Is there any cheap SSD suitable for a NAS?

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Octopuss

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I have a simple three disk setup running virtualized TrueNAS with the basic 4TB WD Red disks (EFRX, replaced by EFZX this year; larger cache and supposedly a tiny bit faster). They are all about three years old (possibly longer) and running nonstop, I feel like they might be pushing their lifespan somewhat soon. Actually one of them already failed about a year ago and I had to replace it.
Lately I've been thinking about what to replace them with when their time comes, and started considering SSDs. Now I don't really know what large capacity SSDs cost besides A LOT, but quick look at the pool usage showed me I could get away with 2TB drives (RAIDz1) if I cut down on the amount of downloaded films and other questionable content.
Obviously I'd be looking at SATA drives and the speed wouldn't matter all that much as long as they are faster than HDDs; I am after faster access times etc. rather than raw speed (important, but not a priority). I don't write too much data to the thing, it's just a home NAS where I store daily backups of three PCs plus various pirated audiovisual stuff, so the endurance rating wouldn't have to be something server-grade like.
I wouldn't mind buying 2nd hand if such drive was reliable model without tons of data written to it.

So the TL;DR is: is there say 2TB SATA SSD that doesn't cost an arm and a leg when buying three of them? Obviously everyone's arm has different worth, but since this is a segment I never paid attention at, I am pretty much lost and getting some ideas is probably faster than starting a research from scratch.

edit: or should I just, when the time comes, "upgrade" to the WD Red Pro line.
 
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i386

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Save the money, buy hdds and get some darn fast ssds that can be used for caching. That way you can get decent performance for a moderate price.

Ps: you can use the saved money to avoid pirating and buy/stream the stuff legally :D
 
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andrewbedia

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My advice is PM853T 960GB for SATA drives. They are about $100 on ebay.
If you have capacity (the right motherboard) for it, PM983 NVMe drives are about the same price.
If you are patient and check ebay frequently, 2TB Intel P3500 is my favorite drive. Good endurance, real MLC performance. Hard to find, but they do pop up for $150-250 on ebay.

Consider VMs on SSDs, bulk storage on HDDs.

WD Red Pro isn't worth it. Move to SAS if you're already thinking about this.
 

Octopuss

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My advice is PM853T 960GB for SATA drives.
I specifically said 2TB, why are you suggesting something I don't want+can't use?

2TB Intel P3500 is my favorite drive.
Quick google search told me this is a NVMe drive, judging by the speeds. I, again, specifically said I was looking for SATA drives. I have absolutely zero interest in buying new HBA card. The server was already painfully expensive for home use.

WD Red Pro isn't worth it. Move to SAS if you're already thinking about this.
Why not? 4TB Red Pro cost about $144 equivalent over here. That's still vastly cheaper than SSDs with half the capacity. And they are noticeably faster (specs-wise at least) than the basic Reds - I think something like 150 vs 220MB/s.

I don't store any VMs on the NAS. Just data. Speed in absolute numbers isn't that important, as long as it's in the typical SATA SSD range.
 
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Evan

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You can assume about $100 per TB, so 3 x 2tb ~$600

Samsung PM863a in 1.92tb or 3.84tb is a pretty good sata option. I am sure can find cheaper but don’t want too worn or old ones.
 
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andrewbedia

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I specifically said 2TB, why are you suggesting something I don't want+can't use?


Quick google search told me this is a NVMe drive, judging by the speeds. I, again, specifically said I was looking for SATA drives. I have absolutely zero interest in buying new HBA card. The server was already painfully expensive for home use.


Why not? 4TB Red Pro cost about $144 equivalent over here. That's still vastly cheaper than SSDs with half the capacity. And they are noticeably faster (specs-wise at least) than the basic Reds - I think something like 150 vs 220MB/s.

I don't store any VMs on the NAS. Just data. Speed in absolute numbers isn't that important, as long as it's in the typical SATA SSD range.
Over here... over where?

4TB SAS disks are $40 on ebay. If as you say you are not storing VMs on this, I'm not sure the price premium moving to SSDs will ever pay for itself.

You will get alternative solutions suggested to you on this forum. Everyone, you and myself included, are not omniscient and ask questions and turn over ideas in open forum. If you don't want to have open discussion/want to be low key hostile, this is not the place for you.
 

Octopuss

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How do you expect me to react to useless suggestions?
I asked about 2TB drives, you suggested 960GB one. I specifically mentioned SATA, you suggested NVMe drive.
You either lack reading comprehension or I don't know what the problem is.
 
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Patriot

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How do you expect me to react to useless suggestions?
I asked about 2TB drives, you suggested 960GB one. I specifically mentioned SATA, you suggested NVMe drive.
You either lack reading comprehension or I don't know what the problem is.
If you are asking about topics you don't know about, how do you know if a suggestion is useless? He was simply playing off i386s suggestion of large HDD and fast cache, NVME IS the fast cache.

If you want all flash storage, sas ssds are probably more cost effective and I'm not sure what HBA you have that only supports SATA. You should probably detail your setup a bit more for better help. SAS SSDs are the most cost effective, SATA/NVME cost pretty close in large sizes.

Merry Chistmas, be nice, im out of coal.
 
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Octopuss

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At the very least the suggestion about completely different capacity drive was more useless than useless. If I ask about 2TB drives, there is a reason why I specifically mention such capacity. Another indicator would be the fact I am currently using 4TB disks. That should be an indicator of 2TB already being a compromise, the lowest capacity I can go to or whatever. But no...
I agree the NVMe drive suggestion wasn't absolutely useless because I didn't clearly state I didn't have any M.2/NVMe slots available in the server (otherwise that SSD wouldn't be bad at all). Fine.

Where you got I don't know about this topic I don't know. I now pretty well what SATA, NVMe, SSD and a HDD is. I am looking for upgrade possibilities and yes, I have no idea what the possibilities are, BUT I know pretty well what the base parameters should be. That's where I usually lose it when I keep getting suggestions about stuff that clearly falls outside of what is being asked. At least I didn't get entitled comments along the lines of "you should have shown some gratitude" or similar shit. No, why should I thank someone for something I didn't ask for?

Anyway, there's no point in arguing about this back and forth though and that was my little "screw xmas" rant.
I am sure andrewbedia will gladly not give me anymore suggestions and everyone will be happy.

For anyone else who is willing to accept the baseline I established in the first post, I am more than open about suggestions.
 

Patriot

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You wont find many accepting of baselines here, we use things not as intended but as we want to.

m.2 is not the limit of nvme dirves, simply an x4 connector on the motherboard. That said you are unlikely to be able to boot from it without bios/uefi mods without m.2 on board. Needs the nvme drivers in the board firmware. In the large scale of cost of SSDs hba is small potatoes.

If you want large SSDs SAS is the cheap way to go, what HBA do you have, or are you limited by a backplane?
You can get Sammy SATA drives of the model listed... up to 4tb.

If you are going to be picky, set keyword notices on ebay for when the 3 models you are interested in are finally cheap enough.

Look for useful information, dismiss what you don't need. People are here to help.
 
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zack$

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If your not on at least a 10G network there is no practical reason to go the SSD route. In any event, note that you can saturate a 10G network with HDDs.

Like others have said, given your use case, get some SAS HDDs and an HBA (if you don't have one).

SAS HDD (10 TB): HUH721010AL4200 HGST Ultrastar He10 10TB 7200RPM SAS 12Gbps 256MB | eBay

HBA: AOC-S2308L-L8E SUPERMICRO BROADCOM 8-PORT 6GB SAS/SATA PCIE RAID CONTROLLER LP | eBay

If you insist on still doing 2 TB Sata, then there is no better recommendation at this time, IMHO, than @zer0sum.

While SATA drives will allow you to utilize the existing SATA ports on your MB at no extra cost, switching to SAS HDDs will pay off in the long run as they are cheaper and plentiful on the used market.

The cost of a HBA is so negligible in this equation that there is really no good reason not to consider it (unless you have no pcie slots left).
 

Octopuss

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If you want large SSDs SAS is the cheap way to go, what HBA do you have, or are you limited by a backplane?
Not sure exactly, but it has the LSI 2308 chip. I'm quite confused by the model numbers (something is 9207 for example and something is 2308...) and brands. I did some basic research back when I bought the card off ebay, but that was like two years ago and I forgot most of it.

If your not on at least a 10G network there is no practical reason to go the SSD route. In any event, note that you can saturate a 10G network with HDDs.
Can I really? How come? A WD Red Pro drive (the next best thing after SSDs I have in mind if the cost would be too high) has around 215MB/s speed. 10Gbit is arout 1000MB/s in real word IIRC.

I do have Intel X710 card in the server, but haven't finished this part of the build yet. In any case, I do have plans to buy another 10Gbit card for my PC at some point this year.

I don't really insist on 2TB, I'd prefer 3TB at least since that would give me 6GB space under RAIDZ1. 2TB is possible, but I am pretty close at ~3.1TB used space already.
While I largely prefer to buy a SSD 2nd hand, I'd be less than excited to do so when it comes to rotating disk that has who knows how many tens of thousands hours on the record. Also, aren't SAS drives loud as hell by design, being mostly used in servers where this is no concern? The server sits in the living room next to my wife's desk. She wouldn't be happy about one rattling and buzzing box :D
 

itronin

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If your not on at least a 10G network there is no practical reason to go the SSD route. In any event, note that you can saturate a 10G network with HDDs.
Respectfully I have to disagree just a wee bit with that. Storage Density is a practical reason.
With large cap 2.5" SSD's I can fit say 100TB+ raw in the same physical space space that I can fit 5 x 20TB raw 3.5" spinners.
with a 2 disk per drive group "parity" I'll also have much higher usable capacity using the 2.5" SSD's than say high cap 3.5" spinners.
you are 100% correct though that a design will benefit more if you have 10Gbe (at least for reads with these types of drives).

IMG_4131.jpg

@Octopuss best large cap 2.5" SSD deal I've been able to achieve post CHIA is about .071/GB.
Deals are out there. If you are looking for cheaper than that, please share if you find it and after you've purchased what you require.

@Evan is accurate, I too use $100TB (or 960GB) as a baseline when starting to search. I am confident that's also a number others here use as well. But, that's the search start or "the I need to buy it now sure" position, less $$ are better. If you are looking for someone to just point and tell you "go here"... that's probably not gonna happen. Good deals more often than not get posted (here, R, other places) after the person posting got what they were looking and maybe there are some left *or* they found something they weren't looking for and decided to share.

Sandisk Cloudspeed Eco gen ii 3.84TB can be found for less than 300.00 periodically.
Micron SM883 is a better drive than PM883 - both are very good drives. Both available in your target size
As stated previously, 863a is something you should look for, great drive, can be found for < $100/TB
If you find yourself in a position where you can deploy more drives then consider the venerable 853T, yes, only 960GB, but they're cheap and you can find them less than $90/drive.

Only other thing is look at your use case, look at reliability stats and decide whether QLC will fit your needs. I'm sticking to TLC for the moment. I'd prefer MLC but 15mm drives are too big for my current build (unless they were 15 or 30TB :)).

Edit - oh and I agree that Micron 1100 2TB drive might be your best value right now. I don't consider 2TB SSD large cap any more so that's why I'm not looking at its price/GB. ;)
 
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Octopuss

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Oh heck no, QLC will never enter this house. While I am not one of those "omfg have to move temp folders, cache etc. to spinning disk otherwise SSD dies in xyz months", QLC is just not what I'd want for any use. Maybe I am way too used to my Samsung 970 Pro and set the standard too high, I don't know, but just a few random technical facts about QLC is enough not to want to have anything to do with such products.
 

Sean Ho

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A friendly suggestion based on my experience fielding similar questions: to pose an effective question, either narrow the scope of your question by specifying clear constraints without justification ("What's the cheapest 2TB TLC SATA SSD with at least 0.5 DWPD?"), or broaden the scope by describing your overall use cases and constraints ("I'd like more space on my home NAS storing desktop backups and downloaded media, currently running TrueNAS with 3x4TB WD Reds. What do you recommend?"). If you pose a narrow question, you run the risk of asking the wrong question; you may get an answer that satisfies you but doesn't solve your ultimate issue. If you pose a broader question, expect and welcome a diversity of responses and debate over pros/cons.

A very large number of users over at SB have exactly the same use cases as you do, and we generally point them to Unraid on 3.5" spinners (either new shucks or used SAS2). Backups are batch jobs, and streaming media is less than gigabit. For VMs, yes use flash. This setup can be extremely cost-effective for limited budgets; many of our users have over 100TB usable at home for their *cough* totally legal "Linux ISOs". There are plenty of other quite valid ways to build a home NAS, though; no disrespect to TrueNAS intended at all.

In any event, note that you can saturate a 10G network with HDDs.
Can I really? How come?
RAID/zfs uses multiple drives at a time. 10Gbps can be saturated by 6-8 spinners; the dual-8087 link of an -8i SAS2 HBA can be saturated by 16-20. That's with RAID0, which is rarely appropriate to use, but just tweak calculations according to your raid level.

As itronin highlights, though, drive bays themselves cost money (rack space, additional chassis, PSU, power, cooling). All the more reason to consider spinners, if you are willing to expand your parameters.

Also, aren't SAS drives loud as hell by design, being mostly used in servers where this is no concern?
A drive's noise is not made by its controller speaking SAS or SATA protocol. It's true that for a long time noise was not a design consideration for equipment intended for the datacenter, but even there folks are realizing that noise energy ultimately becomes heat, which requires more energy to remove. I have both SAS and SATA spinners (nearly all older than 5 years, still going strong); the noise characteristics are not terribly different. 5400 vs 7200 vs 10k is noticeable, though, and certain brands/models are louder.

All the best on your hunt for drives; it's homelab, it should be fun!
 

Octopuss

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A friendly suggestion based on my experience fielding similar questions: to pose an effective question, either narrow the scope of your question by specifying clear constraints without justification ("What's the cheapest 2TB TLC SATA SSD with at least 0.5 DWPD?"), or broaden the scope by describing your overall use cases and constraints ("I'd like more space on my home NAS storing desktop backups and downloaded media, currently running TrueNAS with 3x4TB WD Reds. What do you recommend?"). If you pose a narrow question, you run the risk of asking the wrong question; you may get an answer that satisfies you but doesn't solve your ultimate issue. If you pose a broader question, expect and welcome a diversity of responses and debate over pros/cons.
Hmm, I guess you're right, that makes sense.

the noise characteristics are not terribly different. 5400 vs 7200 vs 10k is noticeable, though, and certain brands/models are louder.
That's another reason why I'd like to swap HDDs for SSDs: the regular WD Reds are 5400rpm drives. They are audible during operation, but it's not annoying at all. I'm afraid just going to 7200 would make things a lot worse, but I haven't had a disk in my PC for over a decade and I don't even remember what 7200rpm one sounds like. I do remember I had to do all kinds of obscure shit to dampen the damn things so the case wouldn't vibrate etc., though.
I don't plan on expanding the storage, three disks and 4-6TB (4 minimum, 6 with lots of reserve) space is all I need.
 

Evan

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Disks these days are loudest on head seeking regardless of speed. From memory the WD RED’s used to be quieter drives.

So just to put out what I have , my file storage is all SSD, a raid set of 4 x 3.84tb
Would never go back to spinning things (have a couple of disks on a synology for data dump & backup though.

My main issue is I am never happy as I want low power so always thinking of changing around , maybe even an NUC with external thunderbolt storage. Currently my storage (SSD’s as above) sits in a HPE microserver gen10 plus. Works fine but I have systems for playing/lab, that is a 5-node ceph cluster (HP ec200a’s) and a couple of supermicro 8-core d-1540/1541 systems with local NVMe.

I did think of consolidating all the lab to 24-core / 768gb or even larger but the physical footprint of that kind of system is large unless of get super motivated to use a small case instead of a HP/Dell/Supermicro box.

Anyway back to the topic and a different idea, what about a single large 3.84 or 7.68tb SSD (NVMe would be nice but SATA if you don’t need max performance and low power/heat a priority) then a backup to 1 or 2 spinning disks ?
(If Linux say use btrfs with checksum on a single disk so you can detect errors)