SSD for NAS

I don't think the faster read speed would make any difference. I had a 256Gb ssd previously and now use a 640Gb spinning rust laptop drive as I needed more storage. I cant discern any difference between them. Presumably as you are primarily reading the data from the NAS and not writing very often then reliability should be good. Lower noise and negligible heat are both advantages for the ssd. The main drawback is still cost. If you have already bought the disk then I would use it.

agree, lower noise and heat i think wouldn T preserve it from damages.

But it s just 250gb and seller is willing to replace and has 2/3 tera wd red available.

tough decision..

SSD is still a tadge too much for proper storage right now. I have a proliant as a nas running OpenMediaVault and use and SSD as the boot drive however (not storage) though this is overkill as its happy to run off a memory stick

I'm using a M500 1TB SSD with a QNAP single slot NAS. You don't notice much difference speed wise but it is nice and quiet which helps as my NAS is in the living room. Given folks on here spend thousands on Hi-Fi gear a couple of hundred on a SSD isn't that extravagant.

My MacBook Air is SSD so of course the screen died first. That was a mere £540 to replace. After that it came back sounding like and old steam engine so back to the dealer. Popped open the back and although it is not a big machine almost all of the innards are batteries. The noise was coming from the only moving part which was the fan and a blast from an air gun cured it. I was surprised at the heat the thing generates even without the moving parts, so a fan is still necessary. 

My NAS has disk drives and has been running for at least three years trouble free. If you have the extra cash I would go SSD purely because it is one less moving part and a very important part at that. Am surprised how long it has taken SSDs to replace disks as I thought they would have achieved the density and pricing by now. 

SSD or HDD is irrelevant for audio provided the NAS enclosure is sufficiently 'out of the way' so that, in practice, you don't her the click of the HDD head motor.

SSDs now have greater reliability but at much higher cost.  In either case 2 level backup is still required to protect against other forms of data loss.

Huge posted:

SSD or HDD is irrelevant for audio provided the NAS enclosure is sufficiently 'out of the way' so that, in practice, you don't her the click of the HDD head motor.

SSDs now have greater reliability but at much higher cost.  In either case 2 level backup is still required to protect against other forms of data loss.

Exactly!

Huge posted:

SSDs now have greater reliability but at much higher cost.  In either case 2 level backup is still required to protect against other forms of data loss.

Reliability is not better, google it, it is a bit different type of.

Music store usage tends to be different from computer usage, in that files tend to be added, with some people often, others, like me, not often, and, certainly for me, very little deletion. So, there is very little re-writing to any individual 'cell', whereas some computer uses have heavy re-writing in parts.  My understanding is that this maximises reliability of SSDs for music storage use, which is my prime reason for choosing.

Regarding noise, if you have the music store is in the listening room and if it is otherwise silent,  it is nice not to have hard disks whirring. (Mac Mini enables music to feed directly to music system with no need for files over the network, but is then in the listening room just like any other piece of hifi kit.)

Re cost, although expensive relative to HDDs, that is not so significant in the context of everything else hifi:  when I got mine a year ago, they were down to about £250/TB (less now). 1TB is a massive amount of music storage, probably equating to around 15p per album when full. 

However, I fully agree: backup is essential if anyone values their collection, regardless of HDD or SSD.

After my last round of disk failure lately, I am running my Readynas duo with 2 wd red 3 tb disks. It is about 150 cm away from my  computer workspace and when radio is on I cannot hear it. From my hifi listening chair I cannot here it at all.

Claus

SSD's in the 1+ TB capacity are still VERY expensive.  Now sure one might compare that to how else we spend our money on hi fi, and argue that in context they are not that dear.  But $700-$900 for a 1 TB ssd drive, vs. $60.00 for a 1 TB WD Red hdd, is the issue.

Bart posted:

SSD's in the 1+ TB capacity are still VERY expensive.  Now sure one might compare that to how else we spend our money on hi fi, and argue that in context they are not that dear.  But $700-$900 for a 1 TB ssd drive, vs. $60.00 for a 1 TB WD Red hdd, is the issue.

Not sure where those prices are from? My 1TB SSDs cost about £250 last year, and prices are lower now - I believe you can get for under £200. Yes, much more than HDD in relative terms, which I believe are about £60 now for WD red, but a  factor of 3-4, not 12-15!

Bart, you're being WAY overcharged for your SSD:  1TB SSD should cost about $300 - $350 (and you're doing well to get a 1TB WD red for less than $80, unless someone's selling off old stock).

IB, after Brexit, those prices are going to RISE - the pound's already fallen 20%, and it's probably going to fall more than 25%.

Something for the Brexiteers to think about - they were warned, but just denied all the warnings.

AGreed, Huge. If in Britain buy right now, or wait and hope the £ recovers in a few weeks/months/years (depending on what actually happens with UK politicians then Brexit or not and rebuilding confidence....

I was just checking Amazon and Newegg here.  Yah I was looking at 2tb prices however.

Minor point of order;  GBP has dropped around 10% against USD   (1.44 to 1.31 = -9%)  Still bit of a drop tho' 

But right on   "they were warned",  but be assured its as nothing according to Gore the Boris Slayer.  Interesting times.

Mike,

14th October 2015 - just before the Stronger In / Brexit campaigns started the pound:$ ratio was 1.5474
Yesterday it closed 1.2883

Loss = 20.1% over the period of the campaigns taken as a whole.

Both figures are correct in their own context.

Huge posted:

Mike,

14th October 2015 - just before the Stronger In / Brexit campaigns started the pound:$ ratio was 1.5474
Yesterday it closed 1.2883

Loss = 20.1% over the period of the campaigns taken as a whole.

Both figures are correct in their own context.

And? Shorting of the pound was an inevitable consequence of Brexit, although the Stock Market here, as opposed to our ex-EU neighbours, has held up surprisingly well. Brexit was and is  a golden opportunity for the money market players. Nevertheless, as you can see the leaks Spring everywhere on the EUTitanic, I certainly believe we are much better off paddling our little lifeboat well away from the whole mess. Naim can now make and sell their products cheaper. Win, win!

Yes Huge,  my main point was agreeing "they were warned, but just denied all the warnings."

Having held a few USD share accounts for years & being sensitive to such things I viewed the 1.54 to 1.44 change prior to the 23rd (& after the 2008 crash) as normal speculative cycles,  that said the "threat" of the possible brexit vote did add to speculative pressure.

andarkian posted:

 Shorting of the pound was an inevitable consequence of Brexit, although the Stock Market here, as opposed to our ex-EU neighbours, has held up surprisingly well. Brexit was and is  a golden opportunity for the money market players. Nevertheless, as you can see the leaks Spring everywhere on the EUTitanic, I certainly believe we are much better off paddling our little lifeboat well away from the whole mess. Naim can now make and sell their products cheaper. Win, win!

Erm, UK's neighbours who were in the EU still are, and UK still is...

Meanwhile the only winners are a few who speculated on the money or other markets, and In general I doubt there'll be much winning out of the Brexit issue for a long time to come whichever way it ends up.  As for Naim specifically, no doubt much will depend on how significant in terms of cost proportion are imported components or materials, and the relative size of different markets at home and in the various export regions. 

But this seems to be straying towards Padded Cell territory!

I would stick with spinning disk in a NAS. SSDs tend not to fail gracefully like spinning disks mostly do. SSDs can just stop working. It's happened to me a couple of times. If this happens with 2 disks from the same batch in a RAID configuration you've lost everything. 

SSDs also have limitations on how often they can be rewritten in a day. I only learnt this recently. They are still an emerging technology. Fast but more unreliable than spinning disks. 

Graham Russell posted:

I would stick with spinning disk in a NAS. SSDs tend not to fail gracefully like spinning disks mostly do. SSDs can just stop working. It's happened to me a couple of times. If this happens with 2 disks from the same batch in a RAID configuration you've lost everything. 

SSDs also have limitations on how often they can be rewritten in a day. I only learnt this recently. They are still an emerging technology. Fast but more unreliable than spinning disks. 

I beg to differ: I've known quite a few HDDs just fail without warning in computers, against only one that I can recall give warning.

Comment re RAID applies to everything - the server itself can cause all disks to corrupt at the same time: RAID is not a substitute for a proper backup!

And re SSDs, in a music store I doubt many people do much in the way of re-writing cells obpver months or even years, let alone in a day, unlike some computer applications.

Graham Russell posted:

SSDs tend not to fail gracefully like spinning disks mostly do.

I'm really struggling with the concept of a graceful disc failure! The expletives that inevitably fill the room don't help, but in my world, any disc failure is pretty awkward. 

But typically you can see it coming, i.e. SMART status would warn of impending doom. An ssd literally stops. I had one go with my main OS on once, that was weird because OSX tried to battle on with what was loaded in ram before the whole thing collapsed.

IN terms of SSDs in a nas, I don't see the logic. They are good for speed and noise. A nas should really be no where near the music space any way so that rules out noise issues. As for speed, the main bottle necks for a consumer nas is an underpowered chip and lack of ram. Combined with network overhead an SSD will not help in this regard.

If you want speed then set your disks as raid 0. But like any raid you need a back up, with raid 0 this becomes particularly important as if a disk goes down so does the whole array. I use raid 0 on my large server infact I have 4 sets of raid 0, because I have a back up solution and its super fast which is great for a bunch of virtuals.

No SSDs in that lot, but all of our pcs/macs have the primary OS on an ssd.