Please recommend me a NAS with minimum 6x2.5" bays and no FAN - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2019, 09:27:12 pm
content: So I have an old Netgear for rotating rust and I want to get rid of it. Please recommend me a nice home NAS with minimum 6 (8 better) 2,5" bays and totally and absolutely silent. I don't need more than 1Gbit network interface, 2 will be nice to have and eventually some USB and eSATA connectors, but this is not a must have.What I wold like to have is a sane interface for management and standard RAID configurations.Thanks and cheers,DC1MC

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2019, 10:47:57 pm
content: I was looking for a new NAS some time ago, and it looks like fanless for more than two drives just does not exist.If you can accept fans (and I think you will have to), then I can fully recommend Synology. They all have fans, but they are relatively quiet. The spinning drives create more noise than the fans.

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2019, 11:41:54 pm
content: The Synology model that I use allows you to specify the tradeoff between fan noise and hard-drive longevity. It's never going to be something you'd put on your nightstand, though. The only way to get complete silence is to spend a small fortune on an array of SSDs and turn off the fans entirely, or spend a bigger one delegating the problem to Amazon or another cloud provider at the other end of a fast pipe.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 03:52:16 pm
content: That seems like a lot of drives for a NAS. How much storage space are you after?

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 07:46:37 pm
content: Quote from: rdl on March 21, 2019, 03:52:16 pm4-6TB in RAID3 (minimum) depending on prices of drives, the 1TB Samsungs went to an acceptable price now with different coupons and sales and the 2TB are also going down, I'm really not interested in a NAS where you can put 3'5" or bigger disks or mechanicals (large inter-disk space, forced ventilation and so on).Also I don't care to have some kind of oversized RAM/CPU to do 4K Video streaming and crypto mining and TOTALLY don't want to put a byte in any kind of cloud storage.There is a Synology with 6 bays bur really elusive to find in EU.Cheers,DC1MC

author: mk_
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:04:42 pm
content: I have 3 HP-Microserver at different locations, each running Openmediavault in the actual version. They all include 1 SSD for the System and 4pcs WD-Red 3TB and one with 4TB, each with all disks as Raid 5. Hearable but nothing to complain.After getting used to OMV I like it and it`s doing well for my purposes...

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:28:41 pm
content: Nothing against 3,5" HDDs per se, also totally nothing against having a good ventilation, the problem is that this thing will be in a room where me and SWMBO are sleeping most of the time and any kind of fan is not allowed, so it has to be solid state, no moving parts, and small.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:29:24 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 21, 2019, 07:46:37 pmHere is a list of places where you can buy the 6 bay synology.https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/1178927/synology-diskstation-ds1618+.htmlQuote from: DC1MC on March 21, 2019, 08:28:41 pmPick one: cheap, silent or small.Or keep looking to that thing you germans have a word for:eierlegende wollmilchsau.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:35:55 pm
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on March 21, 2019, 08:29:24 pmFor 800 eurons I can buy a high end Shuttle and make a NAS out of it, instead of this TWO HUGE FANS Brontosaurus, actually I was looking the Slim version:https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS416slimCheers,DC1MC

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:54:54 pm
content: Well, as the new Synology will be released later this year, I may need to improvise a bit and spare some cash for better SSDs:First think will be this box to put the disks in a 5,25" bay:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/6-Bay-2-5inch-SATA-SSD-HDD-Hot-Swap-Mobile-Rack-Enclosure-Hard-Disk-Enclosure-Rack/32921898033.htmlThen I want to see what king of Shuttle-like barebone I can find with a low-power CPU.DC1MC

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:55:21 pm
content: The DS4xx is 4-bay one...However, completely silent is still on the table. But not with a synology, since the price would be outrageous.The Samsung 860 QVO 1TB is, right now, the cheapest disk with€0,105/GB for the 1 TB.€0,114/GB for the 2 TB one.€0,157/GB for the 4 TB one.That means you can DIY a system with a cheap motherboard, large heatsink. Almost passive system. Some open source firmware. (€200~ I guess)6x1TB (€660~) for 5 TB storage RAID5.4x2TB (€940~) for 6 TB.3x4TB (€1500~)for 8 TB.Compared to a similar load with WD RED 4x2TB (€320) or 4x4TB (€480) for 6 and 12 TB of storage, you're a whole lot cheaper.Note the 4TB WD RED are noisier than the 2 TB. You could also spend some money at the hardware store and build a decent cabinet to sound isolate the box, and place it on turntable damper feet to prevent conducted rattle on the shelf it's on.Don't try hardware raid with ssd's, check thesupportlist before purchase

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 08:56:34 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 21, 2019, 08:28:41 pmIf you cannot find small fanless 6-bay 2.5" disk NAS - most likely it does not exist. I would just disregard "small" requirement, use 3.5" NAS and disconnect fans. DS1618+ Synology seems like very good candidate. SSDs will no dissipate as much heat as HDDs, you may get away w/o fans, especially if you put NAS oriented with exhausts facing up. If better airflow needed - craft chimney using plastics/paper pipe.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 09:11:02 pm
content: Yeah, it seems that I have to build it, the Chinese box will do for nice hot-plug enclosure, I need to find a little Shuttle-like barebone with a Atom/Celeron or something similar ( still 187 timesbetter than whatever ARM is in the 4bay Synology thing) and that it, the funds will be directed to SSDs, never ever I will use some rotating rust, I have also acat.The brand name NAS manufacturers of course they recommend the most enterprisey disks ever, (google and others proved it to be BS) and their estimated usage pattern is some kind of Oracle monstrosity or busy webserver with 10000 writes per second, not a file archive, so I'm pretty sure that whatever disk I'll put there will not have some special wear.I'll see if I'll be able to do some creative heat management.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 21, 2019, 09:49:08 pm
content: I own a DS214, and it's a nice ARM box. Would not have DIY-ed it. Remember, it's just a NAS. Not a server.If you want a server, you'd have to build a server.Also, Synology still uses SATA, not SAS. Those are the real enterprise disks.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2019, 12:30:25 am
content: Build one into an ATX case with your favorite low power and inexpensive motherboard. (1) With the proper vents covered to direct airflow, a "silent" power supply can be used for all of the ventilation and the 2.5" drives will be the noisiest thing.(1) You can get an ECC supporting low power motherboard and Ryzen processor for $120 total not including the RAM.

author: todd_fuller
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 01:46:14 am
content: What about GnuBee?https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1it only 5 2.5" drives, but that's pretty close.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 10:04:33 am
content: 2.5 inch drives are significantly more silent than3.5 inch. And a bit less expeexpensive than SSD. I have a raid array of 2.5” in my desktop only for the silence.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 10:40:19 am
content: You could just make your own NAS.Buy a passive power supply or a psu that doesn't turn fan on below some thresholdBuy a B350/B450 motherboard and a 60$ Athlon 200ge and 8-16 GB of memory (for caching and other stuff)Use a 32-64 GB SSD in m.2 as boot drive.Install Freenas or some equivalent.PCPartPicker part list/Price breakdown by merchantCPU:AMD - Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor(€52.90 @ Caseking) - has cooler in box, but added fully passive heatsink as an optionCPU Cooler:ARCTIC - Alpine Passive Fanless CPU Cooler(€11.90 @ Caseking)Motherboard:Gigabyte - GA-AX370M-Gaming 3 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard(€68.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) - has 6 sata ports, but 2 are disabled IF you use m2 pci-e x4 ssd , all 6 work if you use m.2 pci-e x2 ssd like the one in this list.Memory:Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory(€44.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)Storage:ADATA - XPG SX6000 128 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive(€39.45 @ Amazon Deutschland)Power Supply:BitFenix - Formula Gold 450 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply(€64.90 @ Caseking)Total:€283.13Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when availableGenerated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-23 11:35 CET+0100Pick a case with 6 or more locations for 2.5" SSDs or 3.5" SSDs or one with a bunch of optical drive slots and use adapters that convert 5.25" into 2.5" or 3.5"Example:1https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-5-3-5-HDD-SSD-Tray-to-5-25-Floppy-Drive-Bay-PC-Case-Adapter-Mounting-Bracket/122904885265?hash=item1c9db3b811:g:Y0cAAOSw5UFcJcq92https://www.ebay.com/itm/4x2-5-SATA-SSD-to-5-25-Drive-Bay-Mobile-Rack-HDD-Docking-Station-Hot-Swap-F5J5/323575329612?epid=942813991&hash=item4b5697b34c:g:zI8AAOSwkvtb~qgc

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 11:51:50 am
content: @Mariush - this is almost exactly what I plan to do, except that I'll use another SSDs holder, the one that I've posted earlier, and a Shuttle system, some go on *bay for 40-50euros with all that is needed and have a nice 5,25" bay to host the JBOD.There is totally no need to use a gaming mobo, lots of memory and powerful CPU, altogether eating 55W when idle, they are all nice and dandy if you want to play something on this system, not to export 2 iSCSI targets and some folders that have to be on 24/7/365.25.I will definitely and under no circumstances use a full size PS and case, this is just disgusting, the beige/black/black with blue blinking leds/full/half/midi/mini tower size boxes belong in the recycle bin.The open source little piece of aluminium with 5 disks and a small ARM board was a nice idea, but for 200EUR I can do better.Thanks for the research in any case.Cheers,DC1MC

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 04:42:39 pm
content: I suggested that motherboard because it was the cheapest on pcpartpicker germany which had 6 functional sata ports even with a m.2 nvme drive installed (as long as it's pci-e x2 max)Boards with b350 or b450 often have only 4 sata portsThis particular board is cheap because it uses the x370 chipset instead of the current x470. As for the "gaming" tag in the title, I don't see any actual feature that would make the board more suitable for gaming - i guess it's just marketing.Another reason why you may want to go with a board like this is ECC support - I'm not sure but there's a high change the board will accept DDR4 ECC just fine and actually use the ECC part. I think Athlon 200GE does NOT support ECC (it ignores it if it exists) but the others (Ryzen 3 1200 for example) should support it.I chose that power supply because it's very efficient and has a very silent fan profile - while it's not completely passive power supply, that may be a good thing if you decide to go with passive cpu heatsink (that alpine for example) - the slow spin of the psu fan will move enough air to not have hotspots in the case.That particular board is mATX, so you could have some minitower or slim design case quite easily.You may also want to check out boards like this one:https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157731&ignorebbr=1CPU is soldered and passively cooled. Has 4 SATA ports on the board and you can use an extra sata controller card (maybe with a pci-e x1 riser cable) to get your 6-8 sata portsDDR3L so-dimms are also cheaper than DDR4 but the performance of those CPU is kinda small (should be enough for some basic NAS though)

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 04:56:46 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 23, 2019, 11:51:50 amI helped a friend build a NAS couple months ago and he went with a $70 ASUS Prime A320M-K and $50 Athlon 200GE and that is still what I recommend although with only 4 SATA ports, it will require an SATA host bust adapter.QuoteAn ATX mini-tower would be large enough and has the advantage of using commodity parts like power supplies. The size also makes silent operation easier. There are some smaller sort of standardized power supplies which are almost as good though. Flex ATX? I forget the name.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 05:17:50 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 23, 2019, 04:56:46 pmMini tower large enough for what ? The 6 x 2.5" are fitting perfectly in the 5,25 holder, either mine or the one posted by Mariush, the rest is just waste of space and it's not like a Shuttle case will be crowded with them, what it needs is a half height PCI card with 6 ports and the SATA cable management done right.Also I'll desperately try tounderclockthe CPU, really I just want to have a data storage and not some video streaming, bitcoin mining space heater machine. If one of this Chinese WhateverPi arm64 boards would have some proper SATA ports will be enough.Well, I guess if I got a Shuttle for less then 50EUR with 4GB RAM and a Core2Duo, even if I will prove unsuitable it will still be a good to have around for experiments.Cheers,DC1MC

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 06:21:08 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 23, 2019, 05:17:50 pmCramming the drives together in the minimum space increases forced air cooling requirements. I would actually prefer spacing them out among more 5.25 slots so less cooling is required.QuoteGood luck finding that. If I knew of one, I would be using it. Reasonably priced PCI and PCIe SATA adapters are rare enough that it is often much more economical to buy a "gamer" motherboard and disable most of it just for the extra SATA ports. I wonder what Backblaze uses. Here is my not terribly old reference on the subject:http://blog.zorinaq.com/from-32-to-2-ports-ideal-satasas-controllers-for-zfs-linux-md-ra/I have been leary of using SATA port multipliers. Similar technologies in the past only brought tears.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 09:41:08 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 23, 2019, 06:21:08 pmHere you go (8-ports):https://www.broadcom.com/products/storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9207-8ihttp://www.scsi4me.com/dell-hv52w-perc-h310-adapter-8-port-internal-6gb-s-sas-sata-raid-controller.html

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2019, 11:18:03 pm
content: This controller:https://www.ebay.de/itm/LSI-SAS3081E-R-8-port-Internal-SATA-SAS-3Gb-s-PCI-E-RAID-Controller-Card/131983310976And this cable:https://www.ebay.de/itm/1-Stucke-Mini-SAS-SFF-8087-zu-4-Port-SATA-HDD-Festplatte-Adapter-Konverter/163048151379Hopefully they fit

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 04:59:27 am
content: I have seen the used PERC ones which came out of data centers before.I found out Backblaze uses cheap 2 and 4 port SI controller boards with SI port multipliers. They report problems with non-SI controllers and port multipliers so avoid using the Intel (and AMD?) SATA ports on the motherboard.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2019, 08:38:52 pm
content: I've won these two Shuttle XPC on >:Dbay, for less than 80EUR together, one silver and one black, let's see who radiates better.Also I've got myself some kind of Chinesium Powermeter to see how low can I go), I'll have it checked with the HW guys in the office to see if it's totally bogus or not.The silver XPC is a Dual Core E6500 - 2,93 GHz w/ 4 GB RAM, the black one is a Dual Core E5400 2,7GHz w/ 3GB Ram SG41J1.I'll see when they arrive what kind of PCI slot they have, to get the SATA 8 port adapter and cables. In the mean time I'll try to see if I can quiet the PS and the CPU cooler fan.Also two "defective" 128GB SanDisk SSDs, for 9,95EUR a piece, shipping included, to use them as boot disks, there is a guy that sells them on DE bay as "defective, cause unknown", he sold hundreds and one buyer said: "Wrong description, I've bought 10 of them and none is defect..."Enjoy the pictures and cheers,DC1MC

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2019, 10:28:00 pm
content: Those meters are reasonably accurate... should give you actual power +/- a few watts.Also, usually these report correct values from around 3w and up.... don't expect to measure stand-by power with pc shut down (~1w)

author: Hemi345
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 02:42:56 am
content: I bought two over those XPC "glamour" Shuttle cases and the power supplies are complete crap. They were anything but quiet since they had 3 fans spinning inside of them and the aluminum chassis amplifying the fan noise. They both ran 24/7 in my office (clean enviroment) and both PSU's died after about 1.5 years. The genuine Shuttle replacement PSU died after about a year. I frankenstein'd a standard ATX PSU on the other one by just sitting it on top and running the power cables through the hole where the old PSU used to be. It ran that way for a few years till the fan on the chipset died a few years later.A steel mini tower or HTPC case that can accept one or two 120mm fans is your best bet for silent operation with a little performance mixed in and still look nice. In my HTPC case, Silverstone, like this oneI installed an Athlon 3ghz dual core with 8GB ram, an SSD for OS and apps, and 1TB WD Black for recordings. The HDD is suspended using bungees in one of the 5.25 bays for near silent operation. The CPU has an old Arctic Cooling heatsink on it with the fan removed, this one:PSU is a 500W Corsair model that is dead silent. I've never seen the fan run on it, maybe it's broken haha. One single 120mm fan wired for 7V in the case cools the entire thing and has run great like this for the last 7 years 24/7 decoding HD streams and comm skipping recordings. I cannot hear it more than a couple feet away in a dead quiet room. Since we use it as a front end for our TV, it needed to be silent. The great part is I have plenty of room for more HDDs, fullheight PCI/PCIe cards, etc and it looks like another piece of audio gear sitting next to the HTPC receiver.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 07:51:35 pm
content: Just a quick update:- The silver XPC arrived, the black one will be here today.- The power meter arrived as well, the GLS driver of course just left a card- I have happily destroyed the two SanDisk and a OCZ of 120GB each, doing thermal testing, around 85C they stop, around 95 they die if under power, one of them with magic soul smoke even. Pictures will followI will start "silencing" testing, Hemi345 is right, as far as I remember, the Shuttles have a large CPU cooler fan that is easy to control a whiny 5cm power supply fan that whines like one of these hysterical little dogs. I will start to get rid of it first.Question:What should I use for the system disk: WD Green, Kingston or Crucial, all 240GB, any suggestions backed by actual experiences are appreciated.Cheers,DC1MC

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 08:28:24 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 27, 2019, 07:51:35 pmFlash memory definitely cannot handle high temperatures. At 85 degree ambient the retention of SLC memory inside microcontrollers drops to a few years. And that's large flash.SSD's have very modern multilayer tiny flash.I would recommend a Samsung drive. I've used Crucials, and they fell short. They couldn't handle combined IO (sequential and random) very well. The Samsung I have now can do thisa lotbetter.Crucial used to be the cheapest, yet the competition in price has almost died. You have to look at the controller and firmware today. The availability of backup capacitors, and cache memory.Edit: Also, make sure you use the correct filesystem, and no hardware raid.https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2016/11/18/dont-do-it-consumer-ssd/

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 08:36:30 pm
content: Uhmm, the boot/system disk in my NAS situation will do almost nothing from disk I/O point of view, it will boot the system and hold some logs, what needs to have is a bit of reliability.Let's see what controllers do those babies have:WD Green Silicon Motion SM2258XTKingston SSDNow UV400 Marvell 88SS1074Crucial BX500 Silicon Motion SM2258XTNow what ?

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 08:57:22 pm
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on March 27, 2019, 08:28:24 pmNo hardware raid? - Could you please provide specifics?

author: Hemi345
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 09:22:10 pm
content: Going by Amazon reviews, the Samsung 8xx series seem pretty good, I've no complaints on the one that I have in a laptop. I've had great luck with Corsair Force and Sandisk Ultra and Extreme series in both home and work computers. The Corsair models have been running 24/7 in workstations for the last 6 or 7 years. The one in my HTPC is an OCZ Vertex 60GB that is almost 10 years old. I honestly think that if you don't cheap out and keep temperatures under control, most will last for a really long time, especially if there are very little writes.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 10:49:14 pm
content: === START, YOU COULD SKIP TO NEXT === for some mildly interesting technical stuff !!!Well, to start I seem to be able to get the purpose of my project here, that is a cheap, silent, but reliable high capacity NAS, for the cheap and reliable I'm willing to sacrifice the speed and the multimedia capabilities.So I'm not making a real-time 3D 4K/120fps video encoding system for a high-end porn studio, neither some kind of fast office/desktop publishing machine, also not a gaming gear.It's a NAS, speaking of which, now, in this moment, there are established companies selling frigging single ARM core boxes for close to 1000EUR as high performance NAS!!!And you gentlebeings are proposing me Ryzens, modern high-performance (and high-consumption) motherboards and top shelf (and price) Samsung EVO with 500MB/s speed for the frigging boot disk!!!What should I do with this monsters ?!?! The connection with the house router will be via 1Gb network interface (the router has only one available) and the access will be mostly via wireless with 3-4 devices accessing it simultaneously. If all this will get over 100MB/s I'll be amazed. Maybe one iSCSI mount with my workstation laptop that is wired connected and that's it. The data disks in the RAID will need to be a bit less crappy, but not the boot disk (btw. I've started the silver box, with an Intenso (crap de la crap) USB stick, goes in 21s to the graphical desktop of Linux Mint 18)=== ENDGood, now let's go to some interesting stuff before is too late, so I've heated and destroyed two SandDisk SSD Plus 120GB and one really old OCZ Agility 2 120GB.Contrary to popular opinion in ALL THREE cases what failed was the controller and NEVER the flash. Doing dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc bs=100M count=100 for random data and then doing SHA256 until the last moment ALWAYS produced the same hash value.Then some DISK NOT READY and whatever other controller related failures appeared, then the disks disappeared for ever, that is, the disk's controller became inert and was never recognized again. One of the controllers even failed spectacularly spitting out smoke on the second cycle of heating long before reaching 90C, around 70-75.So this kind of settles the mystery of failing disks that are not seen at all by the bios, the controller itself dies and it seem that the most sensitive part is the SATA differential transceiver block. The OCZ disk has TSOP flash and I could bet that if I unsolder it and test it it will still be a good flash. Of course that in the long run the storage quality of the flash degrades with high temperatures, but the controller will be long dead before this happens.The second big discovery: these cheap consumer SSDs areDESIGNED to fail, please look at the picture of the PCBs, the small ones are the SanDisks and the big one is the OCZ (at its time was really friggin expensive), these guys are small and thin, the cases are HIGHLY ISOLATED, hermetically sealed plastic cases where none of the chips were touching the case body and they were kept at a distance by thin bumps. Of course exactly ZERO air circulation as well inside the case.The OCZ has 1/2 of the case of metal but no thermal contact with the chips and the metal is ON THE OTHER SIDE of the controller so I think that a huge improvement could be made by just discarding the cases and thermally bound the boards on some metal surfaces to serve as proper radiators.Have a look at the boards picture and let me know your opinion, now is too late, but tomorrow I can picture the plastic shells as well (and a thick plastic it is, was a pain to open it).Cheers,DC1MC

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 06:59:39 am
content: Quote from: ogden on March 27, 2019, 08:57:22 pmThe hardware controller must supports SSD's (eg: trim/align support), and the SSD must support being in a RAID configuration. With above mentioned consumer grade disks, I do not see this happening.Software raid will be the most suitable situation for this, since this provides the most support for all sorts of disks. (most consumer grade nas boxes use software raid)

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 07:13:28 am
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on March 28, 2019, 06:59:39 amThis is something that I agree with 100%.DC1MC

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 07:59:08 pm
content: Eh well, today I've encountered again the typical ebay seller imbecility, the black XPC came miserably packagedin an improvised box made by some cartons taped together and 1 (one !!!) foil of the weakest bubble wrap I've ever seen in Germany, and I've really seen shitty bubble wrap. Of course the DHL took a perverse pleasure of kicking it around until they totally destroyed the front panel, breaking all the standsDon't know what else is broken, I've open it and as opposed with the silver XPS, this one is full of dust, really prolly the parents bought it for him, this really pisses me off, because he took the time to dismount the HDDs and whatever crappy DVD it had, but he couldn't be arsed to do a minimal cleaning.So enjoy the EBAY complain picture of the poor broken XPS.By the way, both NAS wannabies areShuttle XPS SG41J1:http://global.shuttle.com/news/productsSpec?productId=1382On the other side I've got two of these babiesAdaptec ASR-5805512MB 8-Port PCI-e for 17.50EUR a piece, shipping included, cables included :https://www.adaptec.com/nr/pdfs/ds_series5.pdfHopefully they will talk with my consumer SSDs, as far as I can see, they are fully supported by Linux, yes I know that they are 3Gb/s and no, I don't care, actually I prefer them like this, less stress to the SSD controller transceiver.Also the Chinesium mains wattmeter has arrived as well (in one piece this time) and seem to work, I'll tell you good after comparing it with a professional wattmeter.And I'm still waiting for reasonable suggestions for the boot disks that are not Samsung EVOsCheers,DC1MC

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 09:44:12 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 28, 2019, 07:59:08 pmGood find considering price3Gb/s for (1Gb) networked *storage* server is more than enough.QuoteTake Intel thenDon't do thermal testing anymore. Baking MLC SSD at 95oC is not testing but scrapping. Even 85oC most likely is deadly, exceeds max temp specs for most SSDs and electronics as such. Limits are set for a reason.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 11:37:30 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 23, 2019, 06:21:08 pm8-port SAS/SATA controllers are very common (and cheap to buy second hand). You can use SATA drives with a SAS controller, but not the other way around. You just need yourself aSAS to SATA cable. I use LSI controllers in my NAS machines and they work a treat. Some models can be flashed into IT mode (using firmware provided by the manufacturer) so you can use them with ZFS. My second NAS runs FreeNAS in a virtual machine (under ESXi) and the SAS card is passed directly through to the guest OS so that it has direct control of the hardware. It works very well. If you plan to do this, you want to find a controller that uses the LSI SAS2008 chipset.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2019, 07:51:31 am
content: @ogden said: "...Baking MLC SSD at 95°C is not testing, but scrapping."^^^^This, exactly this, is why I've backed them, I've heard so many stories about these "horrible MLC" SSDs, that die and suddenly disappear from the BIOS, never, ever, to be seen again and "the data is irrecoverably gone, dammed be the MLC flash...".And I've actually empirically proved that what actually dies it's the SSD controller, it has nothing to do with the flash (didn't backed it directly at 95, I've done long other reliablility tests with lower temps, never to have a data integrity problem) , and the plastic clam shells are SPECIFICALLY designed to hold the temperature high (I'll post some pictures), so it's kind of planned obsolescence, I could bet that the high-end drives have metal parts in the case, even full metal case AND good thermal contact with the chips, and this keeps the disk alive more than some magic flash or controller sauce.I'm not talking here of really long and intensive R/W operations, but this should be dealed of by the "smart" controllers that should let one know about these issues and even in the worst case, one should get data integrity errors (hopefully signaled in advance by the RAID algorithms), not disks that suddenly pop out of existence taking ALL the data with them.If I'll ever get a defective high-end SSD, I'll perform a dissection to confirm my theory.This changes a bit my NAS plans, because now I'm planning to eject the electronics from the shell (warranty be damned) and use a proper heat spreading and cooling technique, instead of putting them in those cramped (also plastic) 6-bay enclosures.Cheers,DC1MC

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2019, 08:20:46 am
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 29, 2019, 07:51:31 amI am afraid that you did not prove anything. To prove that it is controller that died and only - you have to replace dead controller chip with working and run full diagnostics of SSD proving that flash chips are intact and controller is only part that failed. Did you do that? What if flash died and controller is fine, just unable to read it's firmware (from flash)?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2019, 08:25:54 am
content: There's no point.Writing data on the SSDs is what consumes power, and you'll only write for brief periods of time. Natural air cooling will take care of moving the generated heat.When you're reading data from SSDs you're basically only dealing with the idle power consumed by the controller, which is what... 0.3w to 1w ... that's nothing.I wanted to write something about the previous post but I was too lazyDrives like those Sandisk 120GB ones have a pretty clear warranty : 5 years or 80-100 TBW (terrabytes written) over the warranty of the drive. Some go even further and specify "as long as maximum 0.8-1 drive writes per day" or something to that effect.Basically, 5 years is so chosen that if you divide that 80-100 TB figure by the number of days, you get an average writes per day that's less than a full drive.. ex 5 x 365 = 1825 days.. 100 TB / 1825 = ~ 55 GB per day.Keep in mind that you're dealing with 120 GB drives... if you assume an average 200 MB/s of write speed, you're writing 1 GB in 5 seconds, or around 10-12 GB per minute. A full drive would take 10-15 minutes to fill up.There's some amount of air inside the case of the SSD and there's some inertia...even if the controller and the flash chips warm up with the writes, it takes SOME time for the temperature inside the SSD to go up by any significant amountIf you have a SSD staying on average at 30-40c, you can afford to see it jump up to 50-60c when you're done filling it with data... it will gradually cool down. If it's screwed to a case, just the cooler metal will suck heat away, the plastic will also slowly cool down and so on.Yes, they cut some corners with plastic cases on SSDs but that's basically price cuts to keep SSDs competitive.. metal cases are more expensive. BUT, for the way they're meant to be used (a few GB or tens of GB of writes per day, it's a perfectly adequate product, the chips are kept at reasonable temperatures).If you do decide to open them up and add heatsinks, imho it would be enough to put just one tiny heatsink on the controller chip, one of those heatsinsk you see used on ram chips.You'd do much better cooling just by having a 92-120mm fan spin at low rpm (barely inaudible) moving air between the drives, over the surface of the drives and cooling the metal of the case as well.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2019, 07:17:23 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on March 29, 2019, 08:20:46 amOne of the Sand Disk controllers crashed spewing magic smoke on few pins, the OCZ drive has Micron in TSOP flash that has a data-sheet and it can be accessed, sometimes when I'll feel like experimenting again I'll invest few euros in another bunch of cheap drives and gently solder away their flash.The OCZ SandForce ST-1222TA3 PCB even had serial and a JTAG port, I could bet that interesting experiments cold be done there. Probably on SSDs now these ports are long gone, the SanDisks have branded BGA flash chips and totally no debug ports.In any case, the little on-board power regulators are still working !!!, these are indeed resilient. I'll use the PCBs to train in removing the controller, maybe I can access the flash, it could be a business opportunity if the flash could be read after the disk has become invisible to the BIOS.Also, even if locating the controller firmware in the data flash may sound like a good idea, I do think that it's put into some internal memory, those guys are paranoid with their IP, anyway until some more experiments will be done, this will remain just suppositions.Right now I'm waiting my multi-port SATA cards and tomorrow I'll raid Saturn for some cheapos Crucial/WD to be used as boot disks and see if Ubuntu server knows about the multiport cards. Then I'll peel them off the plastic case and thermal-glue them on the metal cage.Then the big question will show up:what should I replace the aging fans with, I want to keep them (not all 3, but at least one as emergency cooling) ?@mariush Many people on amazon's Crucial BX500 were mentioning that during normal usage it reaches internally around 75°C !!!, the 3-40 degrees are a (heat) pipe dream.Before peeling off the boot disks to cool them properly, I'll try to see if I can read the internal temperature and do some bonnie++ tests with/without case and glued on metal cage.Cheers,DC1MC

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 12:01:16 am
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 29, 2019, 07:51:31 amCorruption of the Flash translation data structures is indistinguishable from controller failure which is why you can brick drives by corrupting the Flash translation data structures.Quote from: mariush on March 29, 2019, 08:25:54 amI ran into this problem recently when configuring an SSD to use a SATA to USB bridge. Power requirements can be higher than the 2.5 watt USB 2 specification or the 4.5 watt USB 3 specification even when only reading.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 12:07:14 am
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 29, 2019, 07:51:31 amYou've proved what dies under extreme thermal stress is the hottest part on the board. This is not only not surprising, but not of any particular value.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 04:56:28 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on March 30, 2019, 12:01:16 amWhat is a "Flash translation data structure" and how it makes the controller not serponding to the basic SATA commands ?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 05:04:53 am
content: Quote from: DC1MC on March 30, 2019, 04:56:28 amIt's the incredibly critical block of data which tells the controller exactly how and where data is stored. Without it, the controller cannot piece anything back together, fails to initialize, and does not talk to the host.Remember, there's no direct relationship between an LBA as the host sees it and the content of the NAND. There's compression, encryption, wear levelling, striping, and presumably some parity.

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 05:23:27 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on March 30, 2019, 12:07:14 amThe goal was to see what actually dies and make the device totally invisible to the controller, causing instant 100% data loss, not gradual failure that may be recovered from with the help of RAID data redundancy.So far the results are:- The cheap disks have an exceedingly bad thermal management, besides the thick plastic cases that have partitioned inside in such a way that those compartments are not communicating in between them (see the attached picture of a SanDisk shell), the PCB and chips are not touching directly any of the case walls, so the head accumulates and transfer is as difficult as possible.- The controllers are indeed the hottest part of the assembly and forcing them to go to 6Gb/s to have the marketing bonus points (useless for controllers without significant RAM cache) made them even more prone to failure.- Still waiting to see what's actually happening when the flash have reached its limit of operations, will the disk go BOOOM and fully disappear form PC controller suddenly, will the SMART give early warnings and/or make device R/O as promised, will I have HDD like individual "bad sectors" errors or what ?I plan to put a cheapie in the most comfortable operating conditions (cooled directly) and gently write the hell out of it, what it will actually happen in the end ?Cheers,DC1MC

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 30, 2019, 05:54:23 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on March 30, 2019, 05:04:53 amI've only experimented with the OCZ manufacturing tools, there is nice Fedora Linux image floating around with the OCZ manufacturing tool (written in Python !!!) where you can play with everything manufacturing related, from serial numbers, firmware, capacity, secure erase and so on. The manufacturing pack available was for the SandForce controller, that all in all is a standard ARM MCU, not unlike an NXP iMX something. I've used it extensively and the firmware is (at least for that model ) saved in a separate serial EPROM, most likely a NOR device.It also allows for selecting what NAND Flash type is connected to the controller, from a list of reasonable different types, and while you CAN confuse the controller by selecting wrong flash types or loading a bad firmware, it never goes in a state where it doesn't respond to basic SATA commands and can be pulled back from the grave. If it's too far gone, one needs to strap a jumper on the board to put it in "default firmware manufacturing mode".In any case, to me it sounds smart and sensible to put the controller firmware and configuration in a separate flash from the data devices, either internal to the controller or a small SPI.But I don't consider that will be under the dignity of some manufacturers to put it in the data flash to save some costs, but it seem unlikely. And remember we're not talking here about data errors, but about the device not being sensed by the controller at all.Anyway, while this is an interesting topic in itself (accessing the disk controllers via the debug ports and playing with the firmware) I'm just interested in building a somehow reliable NAS and I think I've got enough data to improve things a bit. Whis me luck with the multiport controllers if the seller will ever ship them.Cheers,DC1MC

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2019, 08:02:37 pm
content: OK, time for an update, it's not an April fools joke but rather a sad joke, underlining the extreme "cheapification" of the SSD devices, combined with bait and switch tactics, now happily embraced by the brand-name manufctureres as well.Exibit A:CRUCIAL by MicronBX500 120GB SSDThe Memory & Storage Experts (TM)(Product of China)So let's do a quick search: this well known hardware review site say it has Micron branded 3D flash chips and shows up even a picture of the PCB with nice Micron logo:OK then, I've used Micron memory, it shouldn't be that bad, the reviews are very polarized, either OK or extreme crap, oh well is just 25,99EUR at Saturn (large German retailer), let's get one and see how it goes.Step 1: staying idle connected on an external USB3.0 adapter: after 1/2hour it feels warm to the hand, ca. 30-35C outside temperature, the case it's full plastic, no metal around except for the screw inserts.Step 2: Does it cooperate with my JMicron chip usb adapter and smartmontools ? Yes it does, and the SSD is known already in the smartmontools database, cool, let's have a quick look and long offline test, all OK, but the highest temperature logged is 42C with practically no activity.All other logged values and test results show a veri virginal device with just two power cycles.Step 3: Good bye warranty, hello similar miserably partitioned case as in the SanDisk situation and a very similar looking PCB, can you spot the difference in the attached picture ? (Hint the Crucial is the one on top).Good, let's do a quick read test and "finger measure" the controller and the flash chips:dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/null bs=4kGoing..., going..., done: 485MB/s, not too shabby but the controlled feels uncomfortably hot, I estimate ca. 60C, smartmon agrees, highest logged value 58C, the flash chips are barely above their idle temp.Step 4: OK then, what about an intensive sustained write test:dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=4kGoing, go... AUCH, HELL IT BURNS, turn it off, turn it off now, shit it doesn't react to Ctrl-C, the system log starts spewing SATA errors, out of the USB socket, reboot the machine.Aftermath: device recovered after cooling, the smart data is not so virginal anymore (there were logged some interrupted write commands, no shit Sherlock), and the highest logged temperature 73C !!!.There is no way the poor guy would have survived in its plastic case inside a laptop.Strangely enough, the flash chips were barely a bit warmer during the 30sec it took for the whole device to do its thermal runaway, this is strange to have the controller getting so hot because from the data transfer pov it should have been even lower than when reading, I do hope that the encryption algorithm (if any) it's CPU power symmetric for encryption and decryption and the surrounding little LDO regulator and whatever little PMIC chips were totally cool ?!?!Oh well, let's look a bit closer to these Micron chips, than of course the shenanigans appeared immediately, I have found the EXACT same situation like these people:https://twitter.com/pana_junk_pc/status/1071719728672989185https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/a4uwag/spectek_flash_without_logo_grade_marking_low/Executive summary, theThe Memory & Storage Experts (TM)put inside this model some flash so crappy that even their failed-wafers recycling company didn't dare to put their name & logo on it !!! Actually it doesn't have ANY name or logo on it, like the most miserable Asian junk made in the 3rd shift!!!Of course the devices send to the established hardware review sites had Micron chips, that probably worked reasonable, if not stellar, and then when the device got a bit of reputation (not a speed demon, but it works), they've switched with the bottom of the junk-barrel crap.Well, most likely the situation is similar in this capacity and price range, so I'll happily skip the WD Green and Kingston, and to make thing worse, one really needs to put individual little radiators on the controller and flash chips if wands to have at least a minimum of reliability. Because of course the chips surfaces are not same level and there are hich cpacitors and other passives protruding even higher than all the ICs on the PCB.My solution for this is:Radiators for the controller:https://www.ebay.de/itm/Aluminum-Kuhlkorper-Heatsink-fur-GPU-VRAM-IC-LED-10-Pack-11-11-5mm/113324638608Radiators for the flash:https://www.ebay.de/itm/Aluminum-Kuhlkorper-Heatsink-fur-GPU-VRAM-IC-LED-5-Pack-35-10-10mm/113324638717Thermal glue:https://www.ebay.de/itm/Silverbead-Warmeleitkleber-Thermal-Glue-fur-Heatsinks-LED-VRAM-VRM-CPU-GPU-10g/111972697722The Asian suppliers have them a bit cheaper, but I don't want to wait another 3-4weeks.So yes, if you want to fool someone buy them a Crucial BX series SSD, they will never forget youCheers,DC1MCPS: I understand somehow that low capacity SSDs are competing in a price sensitive market, but why must EVERYONE be crap, it's not like the 120GB miserable crap it's 7 times cheaper than a good 960GB disk ?!?

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 08:03:01 am
content: Are you actually considering use of bottom-end entry level SSDs in a NAS?

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 10:47:26 am
content: Quote from: rdl on April 01, 2019, 08:03:01 amUhmm, actually no, don't know where did you get this idea from my postings, but I was considering to use for the boot and system disk one of this bottom-end SSD and I was actually curious what makes them bottom-and and if there are some small improvements that could switch them to mediocre.I was imagining that of course some low speed flash will be used, maybe lose more performance due to DRAM-less controllers and also some reliability on repeated write erase operations that didn't matter so much for a NAS OS disk.I didn't imagine for a moment that the enclosures are designed so thermal management hostile, that the established flash vendors in the market will use "anonymous" ultra low grade memory and that the controllers will thermally self-destruct instead of throttling the transfers or going in a safe mode. But hey, at least they carefully log: "Maximum Temperature error > 75C, you should change the disk...". And this is the lucky situation if they're not crapping out completely.In any case, I've seen that cooling them properly helps a bit and I will do it, and for the data disks I will use the high-end devices, no way around it.Cheers,DC1MC

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 10:57:27 am
content: But aren't good quality MLC flash SSDs still insanely expensive for 1TB drives?

author: DC1MC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 07:25:48 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on April 01, 2019, 10:57:27 amEh well, in my naivety I believed that there is a "middle class" in between absolute crap and rich bastards, but actually there isn't any. I mean for ahome NASI don't need an "Extreme Ultra Enterprise SSD" and I've thought that there are some things that could be made to improve the low-end drives, like better thermal and stuff like this, assuming that inside were honest flash and controllers, not just leftover garbage.For a long time I was hearing that the industry has to deal with an over-abundance of flash and doesn't know what to do with it, actually it seems that it has to deal with a lot ofmiserable crappy flashthat can't be pushed in the phones and other gadgets so the last dumping place is the cheap SSD, that has so many * and ** and *** to the already miserable characteristics that practically means nothing in reality, it's practically a place of dumping electro garbage.The average and hi quality flash is eaten like crazy by the mobile industry, googles and aws and other data vampires. And the "cheap" shit, it not even so cheap actually.It was an enlightening experience to open those cheap guys and see how they're done and play with the firmware and stuff, totally recommend if you want to be convinced to buy hi-end stuff for everything, no experience like personal experience.After the 8x controllers will arrive and I'll be done with the NAS infrastructure I'll get some EVOs and open them out of curiosity.Cheers,DC1MC

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 09:38:18 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on April 01, 2019, 07:25:48 pmThere is middle class indeed. Just for example Kingston:Kingston A400: home users, 3year warranty or ~300x TBW*Kingston UV500: "middle class", 5years, ~500x TBWKingston DC500: enterprise (server SSDs), ~2000x TBW, 5years* lifetime Total Bytes Written, example: 1TB disk guarantee is over when more than 300TB writtenYour Crucial BX500 is cheap end, more or less similar to Kingston A400. I would stay away from this class.Those high density MLC/TLC/QLC NAND flash chips are inherently bad BY DESIGN, w/o heavy error correction and decent amount of spare blocks they would be completely useless for storage.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cellLow cost SSD's are getting cheapest to manufacture chips. Kinda you get what you pay for - obviously.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2019, 11:53:18 pm
content: Quote from: DC1MC on April 01, 2019, 10:47:26 amI guess I didn't see any other reason for you testing them as you did. For boot and or system drives in a basic NAS, pretty much anything will work. My FreeNAS machine boots from a pair of Sandisk flash drives. System logs and such are on a really cheap Kingston flash drive, because with a lot of logging it will wear out in a year or so.This morning I was getting some new drives set up - nice, cheap spinning disk drives. After copying over almost 200 GB of data to the new drives without a break, they had only increased about 6C in temperature. That's with only a single low speed fan in the box which I can't hear at all from 2 meters away.Some nice big, good quality SSDs would be great to have, but I just don't see them being cost effective yet.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2019, 05:30:00 am
content: The MLC flash technology is usually a good middle ground for a decent SSD. The SLC drives are out there, but they are so expensive that they are only really viable for the enterprise costumers. On the other end TLC and QLC flash are what is in the cheap bottom of the barrel consumer drives where the write endurance and data retention becomes terrible.The problem with flash for long term storage is that "bit rot" is quite rampant with it. If you only read a area of flash or let it sit unused for a long time the charge in the cells starts to leak and eventually flip the state of a cell. High capacity flash always has ECC bytes in there for this very reason as it would be way too unreliable otherwise, but at some point it overwhelms error correction with too many bit flips and the flash just spits out its best guess for that sector. This is probably where using FreeNAS is a good idea for SSD storage since it has the ZFS filesystem that has extra error correction built into it to detect and fix things like this.I use a PC server running Unraid with 12TB worth of spinning rust in it that is cooled by a single 120mm fan via 3D printed air ducting. You can only really hear the fan if all the drives are spun down, but the 4 mechanical drives inside do need a little airflow to keep them cool. Stopping the fan has them rise above 40°C and that's not good for longevity. Also i run VMs on the server so the CPU does also sometimes need some airflow over its big ass heatpipe heatsink to keep it happy, but when doing only NAS tasks it can actually run fan less.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2019, 10:23:50 am
content: Still plenty of SSDs with MLCADATA SU900, Premier Pro SP900,Samsung 860 Pro, 970 ProCorsair MP500, NeutronCrucial MX200Plextor M6e , M8PePNY CS1111Kingston SSDNow E50Intel S3520, 900P series (Optane)HP M700Teamgroup Dark L3Transcend SSD360, SSD370 (Premium Series), MTS400, MTS600, MTS800etc etc