Author Topic: Best SSD for file server/nas  (Read 2639 times)

2022-01-26, 17:40:32

Marcin Pabich

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Hi, I am going to buy a SSD for the file server for the first time instead of a HDD. Which SSD is best for this type of task, what do you recommend? I really care about the durability and the highest possible capacity. I consider drives such as:

Samsung 870 QVO 8TB - due to the capacity though, I know it uses an inferior type of cell
Samsung 860/870 EVO 4 TB - due to the better construction technique

And what about SSDs, typically for NAS, such as:

WD Red SSD
Seagate IronWolf SSD
Synology SSD SAT5200

Thank you for your help

2022-01-28, 16:26:09
Reply #1

1equals2

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Hi there,

Do you consider going for 1 or several drives? How many pc's are going to access it simultanously? Do you consider raid as option?

Have several 1/2 TB Samsung SSDs and  6 WD RED/Gold HDDwith capacity higher than 8 TB. Never had any problems with any of them. Several colleagues complained from Seagate drives, specifically Ironwolf ones. Believe it is  bit safer to bet on enterprise disks/ssd's than consumer ones.
Was recently testing several scenes in three different scenarios  with two way different workstations (old school Dual Xeon v4 and AMD 5950x) - HDD only( network mapped raid 10+SSD cache), NVME (Evo plus) network attached and local (980 Pro).
10 GB of data assets, one user access them at a time, 20 + FP objects, 60GB RAM at render time, in the nutshell typical exterior project scene.

From conducted tests - time for opening any scene from nvme drive is like  20-40 % less than  from the RAID 10 HDD combo and this in situation when all FP objects are deleted from the scenes. If FP objects were  left intact - opening of the scenes were like three times slower, regardless of the system and combo, which  literally gave the nvme around 15 % less time than the raid 10 hdd combo.  Considering that the all 5 ssd/nvme drives in the machines cost as much as the 4 HDDs, but with like 6 times less capacity, it is all down to put the priorities right, rather than if ssd/nvme or hdd. How many people, how much storage - 2-3 scenarios,  what price, and last but not least, can the available system  support the drive properly. For the dual Xeon v4, persoanlly had to to buy add-on card to support nvme at all. The more systems the tougher the equation.

Despite the good price for 870 QVO, the 72/78 GB cache which this drive has, actually is limitting one, or at least forcing to pay attention if cache is full, since the speed  drop is significant.

In your case, if there are max two machines in the  setup, I would just get 2 TB or maybe 4 TB nvme for assets, 2-4 TB ssd for projects and leave the available HDD  for backup.

PS - 10Gbit network
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