Storage Solutions 16TB SSD NAS For Under $1200!

[buzz88]

So jealous of the parts prices outside India.
This project would be double or triple expensive if we tried to build it here.

Also, I miss Ebay.

 

[ibose]

Yes, SSD prices are damn cheap abroad but for that much money I would rather pick up the latest 2 bay Synology box, 2 x 8 TB WD REDs and couple of 256 GB NVMEs for cache.

 

[buzz88]

Yes, SSD prices are damn cheap abroad but for that much money I would rather pick up the latest 2 bay Synology box, 2 x 8 TB WD REDs and couple of 256 GB NVMEs for cache.

I rather like the idea of building stuff than buying prebuilt more. Also SSD vs HDD. Two drives vs eight drives. This system is more robust and has better redundancy.

 

[ibose]

I rather like the idea of building stuff than buying prebuilt more. Also SSD vs HDD. Two drives vs eight drives. This system is more robust and has better redundancy.

I also like to roll my own but for more reasonable components based on specific use case for a NAS. I am not really sure what purpose SSDs serve in a NAS for normal use cases. If you need that fast access, you would rather stick the SSDs in your system itself rather than have your data traverse from a NAS. Redundancy, yes, but actual storage space will be on the lesser side. I could go on eg. Xeons in a NAS are overkill and make no sense etc. etc. Nah its more of an "enthusiast's no question's asked" kind of a build which makes more sense as a Server rather than a NAS

 

[gourav]

While I understand it's not the point of the post, SSD for a home NAS is mostly useless. You don't need that kind of speed unless you constantly work on photo/video editing or something similar. Even then, unless you have 10 Gbit Ethernet all the way, you won't really get the benefit. SATAIII (6 Gbps) is way faster than most people's home routers (1 Gbps).

My WD Purple drive, which is among the slower hard drives, often saturates my ethernet bandwidth, hitting 120 MBps on file transfers. An SSD would have been only marginally faster for me.

 

[booo]

Try putting that server anywhere near you work and I promise you will go crazy. There is a reason people wear ear plugs in data centers.

 

[buzz88]

While I understand it's not the point of the post, SSD for a home NAS is mostly useless. You don't need that kind of speed unless you constantly work on photo/video editing or something similar. Even then, unless you have 10 Gbit Ethernet all the way, you won't really get the benefit. SATAIII (6 Gbps) is way faster than most people's home routers (1 Gbps).

My WD Purple drive, which is among the slower hard drives, often saturates my ethernet bandwidth, hitting 120 MBps on file transfers. An SSD would have been only marginally faster for me.

Don't need it, but WANT it. That's been the case with all my tech purchases lol. 10Gbit ethernet should be the standard.

 

[gourav]

Don't need it, but WANT it

Lol, tell me about it! Every other day I add products to cart in some website then hold myself back looking at my credit card bill

 

[rsaeon]

SSD for a home NAS is mostly useless. You don't need that kind of speed unless you constantly work on photo/video editing or something similar. Even then, unless you have 10 Gbit Ethernet all the way, you won't really get the benefit.

Can confirm, SSD based NAS over 10G is pretty mind blowing.

I am not really sure what purpose SSDs serve in a NAS for normal use cases. If you need that fast access, you would rather stick the SSDs in your system itself rather than have your data traverse from a NAS.

In my case, it was cheaper to build a SSD based NAS running TrueNAS than to pay apple the upgrade price to 2TB.

There's also the psychological factor that your data is not on your main system, so you don't have to worry about data loss when experimenting or swapping hardware or upgrading software or even installing new software. I built my first NAS while I was still on a 64kbps connection and I really can't imagine how life would be without one.

 

[ibose]

In my case, it was cheaper to build a SSD based NAS running TrueNAS than to pay apple the upgrade price to 2TB.

Apple ? Anything and everything will be cheaper compared to Apple. External drive is also an option (I use one).
And yes, we can build a NAS with whatever we want but typical use cases do not require that much speed. Most NAS OSes now allow getting a speed bump with NVMe caches. My point was more on how the video was peddling some HW under 1200 as a low cost NAS which was anything but a NAS, forget the cost. You can easily get some excellent Synology NAS H/W with S/W at that price let alone build one. The only takeaway from the video was that SSDs were much more cheaper abroad.
I have used Freenas, OMV, Rockstor but keep coming back to Xpenelogy i.e. Synology DSM for non Synology H/W. It is that good.

 

[rsaeon]

I've heard great things over the years about Synology. I really would like to try it some day for a tiered backup solution, especially now that you've reminded me that the software is available separately. I remember reading that a long time ago and then I forgot all about it. I loved the original Windows Home Server for how easy it was to setup and use and Xpenology looks like it would've been even better.

Apple ? Anything and everything will be cheaper compared to Apple. External drive is also an option (I use one).

As a kid, I grew up with DOS and Windows in the 90's but when OSX86 was first available as a torrent in 2006, I tried it out as a curiosity and since then I've been using macOS as my primary OS.

It has been a constant frustration since then to settle on affordably priced hardware. After a year of OSX86 on my PC, I got a basic white macbook for an eye-watering $1100 in which I upgraded the memory and drive. Back then, it was the most amount of money I had ever spent on a computer. But I just couldn't keep it (buyer's remorse), I sold it a year later for $1000 and replaced it with a 12" Power Book and an Intel Mac mini that I upgraded with the fastest processor, memory and drive. The Mac mini didn't have discrete graphics so I ended up selling that after a year (macOS heavily relies on graphics acceleration for it's UI) and settled on another OSX86 build until I gave up and bought a top spec 2011 17" Macbook Pro. That machine died just as the two year EMI ended, and Apple replaced it with a 15" retina model. But that did not have expandable storage, so I sold it and went back to an OSX86 build until around 2016 when I built a 15" non-retina Macbook pro from replacement parts sourced from Powerbook Medic and Aliexpress. That machine is still operational today but it has started showing it's age (3rd gen i7). Apple Silicon has basically obsoleted OSX86 so I bought a base Mac mini a year ago with upgraded memory and 10G. But I just could not justify 80k for a 2TB upgrade from the base 256GB, so a 10G NAS made more financial sense.

As for why macOS, it's the system-wide scripting language that I've become heavily reliant on. Triggering apps/hotkeys with other apps/notifications. Multistep image resize/upload workflows are just a single click away. Most of all, it's these really cool stats in the menubar:

That's network speed, cpu usage, memory usage, disk space, disk speed all at a glance.

 

[rsaeon]

There's an Amazon seller (93% rating) with high capacity salvaged PCie nvme drives (PM983's with TBW in PB's) at the lowest prices I've ever seen:

https://www.amazon.in/s?k=nvme&me=A1X98GDW8K7WHE

You'l need a U.2 port or a m.2 to U.2 port adapter along with a SFF8639 cable, or a PCIe to SFF8639 adapter card (another 2k to 6k).

 

[rsaeon]

https://www.amazon.in/s?k=nvme&me=A1X98GDW8K7WHE

Don't buy, not recommended. Received a 128G sata drive instead of a PCIe one. Looks like someone bought it before me, swapped out the PCB and returned it.

 

[imran_chennai]

Don't buy, not recommended. Received a 128G sata drive instead of a PCIe one. Looks like someone bought it before me, swapped out the PCB and returned it.

That's bad. Hope you get your refund.