Anecdata, but SSDs will last longer than you want to use them in terms of write endurance.
My NAS OS SSDs are 500gb hynix drives from about 8 years ago, and they’re pushing 150 TBW.
150TB is a LOT of write cycles on a small drive, and they’re still reporting 94% endurance remaining.
The controller will die or I’ll upgrade well before that breaks at the rate it’s going.
Also keep in mind that you can read flash all you want and that doesn’t wear anything (unlike a HDD, amusingly), so for most consumer use cases, they’ll load the drive up with their data, and then only slowly modify or add to it, but have lots and lots of read access.
I hadn’t considered that, it makes all the sense of course, as a NAS, even when torrenting with cache enabled, will give an SSD less wear and tear than an HDD.
If you use a NAS for file storage it really does not do extreme amounts of IO. Similar to a desktop SSD.
There are torrent freaks out there who really need that price performance fix for everyone else SSDs are fine. Always run them in RAID anyway for redundancy and get TLC storage not QLC.
Heavily depends. If you want to use it as long-term cold storage you absolutely should not use SSDs, they’re losing data when left unpowered for too long. While HDDs are also not perfect in retaining data forever, they won’t fail as quickly when left on a shelf.
Well, they arguably can also be used as one big long-term storage. Not sure who’d need to save so much data for a long time, but there surely will be at least some people who do and buy the “modern solution” over old HDDs thinking they’re better in general. As the “family backup” for example, or as cold storage solution in faculties that can be quickly accessed if needed.
Read somewhere about a professor who used SSDs to “permanently” store important data on SSDs (perhaps in the comments of the article above) for a few years. Well, wasn’t that permanent…
This. I can’t afford reliable always-on storage now, but I plan to build for SSDs rather than HDDs because I don’t have a separate room to put it into.
Are people really doing NAS with SSD? Not just for cache?
Yes, for purposes of noise, size, speed and power efficiency
More reliable, less power draw than HDDs, faster and far more space efficient.
Unless you are data hoarding random torrents, 6 to 12 TB is plenty.
Are they really more reliable than NAS “grade” HDD - and a ssd cache? I always saw SSD with a max write on them, and a NAS does plenty of I/O.
Admittedly I’ve never had an SSD go bad in my computers, but for some reason I never considered them as a good enough alternative for a NAS.
Are there any data you know of the top of your head before I go searching?
Anecdata, but SSDs will last longer than you want to use them in terms of write endurance.
My NAS OS SSDs are 500gb hynix drives from about 8 years ago, and they’re pushing 150 TBW.
150TB is a LOT of write cycles on a small drive, and they’re still reporting 94% endurance remaining.
The controller will die or I’ll upgrade well before that breaks at the rate it’s going.
Also keep in mind that you can read flash all you want and that doesn’t wear anything (unlike a HDD, amusingly), so for most consumer use cases, they’ll load the drive up with their data, and then only slowly modify or add to it, but have lots and lots of read access.
I hadn’t considered that, it makes all the sense of course, as a NAS, even when torrenting with cache enabled, will give an SSD less wear and tear than an HDD.
It comes down to price vs everything else
If you use a NAS for file storage it really does not do extreme amounts of IO. Similar to a desktop SSD.
There are torrent freaks out there who really need that price performance fix for everyone else SSDs are fine. Always run them in RAID anyway for redundancy and get TLC storage not QLC.
TIL about TLC vs QLC, thanks
I guess my next Nas will be SSD then
If you don’t cheap out you are fine
Heavily depends. If you want to use it as long-term cold storage you absolutely should not use SSDs, they’re losing data when left unpowered for too long. While HDDs are also not perfect in retaining data forever, they won’t fail as quickly when left on a shelf.
Good and true point, but arguably most NASs are built to be used, not to be not-used…
Well, they arguably can also be used as one big long-term storage. Not sure who’d need to save so much data for a long time, but there surely will be at least some people who do and buy the “modern solution” over old HDDs thinking they’re better in general. As the “family backup” for example, or as cold storage solution in faculties that can be quickly accessed if needed.
Read somewhere about a professor who used SSDs to “permanently” store important data on SSDs (perhaps in the comments of the article above) for a few years. Well, wasn’t that permanent…
If you live in a small place and dont have massive storage needs, it can make sense for the sake of the quietness.
This. I can’t afford reliable always-on storage now, but I plan to build for SSDs rather than HDDs because I don’t have a separate room to put it into.
I have a long-term dream to build a fanless SSD-powered NAS
Self-hosted, silent, fast - what’s not to love, aside from steep price tag?
I did, because of energy efficiency and quietness. But also I heavily compromised on the amount of space.