Advise for purchasing new NAS

[Sankaw 10]

hello there ... 

 

planning to setup a NAS system, currently i use a normal 2 external hard drives connected to my IMAC

what is the best NAS ( synology, WD or something else ) 

pls note that i will use the NAS only for emby 

thank you . 

[Luke 42078]

HI, Synology would be my suggestion, but Asustor is a great choice as well.

[Sankaw 10]

thank you Luke 

always helpful 

[Sankaw 10]

Hi There,

 

after searching here and there, I couldn't find other than WD and Synology in my city

so I will go with Synology its either ( DS923+ or DS420+ )

I guess my choice will be DS923+ as i read the DS923 better than DS420

 

so now for the hard drives 

the M2 and SSD super expansive 

- The M2,

SEAGATE 4TB FireCuda 530 NVMe M.2 SSD PCIe 4.0, 7300MB/s  

Around ( 487$ )

- The SSD

WD 4TB SSD Blue 2.5'' SATA Solid State Drive 7MM, 560MB/s

Around ( 357$ )

and the Synology DS923+ around 683$ so i will go for the HDD ( i need more than 15TB )

( NO SSD OR M2 unless you try to convince me otherwise )

 

for the HDD

What's better Seagate Iron wolf or WD Red ? and should i keep something on mind for the hard drives before buying ? i mean the speed or rpm ?

 

 

 

Thanks

[Luke 42078]

8 hours ago, Sankaw said:

Hi There,

 

after searching here and there, I couldn't find other than WD and Synology in my city

so I will go with Synology its either ( DS923+ or DS420+ )

I guess my choice will be DS923+ as i read the DS923 better than DS420

 

so now for the hard drives 

the M2 and SSD super expansive 

- The M2,

SEAGATE 4TB FireCuda 530 NVMe M.2 SSD PCIe 4.0, 7300MB/s  

Around ( 487$ )

- The SSD

WD 4TB SSD Blue 2.5'' SATA Solid State Drive 7MM, 560MB/s

Around ( 357$ )

and the Synology DS923+ around 683$ so i will go for the HDD ( i need more than 15TB )

( NO SSD OR M2 unless you try to convince me otherwise )

 

for the HDD

What's better Seagate Iron wolf or WD Red ? and should i keep something on mind for the hard drives before buying ? i mean the speed or rpm ?

 

 

 

Thanks

Those are both good hdd choices. I like to console the storagereview leaderboard when making these kinds of decisions:

https://www.storagereview.com/best_drives

[Spaceboy 2573]

every hard disk i've bought in the last ten years has been shucked from a wd desktop case. currently got 48 of them in two synology nas's with expansion units and i think in that time i've had one or two disks deterioriate below what the syno told me was an acceptable state and i replaced them with no issue. i know there are brands that are supposed to be nas specific but from my experience they just appear to be a waste of money. one of the drives was still in warranty and WD swapped the bare disk under RMA no questions asked.

personally, with the syno disk health monitoring software and back ups of critical data, i'm more than happy to balance the c30% saving on disk costs against the demonstrably minor increased risk (if at all) of hard drive problems

[Sankaw 10]

13 hours ago, Spaceboy said:

every hard disk i've bought in the last ten years has been shucked from a wd desktop case. currently got 48 of them in two synology nas's with expansion units and i think in that time i've had one or two disks deterioriate below what the syno told me was an acceptable state and i replaced them with no issue. i know there are brands that are supposed to be nas specific but from my experience they just appear to be a waste of money. one of the drives was still in warranty and WD swapped the bare disk under RMA no questions asked.

personally, with the syno disk health monitoring software and back ups of critical data, i'm more than happy to balance the c30% saving on disk costs against the demonstrably minor increased risk (if at all) of hard drive problems

thanks for the reply Spaceboy.

 

i bought the DS923+ with WD red 4TB today with a good price .

 

now with the USB on the behind (DS923+) can i connect my old hard drive and copy everything to the new hard drives ? is it possible to do this ?

 

 

Thanks .

[c-feiou 0]

I wouldn’t buy WD.
(I’ve stopped buying WD HDDs for our enterprise servers years ago. Only headaches with the disks and support).

I would go with Seagate Iron Wolf Plus  or Toshiba.
If you buy the Plus Edition, the exchange for the new disk is easy like Apples Care Plan. You get the new one first and then you send your disk to seagate back. I’ve done this (only) two times in the last 9 years (managing a lot of servers and NAS).

(btw: No, I’m not a sales representative from seagate

Maybe you should watch this two videos. Interesting informations about WD:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sankaw 10]

5 hours ago, c-feiou said:

I wouldn’t buy WD.
(I’ve stopped buying WD HDDs for our enterprise servers years ago. Only headaches with the disks and support).

I would go with Seagate Iron Wolf Plus  or Toshiba.
If you buy the Plus Edition, the exchange for the new disk is easy like Apples Care Plan. You get the new one first and then you send your disk to seagate back. I’ve done this (only) two times in the last 9 years (managing a lot of servers and NAS).

(btw: No, I’m not a sales representative from seagate

Maybe you should watch this two videos. Interesting informations about WD:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well i bought it already, but Thanks for the reply 

[Sankaw 10]

So yesterday i setup my NAS server and got thru the setup wizard For the Raid ( i watched some videos regarding that )

and as the Synology recommended ( SHR ) i have selected ( please recommend if there is better raid than SHR, as i will use my NAS for Emby server only with 3 HDD 4TBs )

Then asked me to select the drive that will have the storage pool, so to be honest i didn't know what to do here but i selected all 3 drives 

and now i got only 7TB free which is way less than i wanted ( i didn't think about this before buying , so i guess i will get a 10TB today and get the 4th Bay occupied ) .

 

 

 

and for my Q, If it possible to connect my old drive via DS923+ USB PORT and copy everything in it .

 

 

 

Thank you .

[allineedis 18]

I do echo the Toshiba drives or the HGST drives (they are now bought by WD, but the manufacturing site is still HGST).

What size of drives did you buy?

You mentioned SHR. Look for Synology Raid Calculator, that will give you an estimate on how much net you will have. I am using SHR2 and I deduct 9% of the total shown capacity in the calculator. This is assuming BTRFS is enabled as well. So 40TB would be real world around 36TB....

[allineedis 18]

Forgot to add.

You talked about 4TB drives. The calculator shows indeed 8TB (assuming 3 * 4 TB disks), which in real world is around the 7TB.

Be aware that you cannot simply add a 10TB disk. It will be seen as a 4TB disk. This is due to the way SHR (or Raid) works. You will waste 6TB of space.

[Sankaw 10]

26 minutes ago, allineedis said:

Forgot to add.

You talked about 4TB drives. The calculator shows indeed 8TB (assuming 3 * 4 TB disks), which in real world is around the 7TB.

Be aware that you cannot simply add a 10TB disk. It will be seen as a 4TB disk. This is due to the way SHR (or Raid) works. You will waste 6TB of space.

 

 

Yes i got 3 x 4TB 

as i said, i selected SHR as it was the recommended one from Synology  and then for the pool storage i selected all 3 drives 

so now i got 7TB , which is not enough for me . 

i searched the youtube yesterday and i found one talking about the Raid types and As he said ( SHR is the one you can combine drives of different sizes )

Check this youtube viedo at 10:33

[allineedis 18]

that is correct, but since you are using SHR this will protect you from 1 drive failure. This means one drive will be fully assigned to parity (protection). SHR will always assume the largest drive as parity drive and expects 2 equally large drives for a consistent parity set, since this is assumed to be the worst scenario case.

See it as follows. SHR will create partitions on all of your hard drives. Assume you install the 4th of 10 TB. It will create 4 x 4 TB partitions (or 8 x 2TB). Since 4TB is the drive size that would need to replaced (protected) in case of a drive failure . SHR cannot add a more partitions, basically creating another 1 x 4TB or 3 x 2TB on your 10TB drive, since it cannot protect against that 10TB drive failing, simply because there is not enough parity data available. Protection always assumes the worst case scenario (the largest drive) which needs to have an equally large parity drive.

Rule of thumb is (not wasting space) is the 2 largest drives are equal in size. Any other drives can be smaller and of different drive size.

3 x 4TB + 10TB

https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4 TB|4 TB|4 TB|10 TB

2 x 4TB + 2 x 10TB

https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4 TB|4 TB|10 TB|10 TB

 

 

[Sankaw 10]

23 minutes ago, allineedis said:

that is correct, but since you are using SHR this will protect you from 1 drive failure. This means one drive will be fully assigned to parity (protection). SHR will always assume the largest drive as parity drive and expects 2 equally large drives for a consistent parity set, since this is assumed to be the worst scenario case.

See it as follows. SHR will create partitions on all of your hard drives. Assume you install the 4th of 10 TB. It will create 4 x 4 TB partitions (or 8 x 2TB). Since 4TB is the drive size that would need to replaced (protected) in case of a drive failure . SHR cannot add a more partitions, basically creating another 1 x 4TB or 3 x 2TB on your 10TB drive, since it cannot protect against that 10TB drive failing, simply because there is not enough parity data available. Protection always assumes the worst case scenario (the largest drive) which needs to have an equally large parity drive.

Rule of thumb is (not wasting space) is the 2 largest drives are equal in size. Any other drives can be smaller and of different drive size.

3 x 4TB + 10TB

https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4 TB|4 TB|4 TB|10 TB

2 x 4TB + 2 x 10TB

https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4 TB|4 TB|10 TB|10 TB

 

 

 

 

I understand now, Thank you for making things clear for me .

so i guess i will go adding 4TB and not wasting space and money for a future that we dont know about 

 

 

one more thing please, is it possible to connect my old hard drive via DS923 USB and copy everything ?

 

 

 

thank you .

[allineedis 18]

When you plugin the external HDD it should be recognized by your 923. If not check under System >> External devices.

Once the external drive is available go to File Station. From there you can transfer the files over to the 923.

 

[Sankaw 10]

14 hours ago, allineedis said:

When you plugin the external HDD it should be recognized by your 923. If not check under System >> External devices.

Once the external drive is available go to File Station. From there you can transfer the files over to the 923.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

i will do that, once the Synology finish adding the 4th Drive ... it taking along time to add almost 10 Hours now.

is that normal ?

[Spaceboy 2573]

takes me a whole week with a 100Tb pool

[Sankaw 10]

48 minutes ago, Spaceboy said:

takes me a whole week with a 100Tb pool

 GOD ... i can't imagine how did you pass that week .

 

i really want to thank you for your help and time, i just started transferring my data and it will take 17 Hours for the first hard drive .

 

again Thank you .