread is about. So in this case the DIY SSD NAS would be MASSIVELY cheaper than a 16TB synology NAS WITH SSDs (which afaik doesnt even exist). So i dont see what youre getting at. At All. 

 

My specific use case for faster NAS storage is that im a professional 3D Artist and have several terabytes of assets like textures and model files that i use. Every time i hit the render button, those assets get pulled into memory on either my desktop, or on my render farm.

 

Pulling lots of files from a HDD is noticeably slower in the rendering process than an SSD and ideally i want them all saved on a network device rather than the render farm needing to pull directly from my Workstation SSD over the network.

 

So in my specific use case, SSDs not only are worth the slight price increase over comparable drive size, but they have a noticeable performance impact.

 

Why go with a synology system for the hard drives? Why not a DIY for the hard drives? It would be MUCH cheaper than an ssd system. That is my only point. You say that ssd is cheaper than hdd, but that is not the case. DIY is cheaper than synology. That is what you mean.

[Lurking]

I think one should compare DIY-SSD to DIY HDD solution and prebuilt-SSD to prebuilt-HDD solution.

 

Regardless of what is more expensive (and it may be the SSD option) if you actually use that storage (professionally, or as a pro-summer, or in any other way), the upcharge of SSD definitely should be worth it. We all recall years ago when SSD became obtainable and we got 64/128GB SSD for the OS. No one argued or talked about the SSD being $100 more expensive. But everyone talked about what a speed daemon that old PC all of sudden was. If that speed is worth the cost, the OP has to decide (and it looks like they did)

 

No one ever regretted getting faster hardware. No one ever got an SSD over an HDD and later said "I wish so much I could go back to HDD and get my $100 back". 

 

if you have old HDD, use them. If you buy new, buy the good stuff. Cry once. IMHO. Really your choice and there is no right or wrong. 

[japers]

12 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Why go with a synology system for the hard drives? Why not a DIY for the hard drives? It would be MUCH cheaper than an ssd system. That is my only point. You say that ssd is cheaper than hdd, but that is not the case. DIY is cheaper than synology. That is what you mean.

Because like I said, I want the read speed. It's not about having an data hoarder level of capacity for me. I just need faster network storage for frequently used assets and Im looking for options as to how to achieve a DIY SSD based NAS but this has turned into a debate about why HDDs are a better choice  because theyre cheaper but cheaper doesn't help me when read speeds are still HDD level.

[japers]

11 hours ago, Lurking said:

I think one should compare DIY-SSD to DIY HDD solution and prebuilt-SSD to prebuilt-HDD solution.

 

Regardless of what is more expensive (and it may be the SSD option) if you actually use that storage (professionally, or as a pro-summer, or in any other way), the upcharge of SSD definitely should be worth it. We all recall years ago when SSD became obtainable and we got 64/128GB SSD for the OS. No one argued or talked about the SSD being $100 more expensive. But everyone talked about what a speed daemon that old PC all of sudden was. If that speed is worth the cost, the OP has to decide (and it looks like they did)

 

No one ever regretted getting faster hardware. No one ever got an SSD over an HDD and later said "I wish so much I could go back to HDD and get my $100 back". 

 

if you have old HDD, use them. If you buy new, buy the good stuff. Cry once. IMHO. Really your choice and there is no right or wrong. 

This thread wasn't really ever supposed to be a discussion of what's better in terms of pricing. My mentioning if the price in my initial post was to point out that the price itself wasn't insanely different and so the SSD route seemed viable.

 

I was actually looking for recommendations on ways to build a DIY NAS possibly off of the back of the i7 Nuc I have laying around if anyone has ever seen anything like that online.

[BondiBlue]

47 minutes ago, japers said:

My mentioning if the price in my initial post was to point out that the price itself wasn't insanely different

This is what I'm still confused about. The price per TB is dramatically higher with SSDs. If you're after speed then are you going to be using 10GbE cards? If you're only using a gigabit connection then that's the bottleneck. A single mechanical drive can saturate that speed. 

[Blue4130]

54 minutes ago, japers said:

This thread wasn't really ever supposed to be a discussion of what's better in terms of pricing. My mentioning if the price in my initial post was to point out that the price itself wasn't insanely different and so the SSD route seemed viable.

 

I was actually looking for recommendations on ways to build a DIY NAS possibly off of the back of the i7 Nuc I have laying around if anyone has ever seen anything like that online.

But the price is insanely different. About 3x or so. Maybe not insane, but substantial.

[japers]

12 hours ago, BondiBlue said:

This is what I'm still confused about. The price per TB is dramatically higher with SSDs. If you're after speed then are you going to be using 10GbE cards? If you're only using a gigabit connection then that's the bottleneck. A single mechanical drive can saturate that speed. 

Price per TB is irrelevant if youre not worried about capacity. Measure value for IOPS and the SSD is the clear value player when you need speed over capacity.

Again, i was NEVER here to debate HDD or SSD, i am looking for methods of building a DIY NAS.

[japers]

12 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

But the price is insanely different. About 3x or so. Maybe not insane, but substantial.

Given SSDs have been shown to be more reliable than datacenter grade HDDs and are substantially faster to read and write, for my use case they make sense. Yes they are in many cases around 2x the price of say an ironwolf pro for the same capacity but you get more than 2x the speed and potentially 2x the reliability.

Again, not really here to debate what drives to use. I know what i want to use im just looking for any recommendations on how to go about making a DIY NAS potentially with the NUC.

 

[BondiBlue]

2 hours ago, japers said:

I know what i want to use im just looking for any recommendations on how to go about making a DIY NAS potentially with the NUC.

What specific NUC do you have? If you want to take advantage of the faster drives you'll have to be able to add a 10 gigabit ethernet connection. 

[andrebrait]

Kinda necro-ing this topic, but I think it's still pretty relevant.

 

Here are some drive capacities, rated TBW of data and warranty I've found:

 

* 2TB Patriot P210 - 3yr warranty - 960TBW - €72

* 2TB Patriot P220 - 3ys warranty - 960TBW - €90

* 2TB Silicon Power A55 - 1000TBW - €70

* 2TB PNY CS900 - 3yr warranty - 540TBW (0.25DWPD) - €88

* 2TB Crucial BX500 - 5yr warranty - 700TBW (0.19DWPD) - €93

* 2TB Samsung 870 QVO - 3yr warranty - 720TBW - €90

 

SSD prices don't really scale very well, so 4TB ends up being pricier per TB, and so does 8TB, but not by that much. They're basically 2x and 4x the price of a 2TB.

 

And there are now also NVMe drives that are cheaper per TB than those SSDs.

 

On the enterprise/NAS sector, we have:

 

* WD700 Red 2TB - 5yr warranty - 1.3PBW - €114,32 (sale, 20% discount on 2 units)

* Seagate IronWolf 2TB - 5yr warranty - 2.8PBW - €190

 

In terms of reliability, I've very rarely seen an SSD break. There are concerns around data retention in flash memory and whatnot, but with a good enough FS, it should be ok.

 

NAS HDDs aren't worth it below the 4TB mark, and they're about €85 there. So it's about 2x cheaper per TB compared to consumer grade SSDs.

 

However, if the SSDs continue on this trend price trend, soon it won't be worth using HDDs if you trust data to actually be retained by the Flash memory.