Question NAS w/o drives recommendation

[agGIS]

I am looking for a recommendation on a NAS that I can purchase without the drives in place.

I have 3 - 8tb drives that were replaced with ssd from a server. I am considering using the sata drives additional storage on my network. My thought is I could buy a 4th drive and a NAS without drives and create ~32tb of storage for non mission critical data. I would be storing large datasets that we currently pull in chunks from the internet. I would just pull the whole datasets and save them local for faster access.

 

[COLGeek]

I have one of these and have been very happy with its performance and stability. Zero issues.

DiskStation® DS923+ | Synology Inc.

Flexible storage platform for small businesses and home offices

www.synology.com

 

[kanewolf]

I am looking for a recommendation on a NAS that I can purchase without the drives in place.

I have 3 - 8tb drives that were replaced with ssd from a server. I am considering using the sata drives additional storage on my network. My thought is I could buy a 4th drive and a NAS without drives and create ~32tb of storage for non mission critical data. I would be storing large datasets that we currently pull in chunks from the internet. I would just pull the whole datasets and save them local for faster access.

You could get 32TB if you have no redundancy. If you choose RAID 1 or 10 you will have 16TB usable. RAID5 will provide about 24TB usable. If you choose the no redundancy option, then I would recommend JBOD rather than RAID0. At least when a disk fails with JBOD, you only lose 8TB rather than all of it.
For Synology you have the DS423 or the DS923+ The plus series of hardware is significantly more expensive -- $370 for the 423 vs $600 for the 923+ You should use the synology.com website to compare the features and determine if the extra cost is justified. For example the CPU in the 420 is an ARM CPU vs an X86 in the 923+ If you want to use docker containers, then the X86 might be worth the extra cost.

 

[USAFRet]

And from the other side, QNAP.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-432x

I have a TS-453a, it will be 8 years old on Monday.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-453a

 

[kanewolf]

And from the other side, QNAP.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-432x

I have a TS-453a, it will be 8 years old on Monday.
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-453a

I think you would agree with everything else I had. Specifically about volume types ...

 

[Misgar]

Or if you have an (old) spare computer with 4 SATA ports, you could save the expense of a "proper" Qnap or Synology NAS and install the free TrueNAS Core operating system on a small SSD (64GB or larger).

TrueNAS will run in 8GB RAM on any 2-core CPU, but 16GB RAM is recommended. You could end up with a NAS costing nothing more than the price of a new 8TB hard disk. It's a cheap way to build a NAS with existing hardware. No need for DDR5 or even DDR4. DDR3 will work.
https://www.truenas.com/truenas-core/

ZFS RAID-Z1 is equivalent to RAID5 and will provide 24TB of space with 4 x 8TB drives. ZFS RAID-Z2 is equivalent to RAID6 (16TB free with 4 x 8TB).

TrueNAS takes some "figuring out" so if you have the money, get a Synology or Qnap system for an easy life. They're physically smaller than most PC builds and likely to consume less power too. Useful if you intend running the NAS 24/7. On the other hand, if you're strapped for cash and like experimenting ...

I have 3 - 8tb drives that were replaced with ssd from a server.

Before building a NAS, I run a long SMART test or Hard Disk Sentinel's surface read test on all drives (about 8 hours per 4TB hard disk), regardless of whether they're brand new or server pulls. It helps avoid future problems if there are any pending sectors or bad blocks.

 

[USAFRet]

I think you would agree with everything else I had. Specifically about volume types ...

Yes.

And RAID 5 is contraindicated for such large drives.
Replacing a drive in a RAID 5, it can take up to 2 hours for each TB of consumed space.
If, for instance, there were 20TB data in it, it would take almost 2 days of rebuild time.

 

[kanewolf]

Yes.

And RAID 5 is contraindicated for such large drives.
Replacing a drive in a RAID 5, it can take up to 2 hours for each TB of consumed space.
If, for instance, there were 20TB data in it, it would take almost 2 days of rebuild time.

And during that 2 day period, you are vulnerable to another disk failure taking ALL your data.

 

[USAFRet]

And during that 2 day period, you are vulnerable to another disk failure taking ALL your data.

Yup! 2 days of 100% thrashing.

When I switched mine from 4x 3TB to 4x 4TB (RAID 5), it took far longer than I thought.
I did it one by one, primarily to see how it handled the hotswap, AND the differing drive sizes.

I did have a 100% known good backup, just in case.

It is no longer RAID 5.