NAS Drives

[eccles]

bmwmike said:

+1 on noise

I replaced a lovely readynas duo, silent when not being accessed etc, and very quiet when in use, to a qnap and the 8tb ironwolf drives are constantly chattering away. Its utterly annoying. I think its mostly the fault of the drives than the qnap itself.

Thanks for that. I think I'll give it a miss. The price isn't that cheap for a second hand one, and if I have to replace the drive I'm not sure it's worth it.

[Captain_Morgan]

eccles said:

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm looking at buying a second hand Synology NAS and it comes with two, 4tb drives.
One is a WD red, but the other is a WD HC310. My research tells me that the HC310 is a data centre drive and I was wondering if it's suitable for use in a NAS setting.
Many thanks in advance.

I can’t comment on noise but there is an argument for running different drives, If they are both supported.

If you run the same drives, purchased at the same time, with the same fw and build date then there is an increased chance of multiple disk failures, if there are build or fw issues. The non failed drive is put under the most stress when rebuilding onto a new drive after a single failure.

It obviously doesn’t happen all the time but if it does then it’s return to backup time.

[eccles]

Captain_Morgan said:

eccles said:

I'm after a bit of advice, I'm looking at buying a second hand Synology NAS and it comes with two, 4tb drives.
One is a WD red, but the other is a WD HC310. My research tells me that the HC310 is a data centre drive and I was wondering if it's suitable for use in a NAS setting.
Many thanks in advance.

I can’t comment on noise but there is an argument for running different drives, If they are both supported.

If you run the same drives, purchased at the same time, with the same fw and build date then there is an increased chance of multiple disk failures, if there are build or fw issues. The non failed drive is put under the most stress when rebuilding onto a new drive after a single failure.

It obviously doesn’t happen all the time but if it does then it’s return to backup time.

I was thinking if I bought it then bought a new drive then that sorts out them being from different batches, but it puts the price up close to buying it all new.

[Captain_Morgan]

eccles said:

I was thinking if I bought it then bought a new drive then that sorts out them being from different batches, but it puts the price up close to buying it all new.

It’s a valid point to question costs, if you back up the source data or the nas then it’s less of an issue, if you don’t and are relying on the data it’s of greater importance that said it’s likely less than 1/1000 and likely lower, but…

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Worth noting that if you are running a NAS with ZFS (eg. FreeNAS / TrueNAS) and running WD Reds, then you'll want to make sure you use WD Red Plus for any replacements.

It's because WD Red now uses SMR technology rather than CMR and it does not play nice with ZFS, whereas Red Plus and Red Pro both continue to use CMR

See
https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/update-w...

[Clockwork Cupcake]

bmwmike said:

+1 on noise

I replaced a lovely readynas duo, silent when not being accessed etc, and very quiet when in use, to a qnap and the 8tb ironwolf drives are constantly chattering away. Its utterly annoying. I think its mostly the fault of the drives than the qnap itself.

Yes, I have IronWolf drives in one array (and WD Reds in another) and my NAS box does tend to chatter somewhat.

[bmwmike]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Yes, I have IronWolf drives in one array (and WD Reds in another) and my NAS box does tend to chatter somewhat.

Glad it not just mine then!! Ive had to move my NAS into the attic, mounted on a row of cut up pipe insulation, and ive wrapped it in reflective bubble wrap and I can *still* hear it when i get up to use the loo at night - 3am and chug chug chug. Ugh, SSD next as i dont need 8TB of instant access, more like 500gb of working space.

[RizzoTheRat]

My WD Reds are reasonably quiet, you can notice it chugging away some time but my Synology has them in nice rubber mounts that seem to do a decent job.

Set it to backup the NAS to my USB drive last night, so both drives in the NAS and the USB drive running and it's not much louder than the fans on my PC.

[Bollah]

It's always worth looking at the disk combability checker for what works with Synology - https://www.synology.com/en-uk/compatibility When I upgraded from 4TB to 8TB disks, I almost went with the Ironwolf ones, but had seen reports of the chatter, then checked in the link and it wasn't supported, so went with WD Red as it was listed as supported

[eccles]

So I ended up biting the bullet and buying a Synology DS220+ and two 4TB Toshiba N300 drives.
Have followed a series of guide videos on YouTube and set most of it up, backed up my phone and computer and some old hard drives.So am generally very happy with everything.
The one slight problem I've run into is that I installed Cloud Sync and set it to sync with my Google cloud storage. I thought it would be one way, in that my cloud stuff would download to my NAS, instead, most of my NAS has gone up to my cloud and filled it up!

Is there a way I can set it up to sync one way from my cloud down to my NAS ?

[bmwmike]

eccles said:

So I ended up biting the bullet and buying a Synology DS220+ and two 4TB Toshiba N300 drives.
Have followed a series of guide videos on YouTube and set most of it up, backed up my phone and computer and some old hard drives.So am generally very happy with everything.
The one slight problem I've run into is that I installed Cloud Sync and set it to sync with my Google cloud storage. I thought it would be one way, in that my cloud stuff would download to my NAS, instead, most of my NAS has gone up to my cloud and filled it up!

Is there a way I can set it up to sync one way from my cloud down to my NAS ?

How do you find the Synology?

To update my prior complaints about the qnap I would never buy another. Maybe they are all much of a much at the £500 price point but here are my complaints of qnap NAS:

- After extensive debugging, i've found the constant disk activity and reluctance to go to sleep is because Qnap are writing some of the logs to a drive rather than ramdisk. Most go to ramdisk, some don't (including docker running in debug (!) mode and very chatty, to disk). That's some crappy QA right there.

- Loads of bloatware and constant changing of the apps used for a given function. It was hybrid sync, now its QuFtp or something, for synching. I don't even use QuFTP but its asking for updates. Never installed it, can't remove it. I just want to set and forget.

- The NAS OS is becoming a platform to deliver content and sell stuff. I don't want that, but have no choice as there is no separation of system proxy from all the rest of the junk.

Hope this helps someone.

[K50 DEL]

I'm another who's joining the World of NAS

I have a Synology DS415+ on its way to me and I have an idea of what I want to end up with, but actually getting there will likely involve a post or two here!

I'm aiming to use all 4 slots, with 3 drives in a RAID array and the 4th as a hot spare.

On that array I'm wanting 3 logical disks,

One for CCTV storage (I've also just bought a couple of Reolink cameras) I intend to use surveillance station to run this.
One for Media storage, using PLEX to display the movies on my smart tv
One for general file storage, photos, documents etc.

I'm all ears if anybody sees an issue with my plan?

[xeny]

K50 DEL said:

I'm aiming to use all 4 slots, with 3 drives in a RAID array and the 4th as a hot spare.


I'm all ears if anybody sees an issue with my plan?

Why not do a RAID 6 across 4 drives rather than a RAID 5 across 3 with a hot spare? Same no of drives used, better redundancy.

[K50 DEL]

xeny said:

K50 DEL said:

I'm aiming to use all 4 slots, with 3 drives in a RAID array and the 4th as a hot spare.


I'm all ears if anybody sees an issue with my plan?

Why not do a RAID 6 across 4 drives rather than a RAID 5 across 3 with a hot spare? Same no of drives used, better redundancy.

Only because I'd read that the write speed is slower with RAID 6 so thought RAID 5 with a hot spare would be a better way to go.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

For SOHO use, a hot spare just seems like a waste of a drive to me. It's just sitting there costing you money and giving you no benefit whatsoever.

Personally I'd go with a RAID5 with 4 drives and enjoy the extra capacity. Especially when you only have 4 bays.

I think a lot of people get very hung up on redundancy. It's not like you are running an enterprise solution here. If a drive fails then turn the NAS off and get a replacement drive on next day delivery. It's not like a home NAS is mission critical.

The only time I'd consider running hot spares on SOHO kit is if you had an 8+ bay system and you had spare bays and didn't want to extend an existing array.

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Monday 29th November 15:22

[xeny]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

I think a lot of people get very hung up on redundancy. It's not like you are running an enterprise solution here. If a drive fails then turn the NAS off and get a replacement drive on next day delivery. It's not like a home NAS is mission critical.

My thinking is drives have a higher failure rate at power on than any other time, and the grim reality is lots of home NAS units aren't terribly well backed up, so I aim for more redundancy than not, especially with larger drives and longer rebuild times.

[eccles]

bmwmike said:

eccles said:

So I ended up biting the bullet and buying a Synology DS220+ and two 4TB Toshiba N300 drives.
Have followed a series of guide videos on YouTube and set most of it up, backed up my phone and computer and some old hard drives.So am generally very happy with everything.
The one slight problem I've run into is that I installed Cloud Sync and set it to sync with my Google cloud storage. I thought it would be one way, in that my cloud stuff would download to my NAS, instead, most of my NAS has gone up to my cloud and filled it up!

Is there a way I can set it up to sync one way from my cloud down to my NAS ?

How do you find the Synology?

Like many others, I'm very happy with it. As it's my first I have nothing to compare it to,but after reading this thread the Synology seemed the most user friendly and idiot proof.
I followed a set of videos on Youtube and over a couple of weeks I got it all set up. The software has updated a few times, but apart from that it just sits there doing it's stuff in the background. Mine shuts down between midnight and five AM.
I have my phone and desktop backing up to it, and I managed to sort out my cloud syncing to just go one way in the end.
Not being particularly computer savvy I found the youtube tutorials really helpful, and made life much easier.

So in summary, I heartily recommend one.

[-Pete-]

I recommend Synology, but QNAP are probably just as good. I did have a Buffalo LinkStation 5-10 years ago, it was awful. When I decided to install cameras, I bought a DS119j with 256GB for £100 on eBay. I didn't want the hard drive on my main NAS running all day and night. It's slow compared to my main NAS but it does the job, and I feel safer having all of my important stuff separate.

[RizzoTheRat]

When I was looking most people reckoned the QNAP and Synology hardware are equally good but the Synology software is better. Not tried the QNAP, but setting up my Synology was really easy, and the backup and sync tools are good too.

PC and 2 laptops back up to the NAS, one of the laptops has an on demand sync folder, all have access to a house shared folder, PLEX streams to my Google TV, and the whole thing backs up to a portable drive. Really easy to set up.

I went with Synology Hybrid Raid for single disk redundancy, and have a 4 bay currently with 2 drives, plan to add an extra drive soon and should automatically reconfigure the RAID.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I run FreeNAS (now TrueNAS) on an old SuperMicro server based on the Xeon 5600-series and the X8DTL-3F motherboard, currently with a single E5645 CPU, 48GB RAM, and housed into a tower case by Antec with ten internal 3.5" bays + two 2.5" bays.

If anyone is interested in an extremely overly-long and nerdy build log on it, that goes into entirely too much detail, then it is available at https://datahamster.com/2017/10/08/building-a-free...

I also built a twin Xeon X5680 workstation using the same kind of components, which is at https://datahamster.com/2017/10/21/building-a-xeon...

WARNING:
Both posts are very long and tedious and should only be read by total geeks and/or people who want to stalk me.