Viability of MSATA drive in NAS (i.e making the most of what I own)

[Aleph256]

So uh.
I'm trying to optimize the use I get from my 4-bay NAS.

For now it's only populated by a pair of 8TB WD Red Pros in JBOD (don't raise the pitchforks yet, I'll be adding a 3rd drive soon and build a RAID5 array), which gives me more than enough capacity for my planned needs over the next few years.

 

I'm considering populating the 4th bay with a SSD that would be dedicated to torrenting.

I own a Samsung T5 that used to be a storage media for my video content in order to watch in on my TV. It has since been deprecated by the NAS and a Shield, so I was thinking of repurposing it for that.

Some quick online research shows the actual drive uses a MSATA interface, and thus would require an adapter like this one.

I'm just a bit worried about two things which lead me to ask for feedback/opinions:

• Could there be "compatibility" issues that would make the drive not recognized?
  • It appears to be a "dumb" board that justs converts the interface
  • I recall the LLT crew using similar boards for some conversion in... One of the server builds I think
  • As such I'm not too worried... Buuuut we had an issue when doing something similar at work (external HDD whose USB-to-SATA controller died, and the off-the-shelf Ugreen replacement enclosure wasn't recognized by some systems and had the IT guys scratch their heads), so I'd rather ask.
• Would such an adapter be fine in a 24/7 working environment?

 

Thanks for taking the time to read my rantings.

[OddOod]

2 hours ago, Aleph256 said:

dedicated to torrenting

we're def talking about linux ISOs here so we don't run afoul of the forum TOS

Why? Deluge/BT aren't really gonna be bottlenecked by the drive speed unless you have a 2Gbps connection at which point, yeah, you're a saint, but no need to burn valuable drive slots on SSD, just run 4 drives in Raid5 and you'll saturate that link if you even have a 2.5G port on that box

[Aleph256]

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

we're def talking about linux ISOs here so we don't run afoul of the forum TOS

Definitely Linux ISOs that I compile the kernel of on a daily basis, yes.

(Though I actually also use it to share TOS-compliant files with some abroad friends who have unstable connections, making filehost-based solutions unwieldy)

 

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

Deluge/BT aren't really gonna be bottlenecked by the drive speed

I'd agree with you if the client was on its own.

But over the past few months I observed a correlation between high seed rates and stuttering whenever I play back high-bitrate/resolution content on my TV.

As ADM allows me to create volumes with specific drives and choose which volume the shared folders are on, my plan was to segregate both uses.

 

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

just run 4 drives in Raid5 and you'll saturate that link if you even have a 2.5G port on that box

Well, I guess I could, but that would involve getting a 4th 8TB drive and my budget is pretty tight at the moment

Though the way you phrase it has me wondering - does Raid5 offer read speed benefits like Raid0 does? Actually pretty new to the whole drive redundancy thing, so legit curious and Google didn't help much for that.

[OddOod]

On 5/10/2024 at 10:48 PM, Aleph256 said:

share TOS-compliant files with some abroad friends who have unstable connections

Doing the lord's work

 

On 5/10/2024 at 10:48 PM, Aleph256 said:

correlation between high seed rates and stuttering

Not sure what NAS you're running, but if there's a management console (or heck, SSH with bash) I'd look at the CPU usage rather than I/O. 

 

On 5/10/2024 at 10:48 PM, Aleph256 said:

budget is pretty tight

One nice thing about RAID is that drives can die and you're still safe. Straight up used drives are pretty cheap (I'm seeing 10s for 100$) and certified refurb (2 year warranty from https://serverpartdeals.com/) are super stable. I deployed 16 of these in dual RAIDZ1 (~RAID5 but faster file access with ZFS, I know I should have gone Z2 but the siren song of 200TB nominal storage was too hard to ignore) 18 months ago and have had no problems and I just deployed another 8 to round out my 1:1 backup 

[Aleph256]

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

Not sure what NAS you're running, but if there's a management console (or heck, SSH with bash) I'd look at the CPU usage rather than I/O. 

Drivestor 4 Pro.

Not the greatest value as I've come to learn, but there was a deal when I got that put it at the price of the 2-bay version, and I didn't wand to overspend if the concept of NAS didn't take to me.

It does have management... But CPU usage is rarely above 15%. RAM is consistently above 80% though so I'm wondering if it could be what's limiting me.

Not upgradeable though, so I'd need to replace the device, which is a medium-term project (and refurbishing this one as an off-site backup at my parents' place).

[OddOod]

Yeah. I've *always* advised against a purpose built NAS because they tend to be shaved down to the bone on everything that isn't required to just be a NAS. Unless you have wicked power costs it always makes more sense (for techy people) to run some corporate castoffs instead. You can then learn Ubuntu (MDADM for RAID, docker for virtualization, etc.) or TrueNAS (I'm done recommending UnRaid given they abandoned the Buy For Life ethos and the continued *requirement* to boot off USB which keep dying). 

Again, I don't think that a faster drive is gonna fix the issue. Something you could try in the meantime is spinning up a different tower and use that for torrenting and Plex while you use the NAS purely for storage

[Aleph256]

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

Unless you have wicked power costs

Coughs in France.

1 hour ago, OddOod said:

Something you could try in the meantime is spinning up a different tower and use that for torrenting and Plex while you use the NAS purely for storage

Well I've been considering setting up a Pi for that.

[OddOod]

56 minutes ago, Aleph256 said:

Coughs in France.

2 hours ago, OddOod said:

I mean north of 40c/kWH
 

1 hour ago, Aleph256 said:

setting up a Pi for that

a pi is gonna have a similar amount of transcoding power to a NAS.

[Aleph256]

2 hours ago, OddOod said:

a pi is gonna have a similar amount of transcoding power to a NAS.

The beauty of it is I don't need transcoding power - that's what the Shield is for.

[OddOod]

Well, as long as you're getting Direct Play, then yeah, you could host plex on a pi. If you have everything laying around, couldn't hurt to try

[Aleph256]

I'm actually not using Plex as I don't need it. 15+ years of external-drive-based storage does that to you - my media library folders are organized well enough that it would take me longer to use a search function than directly go to the relevant place through VLC.

I'll see with a coworker to borrow their spare Pi and test the concept, see if it makes any difference.