Question Home storage

[zigzag03]

Used to have a WD network storage drive, which sadly, as Ian storm surge waters were rising, I didn't think to grab off the shelf it was on, and now looking to replace. The question here is, looking at storage enclosures, they all seem to be using or calling for old school hard drives vs ssd. Is a mechanical drive more reliable than ssd in this application? Any reason why I wouldn't put ssds into these enclosures? Thanks

 

[Tech Junky]

HDD = more capacity for less $

I personally just switched to using U.3 which is a SSD / NVME in a 2.5" format due to it having a higher capacity option than the M2 format or the slowness of the SATA SSD in comparison. The drive I went with is a Kioxia and it hits 6.5GB/s which is comparable to current NVME Gen4 speeds. However, it's a 15.36TB where an M2 caps out at 8TB and for ~$200 more getting double the capacity made more sense.

Now, the only issue here would be traditional NAS / enclosures won't have a U connector in them and you would need an adapter to connect the drive. Adding a U drive to an existing system though is cheap-ish at around $50 for an M2 adapter / cable.

Reliability.... it's a personal preference as both these days are reliable if you go with certain brands. A mechanical drive will give more warning signs before failure but, no moving parts in the SSD side means less wear. I've had spinners running for years as a "NAS" and they still spin like new. I've also had others that only lasted a couple of years. I've got a few SSD drives sitting around that are ~10 years old that still work fine.

 

[zigzag03]

Thank you. For me it's not speed but reliability, and mostly it's pics and vids. Lost a bunch on the drive I failed to rescue, and I certainly could have had I I had the presence of mind. I was saving computers, antique clocks and books, and as much of my race rig as I could unbolt. It just didn't catch my eye, it would have been so easy. 5' of water came so fast! Anyway, a mechanical drive will be fine I think. It doesn't get used that much anyway. Thank you for your input.

 

[mikeymikec]

Reliability: Backups, backups, backups. By all means try to pick reliable drives for your NAS, but plan for failure.

If flooding is a potential problem going forward, consider an off-site backup too.

SSD vs HDD: The throughput of the likely network link you're going to be using is probably important. You'll get at least >120MB/sec out of a 3.5" modern hard drive these days, which GigE will do for you, WiFi however is extremely variable.

 

[Tech Junky]

@zigzag03

I would personally go with an enclosure and disk for the ease of upgrade later. I also don't like to blindly buy a disk in a prefab enclosure as the specs tend to vary a bit too much. Also, with the enclosure approach you can decide if you want to put a spinner or SSD into it. The 2.5" SSD options for SATA are decent at this point. IIRC you can get a Samsung 8TB fairly cheap these days but there are smaller options as well. If your router has a USB port on it you can even run the disk from there as well.

Or outsource the whole storage issue offsite with https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/pricing

 

[zigzag03]

Was thinking along these lines currently:

https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-Capacity-Preconfigured-IronWolf-TS-133-14S-US/dp/B0CGW2DD4Z/ref=sr_1_20?crid=1PJSR0PS5UA4V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ZFWfX5RVqewSqPHYrvmp8wDRpNi7IBL99kD6t7Kb_uhHmjnVQrvxUQ9lXxKObqMCuO68r4mr5jlUQILzd7oZ0dxfkPXEu1P7Ivp06o5L6JghGsGC-OVpvudJsNsv4-AbLSEU3z_j3ILi78c9TlZS5LUjYHvBaE_UwT8vl7ULVaUIhkxdj9nRrPOvS6S4GgyjtAISifURAnG0jugIztZ40zgsc5zTw0xNlmJXl8IbKRnAaDXFkQmTVVei01x_wQrKyP6vsnEsU1KdORx0po1PmeSRKMBlr3G1uDNgX5FGrkk.kTRKz38sB3COV71kpNjesdgDFwQ1Q_g5YU8Ic8znZzI&dib_tag=se&keywords=home%2Bnetwork%2Bstorage&qid=1708788612&s=electronics&sprefix=home%2Bnet%2Celectronics%2C134&sr=1-20&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1

 

[Tech Junky]

@zigzag03

DAS might be a better option for the price you're paying for that box.

Amazon.com

This will get you 4 slots for drives and 400MB/s over USB

Does it need to be on the network? If you have a PC that's on most of the time just plug it into the PC and share it as a file share for backups to be sent to.

If you want something more portable when you have to evac then maybe consider using the 2.5" disks with something like this...

Amazon.com

If you want to go even more portable then there are single disk options you can go with in either 2.5/3.5" formats for under $50 + disk

 

[jamesdsimone]

If you have the spare parts putting together a storage server is easy. The prebuilts are way over priced. You don't need much computer power. I repurposed my FX8350 in an old case and PS. Now I have an 8 bay NAS with 32Gb ram. I use Xigmanas on a thumb drive so I don't take up a drive bay. There are a number of choices for the OS but that is just what I picked.

 

[jamesdsimone]

You have a few choices for a NAS. The advantage is they are all set up and ready to go without much work. The down side is they are every expensive for the specs.

https://www.newegg.com/qnap-ts-431k-us/p/N82E16822099101?Item=N82E16822099101 This is 324USD and only comes with 1Gb of ram and this CPU AnnapurnaLabs Alpine AL-214. Not sure the specs but guessing weak. The least Expensive 8 bay is 599.99. If you are willing to put in the extra work you can pick up used work station for cheap. Something like this for instance has significantly better specs, a W-2123 and 32Gb ram if it comes with 4x8 you get quad channel memory too. Just add your drives and you are ready to go. You can use Windows 10 or wipe the drive and used a dedicated storage server OS. With 4 bays you can run Raid 5. I have been using refurbed enterprise drives for years with no problems. 5 of these for 400USD would give you 1 drive failure tolerance and give you a spare on the shelf if one did fail.

https://www.newegg.com/hgst-ultrastar-dc-hc510-10tb/p/1Z4-001J-00DA4?Item=9SIA5ADK844282&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=promo&utm_campaign=EMC-ignefl022424-_-EMC-022424-Index-_-Desktop%20Internal%20Hard%20Drives-_-9SIA5ADK844282-_-USA_CP_20240224_01&ignorebbr=1&cm_mmc=EMC-ignefl022424-_-EMC-022424-Index-_-Desktop%20Internal%20Hard%20Drives-_-9SIA5ADK844282-_-USA_CP_20240224_01&ignorebbr=1&cvtc=14170052

Dell Precision 5820 Quad Xeon W-2123 3.60GHz 512GB SSD 32GB RAM Win10Pro P400 | eBay

Model Number: 5820. DELL PRECISION 5820 Desktop PC. Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro P400. CPU: Quad Core Xeon W-21233.60 GHz. Hard Drive: 512 GB SSD (Solid State Drive). Condition Detail Used. Power cord included.

www.ebay.com

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've always had a "server" as NAS. With three users plus appliances, I would get Windows Server Esssentials and configure that way. Now I just use a Win10 Pro license.

But this system is a media PC attached to my TV as well as general purpose storage. I have taken an entirely different approach now, since the other two users -- family -- have died. I don't need to have access to the NAS all the time anymore. So I run Windows SyncToy every so often -- a couple times weekly. Each of my two desktop machines has its own local Macrium backup. I have great redundancy, and also concurrency.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Personally, I would look at a cheap 4U 24bay supermicro CSE-846 off ebay or some other refurbish/reseller if you have room to place a 4U rack mount server somewhere (this is what I did for my home). You can sometimes find barebones systems in the $200-300 range, but expect that they are really something that you will basically be gutting, and need to usually get your own motherboard/cpu(s)/ram and sometimes even power supplies (I recommend getting your own power supplies anyway unless it comes with the SQ versions in the first place as they are the quiet ones, but you might need to change out some internals as one of the three different power distribution boards does not support the SQ version power supplies (without modifications... but I would recommend just replacing)).

Replacement parts are readily available since there was such a huge supply of these cases in the market and as an enterprise chassis, everything was replaceable, from power distribution, to fans, to SAS/SATA backplanes, etc... People have also placed standard ATX power supplies in the chassis, but there are limitations (no mounting holes for a standard power supply, but you can simply use velcro/dual lock/doublesided tape and you need to remove the internal PSU cage for the hot swap PSU's it is normally configured to use).

You can many times find cheap used barebones server setups (motherboard, cpus and ram). Heck, I have 2x 6c/12t Intel XEON low power CPUs and 192 GB ECC RAM with a supermicro board (with out of band management and LSI SAS3 controllers) in my setup, that cost me ~$300. This setup has room for 24 hot swap 3.5" drives (or you can use 2.5" as long as it is a SATA/SAS connection). Internally you can can an optional cage for 2x 2.5" drives (which is what I use for my base OS, which is really a hypervisor for running VM's and I run several VM's, including TrueNAS for handling my storage as direct passthrough).

Yes, there are newer chassis than the CSE-846 and you will see many of them for cheaper as well, but the 846 is the one that you can remove the fan wall and replace it with 120mm fans that run MUCH quieter (as well as fit tall tower CPU heatsinks, and the ATX power supply with simple modification). If you don't mind the noise and the other benefits, feel free to look at some of those other supermicro chassis like the 4U 36bay CSE-847.