What PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD should I get for the Asustor AS6704T?

[LostStonerBoy]

My NAS quit on me recently so I'm going to get a new one and I've settled on getting the Asustor AS6704T which has 4 HDD slots, as well as 4 PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD slots which can be used for either storage or caching.

 

I've recently been reading how using an SSD for caching can significantly speed up file transfers. I figured this out because with windows 10 you get the speed graph when you transfer files, and they start off really fast for me at like over 100Mbps, but then at about a quarter to half way through the slow down to anywhere from 30-80Mbps because the HDD's cash has maxed out.

If you use an SSD for a supplimentory cash for the drive and it's bigger than the file(s) your transferring then it will stay at that 100Mbps or so speed, if not faster.

 

However I am wondering if using the M.2 drives in this fashion won't make them wear out even faster than if they were just being used for everyday normal operations such as running an OS or for general storage.

 

I read someone on this forum on someone else post where people said that the TBW rating of an M.2 SSD is really something to go by as many can go far beyond that, and that even if I did surpass it and the drive failed as long as it was still within warranty it could be replaced. However I'd really like to get something that is gonna last me for hopefully beyond the 5 year warranty.

 

Also I would prefer not to spend too much money on them, because I'm already going to be spending a lot on the NAS itself as is, along with 4 new HDD's & these 4 M.2 drives

 

So what do you think would be the best PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD for what I wanna do?

 

Thanks for your suggestions!

[Bombastinator]

For a nas?  the best cost per gb one that has cache.  You don’t need speed.  At all.  Reliability has some value though.  A lot of stuff on a NAS doesn’t get written to again though.  It’s usually a storage area.  Use case matters though.

[tdkid]

from what i understand of SSDs (not much) they have what is called SSD endurance or how long the SSD can last when you add and remove data. if you are just using it for storage then you shouldnt have a problem with it lasting much longer than they say it should. 

 

and currently there is a tier list with the Mvme (m.2), STATA and external storage devices but the list is from Nov. 2022 and some of the products are not even made anymore. personally i have a samsung 870 evo 500gb m.2 for my OS storage and looking for a SSD too.

[Bombastinator]

7 hours ago, tdkid said:

from what i understand of SSDs (not much) they have what is called SSD endurance or how long the SSD can last when you add and remove data. if you are just using it for storage then you shouldnt have a problem with it lasting much longer than they say it should. 

 

and currently there is a tier list with the Mvme (m.2), STATA and external storage devices but the list is from Nov. 2022 and some of the products are not even made anymore. personally i have a samsung 870 evo 500gb m.2 for my OS storage and looking for a SSD too.

SSDs wear by number of writes.  HDDs wear by number of revolutions of the platter.  How the NAS gets used can mean endurance can matter a lot, or almost not at all.  Speed doesn’t matter much because the connection is a bigger bottle neck than the speed of the drive.

Edited June 8, 2023 by Bombastinator

[LostStonerBoy]

13 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

For a nas?  the best cost per gb one that has cache.  You don’t need speed.  At all.  Reliability has some value though.  A lot of stuff on a NAS doesn’t get written to again though.  It’s usually a storage area.  Use case matters though.

Out of curiosity did you look up the NAS I mentioned that I'm going to get?

 

It has the option to use the SSD's as more storage space, or to use them as read, write, or read & write caching.

 

I'm going to have it setup in a raid 10 configuration, and I don't plan to just use it as storage, it's also going to have plex on it and I like to watch the stuff I download with subtitles in case someone says something that I can't understand I can just look at the subtitles and see what it was, rather than trying to replay the same section of audio over and over. Plex doesn't allow hardware accelerated transcoding unless you buy a plex pass which I'd rather avoid doing. Then it is also going to basically be a file server, I'm tired of having all of my files scattered all over between my NAS (which I don't have anymore) my laptop, my desktop, & my cell phone. I wanna have all of them on the NAS and when I need to access them I can go to the NAS and open it do what I need to do and save any changes back to the file on the NAS that way I don't have a file that has newer information on one device and when I go to use another device that new information isn't there because it's saved on the other. It will be one file in one place that is constantly updated with the latest information and is accessible on any of my devices from anywhere.

 

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

SSDs wear by number of writes.  HDDs wear by number of revolutions of the platter.  How the NAS gets used can mean endurance can matter a lot, or almost not at all.  Speed doesn’t matter much because the connection is a bigger bottle neck than the speed of the drive.

This has comes with 2x2.5GBE RJ25 ports for link aggregation, or the option of buying an extra piece that gets plugged inside that adds a 10GBE RJ25 port. So connection speed is not going to be an issue. Which is also part of the reason I'm going with raid 10 so that it will use two drives instead of one that are striped to get her to speed up data access. But I still want to take advantage of the read write cashing so that when I go to open a file bam it's open, same for when I go to save, bam it's saved and done. Also if I decide to copy a movie to my laptop cause I know I'm going somewhere that I'm not going to have a good enough or no connection at all to wifi to stream it, I don't wanna have to sit and wait forever once the HDD cache is full and it drops from 100Mbps to 30-80Mbps transfer speeds.

 

I would honestly really appreciate it if you would be constructive with your responses and answer my question by providing an option about what I asked, instead of only replying to tell me I don't need to or shouldn't do this because you think it's unnecessary.

[LostStonerBoy]

11 hours ago, tdkid said:

from what i understand of SSDs (not much) they have what is called SSD endurance or how long the SSD can last when you add and remove data. if you are just using it for storage then you shouldnt have a problem with it lasting much longer than they say it should. 

 

and currently there is a tier list with the Mvme (m.2), STATA and external storage devices but the list is from Nov. 2022 and some of the products are not even made anymore. personally i have a samsung 870 evo 500gb m.2 for my OS storage and looking for a SSD too.

I see were in the same boat, however I'm curious as to where you found the one last updated in 2022, as the only one I've seen was from August 2019?

 

Also yes there are two different types of endurance for SSD's, the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) & Terrabytes Written (TBW). However as I said I was reading here in this forum somewhere where it was being discussed that the TBW isn't the best way to gauge an SSD's longevity, as many of the drives tend to far surpass that number well into the petabytes written level. However I'm not sure what the consensus is on MTBF.

 

Maybe someone else does?

[Bombastinator]

31 minutes ago, LostStonerBoy said:

Out of curiosity did you look up the NAS I mentioned that I'm going to get?

 

It has the option to use the SSD's as more storage space, or to use them as read, write, or read & write caching.

 

I'm going to have it setup in a raid 10 configuration, and I don't plan to just use it as storage, it's also going to have plex on it and I like to watch the stuff I download with subtitles in case someone says something that I can't understand I can just look at the subtitles and see what it was, rather than trying to replay the same section of audio over and over. Plex doesn't allow hardware accelerated transcoding unless you buy a plex pass which I'd rather avoid doing. Then it is also going to basically be a file server, I'm tired of having all of my files scattered all over between my NAS (which I don't have anymore) my laptop, my desktop, & my cell phone. I wanna have all of them on the NAS and when I need to access them I can go to the NAS and open it do what I need to do and save any changes back to the file on the NAS that way I don't have a file that has newer information on one device and when I go to use another device that new information isn't there because it's saved on the other. It will be one file in one place that is constantly updated with the latest information and is accessible on any of my devices from anywhere.

 

This has comes with 2x2.5GBE RJ25 ports for link aggregation, or the option of buying an extra piece that gets plugged inside that adds a 10GBE RJ25 port. So connection speed is not going to be an issue. Which is also part of the reason I'm going with raid 10 so that it will use two drives instead of one that are striped to get her to speed up data access. But I still want to take advantage of the read write cashing so that when I go to open a file bam it's open, same for when I go to save, bam it's saved and done. Also if I decide to copy a movie to my laptop cause I know I'm going somewhere that I'm not going to have a good enough or no connection at all to wifi to stream it, I don't wanna have to sit and wait forever once the HDD cache is full and it drops from 100Mbps to 30-80Mbps transfer speeds.

 

I would honestly really appreciate it if you would be constructive with your responses and answer my question by providing an option about what I asked, instead of only replying to tell me I don't need to or shouldn't do this because you think it's unnecessary.

I did not.  The second part you commented on sort of explains why I didn’t bother.

 

I thought I did provide one.  Prices vary by area. You want a specific model as if prices don’t change hourly.  But they do.  So what you want is functionally impossible, though no doubt someone will give it to you anyway.

 

I gave you what you actually need instead of what you asked for.  Does explain why the post went unanswered for so long though.  Posts here usually attract some kind of answer in the first 15 minutes.  Most of the knowledgable people probably read it and just threw up their hands.  I try to answer stuff that doesn’t get answered

Edited June 8, 2023 by Bombastinator

[LostStonerBoy]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I did not.  The second part you commented on sort of explains why I didn’t bother.

 

I thought I did provide one.  Prices vary by area. You want a specific model as if prices don’t change hourly.  But they do.  So what you want is functionally impossible, though no doubt someone will give it to you anyway.

 

I gave you what you actually need instead of what you asked for.  Does explain why the post went unanswered for so long though.  Posts here usually attract some kind of answer in the first 15 minutes.  Most of the knowledgable people probably read it and just threw up their hands.  I try to answer stuff that doesn’t get answered

I get that the endurance part is the important part, and that's exactly what I'm asking for advice on. I already know that the speed of any m.2 drive that I use for caching is going to be fast enough to do what I want it to do as far as being a read/write cache for the HDD's... I just have no clue which drives have better endurance over others. 

 

For example when I went to get one for my playstation 5 I got the Samsung 980 pro 2TB, and the next thing I know it's being dissed all over the internet for poor performance, and early sector failures.

 

M.2 drives are completely new to me, and I've only recently gotten into the hardware side of PC's because when I was a teenager I accidentally screwed a processor up while trying to clean the dust out of the case, and that pissed my mom off because it was her computer. So for several years I haven't touched the insides of a PC at all and only recently started trying to learn as much as I can.

 

when it comes to stuff like this though I've been searching for days now and can't find an answer I'm satisfied with, because so many people contradict each other all over the web. One place says go by TBW, another says no go by Mean Time Between Failure, another says no it's something else. 

 

So I'm just lost, I need help, so I can get my new nas ordered and set up so I don't have to keep doing without it since it's a necessity for me.

 

I'm sorry I didn't fully grasp what you were saying earlier.

[tdkid]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

SSDs wear by number of writes.  HDDs wear by number of revolutions of the platter.  How the NAS gets used can mean endurance can matter a lot, or almost not at all.  Speed doesn’t matter much because the connection is a bigger bottle neck than the speed of the drive.

if that is true then you might want to look into SSDs that can stand up to a lot of writing like say the samsung 870 qvo. max capacity is 8TB so you could remove 2 of those SSDs from your case. but just like everything SSD, you are going to have to pay for it. just looking up the best buy store (i know) its $429.99 and currently sold out (i know) was just making a point.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, tdkid said:

if that is true then you might want to look into SSDs that can stand up to a lot of writing like say the samsung 870 qvo. max capacity is 8TB so you could remove 2 of those SSDs from your case. but just like everything SSD, you are going to have to pay for it. just looking up the best buy store (i know) its $429.99 and currently sold out (i know) was just making a point.

That goes to use case.  Lots of little files all the time?  Or do they just read off it.  Reading causes no wear at all.

[tdkid]

4 hours ago, LostStonerBoy said:

I see were in the same boat, however I'm curious as to where you found the one last updated in 2022, as the only one I've seen was from August 2019?

 

Also yes there are two different types of endurance for SSD's, the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) & Terrabytes Written (TBW). However as I said I was reading here in this forum somewhere where it was being discussed that the TBW isn't the best way to gauge an SSD's longevity, as many of the drives tend to far surpass that number well into the petabytes written level. However I'm not sure what the consensus is on MTBF.

 

Maybe someone else does?

scroll down to under the list in the first post. in that first post you will see the tiers for Nvme, SATA and external, under the "external tier d budget/storage" you will see 

PM me for any changes.

Updated - 23/11/2022

[Bombastinator]

12 minutes ago, LostStonerBoy said:

I get that the endurance part is the important part, and that's exactly what I'm asking for advice on. I already know that the speed of any m.2 drive that I use for caching is going to be fast enough to do what I want it to do as far as being a read/write cache for the HDD's... I just have no clue which drives have better endurance over others. 

 

For example when I went to get one for my playstation 5 I got the Samsung 980 pro 2TB, and the next thing I know it's being dissed all over the internet for poor performance, and early sector failures.

 

M.2 drives are completely new to me, and I've only recently gotten into the hardware side of PC's because when I was a teenager I accidentally screwed a processor up while trying to clean the dust out of the case, and that pissed my mom off because it was her computer. So for several years I haven't touched the insides of a PC at all and only recently started trying to learn as much as I can.

 

when it comes to stuff like this though I've been searching for days now and can't find an answer I'm satisfied with, because so many people contradict each other all over the web. One place says go by TBW, another says no go by Mean Time Between Failure, another says no it's something else. 

 

So I'm just lost, I need help, so I can get my new nas ordered and set up so I don't have to keep doing without it since it's a necessity for me.

 

I'm sorry I didn't fully grasp what you were saying earlier.

See the reply to @tdkidit may or may not matter. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Bombastinator

[tdkid]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

That goes to use case.  Lots of little files all the time?  Or do they just read off it.  Reading causes no wear at all.

reading does cause wear because you are picking up item A and taking it to spot B. in this case its picking it up from your SSD and bringing it to your monitor. sure it doesnt cause as much wear as writing or deleting files over and over again but it does cause wear. 

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, tdkid said:

reading does cause wear because you are picking up item A and taking it to spot B. in this case its picking it up from your SSD and bringing it to your monitor. sure it doesnt cause as much wear as writing or deleting files over and over again but it does cause wear. 

My understanding is it doesn’t.  It’s writing that causes wear.  Your example includes writing. Reading from NAS and writing to ram causes no wear because ram isn’t worn by reading or writing.  Reading from the nas and writing to the local drive would cause wear on the local drive (unless it’s an HDD) but not on the NAS.  It has to do with the way nand works.  Technically it’s erasing that causes wear, but erasing is part of writing on NAND.

[tdkid]

5 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

My understanding is it doesn’t.  It’s writing that causes wear.  Your example includes writing. Reading from NAS and writing to ram causes no wear because ram isn’t worn by reading or writing.  Reading from the nas and writing to the local drive would cause wear on the local drive (unless it’s an HDD) but not on the NAS.  It has to do with the way nand works.  Technically it’s erasing that causes wear, but erasing is part of writing on NAND.

everything causes wear, like i said its just not as much. reading and removing files would cause the most wear on a drive, but reading is you opening that file and saying "i want it to go here" The computer still has to send the signal to find that file. think about it like a real book. if you just hand it off from one person to the next and back without stopping, then the outside would get worn, but when you open the book, that is when the inside gets worn, not as quickly as handing it to someone but it does.