d-i-y Nas. Hard drive makes?

[T i m]

Hi all,

Still playing with the idea of putting together a couple of NAS's, one for me (because) and one for daughter as she want's to get all her photos together in one place (or 'copies of' at least).

Trying to keep the power requirements and noise levels to the minimum whilst providing a reasonable (sufficient) online capacity to do what is required at the lowest possible cost.

To that end I already have a few of the slim line (Atom powered) Shuttle PC's:

... with low capacity SSD's and enough RAM (4GB) to run something like Open Media Vault.

I've been running OMV on a Raspberry Pi2b for some time now and it seems pretty reliable and the performance sufficient to stream a video etc. Not saying it's 'fast' as these things go, but it's adequate, very very low power and nearly silent (you can just hear the 4TB external laptop drive running now and then).

However, the Pi is a bit 'bitsy' to give someone as a working solution compared with the Shuttle, because you can actually fit two 2.5" drives in the shuttle, the additional one going on the SATA connector for the slim line drive (that's not present). So, the small SSD on that for the boot / system and 'something bigger' for the actual shared storage.

Now, you can buy a 2.5" form factor WD Red drive in 1TB (max) and whilst that would probably be sufficient for daughters needs, isn't 'big' as such. However, what it does mean is that a 2TB USB backup drive would be adequate and that helps to keep the overall price down.

So then we come to drives, makes and reliability.

*Traditionally* we would have stuck 'a drive' in whatever we were doing and that would have been it, but now we have different drives for different roles ... laptop, desktop, CCTV, NAS, Server, DVR's etc.

But, I can get 2 x 1TB 2.5" 'std' drives for the price of one 'Red' drive or 1 drive of 2+ times the capacity of the Red?

If said drive was in a Shuttle running OMV and the drive spinning down when idle ... and assuming they were fast, quiet and cool enough in use, mightn't std drives be better VFM, even in the long term?

Along those lines, over 10 years ago I built a Windows Home Server using 3 x Hitachi 500GB laptop drives (providing 1.5TB via Drive Extender) and <fingers crossed>, they still seem to be hanging in there. I can't remember if the drives spin down when idle but they certainly spin down when the server hibernates and it does that most nights. I notice you can still get Hitachi (HGST) 2.5" drives in 1TB (~£45) and assuming they were the same thing as I have in my WHS, then I'd have to say I'd be inclined to get a couple of them.

Yes, I could get a Synology box (DS119j?) and a higher capacity 3.5" drive but at a lot more cost and no way I could swap out the hardware so cheaply (outside the warranty etc).

So, apart from the d-i-y focused thoughts above, can anyone say these days that any make / model of hard drive is actually going to be better or worse (from a reliability POV) or is it still mostly a matter of luck how long they last?

FWIW, I believe 'heat' is a killer of some electronic equipment and my WHS and the HDD's run very cool (I ducted the air over the HDD's specifically).

We probably all have tales of drives that lasted for ever but the Internet is now littered with people reporting drives dying pretty quickly. ;-(

I notice you can now buy 1TB SSD's for under £100 but would that be any more likely to last 10 years an a conventional drive in a NAS role?

Cheers, T i m

[Pancho]

With the Pi 4, the Pi is now fast, proper gigabit ethernet. It also goes up to 4GB RAM so you can run loads of other services on it as well as file sharing.

Also SSDs are moving into cheap mass storage territory, e.g. Samsung QVO. It's only going to get cheaper, quickly. For occasional NAS use SSDs are probably already more durable than HDDs. For home use I think the age of spinners is coming to an end.

I get what you are saying about the Pi not having a nice case, but the Pi + SSD does seem to be a really neat solution. USB drives are faster than a gigabit lan, so no need to worry about the lack of SATA. You can even run it all off POE.

So happy with the Pi 4 + SSD as a NAS for my frequent NAS files, I was looking for something to put my old spinning HDDs in, but everything look a bit expensive or crap.

I think as an interim solution I will just put the spinning HDD's in an old core2duo PC and use them for backup, +occasional use. In a couple of years it will all be SSD and I can junk the old HDDs and just use something like a PI 4 for everything. Even it if I left the old PC on

24/7 it would be three years before the electricity cost was more than the capital cost of something like a less powerful Synology.

[Andy Burns]

I have 2x 4TB spinners in RAID1 for my samba box, I think I'd be loathe to burn a grand to have them be SSD.

[The Natural Philosopher]

+1.

SSD simply doesnt make sense for my server at current prices.

I rarely reboot it, so speed of boot is not an isue and over the netowrk that is the limiting factor on file performsancem, not the disk speed

[Andy Burns]

Mine does have a 64GB SSD for the O/S, but only because I had a couple knocking around.

[Brian Gaff]

I was quite disappointed in my old samsung 256 gig only running for four years personally. That was one of those that was like a big chip on the motherboard socket. I now have a bigger on that pretends to be a normal drive, and I backup each week.

To be honest it is the unreliability of drives that makes me still use cds and dvds. If you shove them all onto media in a box and the box goes south and you don't have the originals..... Brian

[Jethro_uk]

Steer well clear of Seagate.

[Brian Reay]

'Putting together'?

I've used a couple of methods to provide a NAS and Timecapsule (for Mac) services (R Pi, PC based..), tried Western Digital units, and now Synology. The latter is by far the best.

For home use, I went for dual disks in a RAID config. If I want I can access it from anywhere but I've not enabled this feature.

I've also got a single drive system I use in the motorhome. It also has most of the clever facilities although I don't need to use them.

User/admin interface to set up etc is straight forward. There are a range of apps they can run, including Plex on the dual system (it has a faster uP), even Apache so you could host a website from it, although I've not tried this.

[jeikppkywk]

Work fine for me.

[T i m]

<snip>

True, however, I'm not sure there is an OMV image for the Pi4 yet, or I'd give it a go on mine (I may have tried to install it on top of Raspbian but don't think it worked for some Linuxy magic reason).

For desktop / laptops I think you are right, and possibly commercial server farms, where heat and energy can be a big issue, cost less so.

There are plenty of nice cases for the various models, my Pi2b is in a nice ally one, it's just that you have to stand the (USB) drive next to it, or it on top of the drive it's a std desktop jobby and I can see that becoming an issue in the wrong hands.

By contrast, a Shuttle PC with both drives internal would be more like most SOHO NAS's, being all-in-one.

Nothing stopping one putting a RPi and HDD in a single case of course. ;-)

Even USB2?

Handy if you wanted it down the shed or in the loft I guess. ;-)

Are you just running Raspian and some shares or some other NAS software?

I applied the firmware patch to my Pi4 last night but not sure I was working it hard enough to see much of an improvement before > after. I also have a length of copper bar and a round heatsink I intend to fit though the lid of a stock RPi case (when it comes from CPC) so it can run a bit cooler (especially if on 24/4 as a NAS).

It would nice to have a MB with 8 SATA connectors and run JBOD or whatever for that sort of thing. WHS V1 does that with it's 'Drive Extender' and across all interfaces and drive sizes. ;-)

Might be a Pi6 by then. ;-)

True, but you still have a fairly big box stuck somewhere and often, fairly noisy (old PSU and CPU fans etc). That's why I liked these Shuttle PC's, silent and very small. I even considered mounting the opened Shuttle PC inside an ITX case as then I could extend both SATA connectors (main HDD and DVD) to std drives, inc 3.5" jobbies inside the main case.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

When looking around recently, if you can get away with the smaller sizes then the price difference between NAS spinners and NAS SSD's aren't far apart. 80 quid for a 1TB 2.5" WD Red and ~£90 for 'a' 1TB SSD and ~100 for a Sammy.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

An issue / limitation with the OMV NAS software is that it (OOTB anyway?) uses all of the boot drive for the OS, even though it only actually uses ~8GB of it? ;-(

I was looking for old 32GB drives or possibly the M.2 format, assuming they could be had cheaper than a unbranded 60/4GB and could be adapted to plug into a std HDD SATA connector ... just because.

Ironically the Shuttles have a handy SD card slot built in but whilst you could run OMV from the SD card, I don't believe it's recommended you do (even with the USB plugin thing) due to the number or writes wearing an SD card out in no time at all (something to do with the lack of wear leveling)?

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

<snip>

And this is the thing with hard drives, they seem to be like tyres or oil re the feelings of their supporters / detractors. ;-)

My first 'big' drive was a half height, 3.5" Seagate 80MB SCSI and I may still have it somewhere and it's probably still working. ;-)

The Buffalo TeraStation I was given the other day came with three x

2012 and one 2009 2TB Seagate Barracudas and one of the 2012 drives had failed it's SMART test because of reallocated blocks.

The NAS hadn't been running for a while before being given to me (possibly a few years) but was probably on 27/7 from new (possibly

2009 from the age of the oldest drive). So I'm guessing the other 3 2009 drives had already failed?

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

<snip>

Yes:

Because?

Why? Ok, I can see if you needed something available 24/7 RAID1 (presumably) might give you that but what if the system hardware fails? Also, what are you doing for the backups of the NAS itself?

That was something that daughter might need and felt might be easier to sort if some commercial solution came with the DDNS function via a 'My Cloud' sorta solution.

I installed and configured a Synology DS218j for a friend and once we had sorted the DOA WD 4TB Red drive ... it sorta went Ok but the UI was a bit confusing and non intuitive. And this was with someone who knew what he wanted and what to expect etc?

Understood. I have scrolled though the list of plugins (or whatever Synology call them) and some of them looked quite interesting.

My main once would be whatever instigated a complete 'bare metal' level backup of a Windows client PC on a daily basis but not sure there is such a thing?

Based on suggestions offered by others here previously, I'm probably going to order a Synology DS119j and duplicate the entire box across the LAN to something (OMV probably) running on a Shuttle or RPi. 'Duplexing' (SFT III?) across two devices should give even better availability and resilience than RAID1 in a single box? It also might be the only way I could ensure daughter actually backs up her NAS. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Brian Reay]

I was trying to get a handle on the level you were going down to.

Scratch building from a drive, perhaps a R Pi and some software, or assembling something from a mix of junk box parts/units and may be new bits, or something else. All are perfectly good ideas. I?ve tried several of them myself.

Mainly convenience and features. While the Synology has a mass of features I?m not currently using, there are several I can see myself using at some point.

That is the idea of dual disk RAID. If a drive fails you can recover the data.

If the actual box fails, who made it doesn?t matter that much. It needs repairing or replacing.

That is also one of the features I can see myself using. I?ve used it in the past with my other solutions but don?t need it at the moment.

One of mine is the 218.

Some bits of the UI could be better but, all in all, it is pretty good in my view.

I run PLEX on mine and it ?feeds? media (video and audio) to various TVs and Wi-fi enabled radios. I used to run a Linux hosted version on an old PC but this is part of the convenience factor I mentioned.

The one I use in the motorhome is a 119. As you know the 119 only has one drive so, if it fails, that is it. You can use your approach but it it seems like a lot of hassle. The drives tend to be the weak spot and even they aren?t bad. Your idea is certainly workable. Better is a matter of opinion. While I enjoy tinkering, there are things I want to work seamlessly in the background without needing intervention etc. The NAS is one of those.

My 119 isn?t used for backup, well not really. It is just a media store- essentially I copy (nearly) all of our media library on to it and it feeds the media system in the motorhome. Useful when in bad weather ;-) I recently bought Senior Management an Amazon Fire Stick ( there is some comedy series- Mrs Mazel? - she wanted to watch) and it works beautifully with the 4G Wi-fi, Kodi, .....

BTW, WD seem to have lost the plot with their NAS drives. I have one which is fine*, it must be 5 years old at least. It is dedicated to a particular project now. When I wanted something for the motorhome, one of those with a larger drive, would have been ideal. Sure enough they seemed to still sell them, minor cosmetic differences but obviously the same series it seemed....

The UI was a nightmare. Once the shares were set up they would drop off the network willy nilly, everything was geared to setting up a personal cloud. The old version offers remote access- which I have used in the past, although I preferred my Linux based server- but it doesn?t dominate the operation.

*World Book series or something similar. They are style to look like books.

[Bob Eager]

I use HP microservers a lot. The main NAS is one of those. If the hardware fails, I swap it for a spare. If a disk fails (happened once in

9 years) then it's RAID-1 so it's easy to replace the faulty disk (cold swap, but very fast) and rebuild the array.

Three overlapping backup strategies, two of which are off-site.

BTW, they are all Western Digital Red now. The one that failed wasn't - it was a Seagate.

I did have one other WD failure - at 37 hours, while I was setting up a new system. Replaced very quickly by WD.

[Jethro_uk]

I've worked with a variety of external drives these past 10 years. The only ones that have failed have been Seagate. Two within warranty.

I can't fault their warranty service - but they're the only manufacturers I've needed to make use of.

[jeikppkywk]

Me too, for much longer.

None of mine have, all the failures have been WDs.

Its been the exact opposite for me.

[dennis]

I don't think you will find USB drives faster on the Pi than the GigE. They still don't have full throughput.

They are a lot faster on the Pi4 than previous Pies.

[T i m]

Ok.

And I am open to any of those, whatever give me the best results. That said, I have a couple of starting points (for a 'NAS') re the RPi's or the Shuttles. eg. Once we go to a full PC we might be looking at a more traditional 'File Server' (although the boundary between NAS and FS is fairly blurred these days).

Understood.

Yeahbut ...

So what do you do in the meantime or how has the duplex drives helped? What if that box is no longer available, what are the chances of a new / alternative box being able to use that drive (and offer the data)?

Which is why I asked about how you were backing up your NAS?

Ok.

218+ (black) or 218j (white) Brian?

Yes, once I had worked out what bit of what utility did what ... and many things could be done by more that one bit ... it seemed to work.

Ok.

<snip>

But what is the MTBF on the drive versus the box itself?

Depending on how you manage your NAS backups, possibly?

I'd say I've had more kit go dead than drives (in my ownership). I have a dead netbook here and a dead Shuttle PC that both have perfect hard drives in them. ;-)

Again, depending on how you run your NAS backups? RAID in any form isn't a backup.

Likewise, and I'd suggest there is more work fitting even a single drive in say a DS119j than plugging a USB drive into a PRi or Shuttle ... and installing the OS still needs to be done on the Synology boxes (and on the 2 x 4TB drives we had on the one I installed I'd say it look longer than actually installing OMV on a Shuttle and configuring the drive for use, albeit that it did most of it on it's own).

Then that might be an answer to my backup question, if it's just a copy of the main files.

I can think of other things the Mrs and I would do, specifically if we were on our own. ;-)

Cool.

The 'My Cloud' things?

Ok ...

;-(

I think that would be a 'handy feature' for daughter *if* it meant she could access files from work, *without* having to install any software at work (because she can't without IT doing it).

I have seen them.

I hope to get a DS119j myself soon (I have enough Top Cashback rewards) and already have a drive waiting to go in it. Once I'm reasonably familiar with it myself and have tested the ar$e off it (and a suitable backup drive / solution), I'll probably give it to daughter. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

p.s. On the lines of 'you can manage what you can measure', I've been briefly testing all the NAS's / FS's I have here using the little Windows utility called 'LAN_SpeedTest' (I run an old / free version on this XP box).

You select a share and a test file size and it runs and gives you a bunch of stats.

Interesting to see if taking a USB3 shared drive from USB2 to 3 makes any difference. I would be interested to hear how representative this particular utility was compared with more sophisticated tests?