First off, I’d normally ask this question on a datahoarding forum, but this one is way more active than those and I’m sure there’s considerable overlap.
So I have a Synology DS218+ that I got in 2020. So it’s a 6 year old model by now but only 4 into its service. There’s absolutely no reason to believe it’ll start failing anytime soon, and it’s completely reliable. I’m just succession planning.
I’m looking forward to my next NAS, wondering if I should get the new version of the same model again (whenever that is) or expand to a 4 bay.
The drives are 14 TB shucked easy stores, for what it’s worth, and not even half full.
What are your thoughts?
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The NAS itself will likely outlive the drives inside, just the nature of things. Hard drives follow a sort of curve when it comes to failure, most fail either immediately or in a few 10000 hours of run time. Other factors include the drives being too hot, the amount of hard power events, and vibration.
Lots of info on drive failure can be found on Backblaze’s Drive stat page. I know you have shucked drives, these are likely white label WD Red drives which are close to the 14TB WD drive backblaze uses.
Yeah they’re reds. Is there a way I can check how many hours they have on them? 10,000 is just over a year. They’re a couple years old now.
I’m not too concerned about them failing, I can afford to replace one without notice and they’re mirrored. And backed up in some other easy stores.
That info can be found in the smart data for the drives, but I didn’t mean 10,000 hours, more like > 50,000
I believe the synology DSM should have a feature for this. Try the storage manager app and it should tell you SMART info.
My Synology NAS was running for 6+ years before I replaced it last year. And the only reason I replaced it was to upgrade the hardware to be able to act more like a home server running some more demanding services.
I’ve since given the NAS away to a friend who is still running it… As always back up your data just in case, but I wouldn’t expect the hardware to crap out on you too soon
Same here. Last year I upgraded from a DS214+ and it was still running great. The only reason I upgraded to the DS220+ was so I could run docker containers.
I sold it for $200 which meant I ran it for 9 years for about $57 a year (CAD). I’m hoping to get even better bang for the buck with the new unit.
Oh, I don’t need to back it up because I have two drives running in RAID.
😜
Raid is not a backup
Protip: The ‘B’ is RAID stands for “backup”.
I like that!
As others have said, you should really be careful treating your RAID as a backup. I for one do all of my backing up on Playstation 1 memory cards… I had to buy a couple storage containers to store them all, but I guess that technically counts as off-site
Dude, it was a joke. I’ve heard the advice a million times
Ehm, probably 2 disks bough from the same batch. They usually die together. ;)
Your NAS will last as long as your storage medium.
HDD lasts 5-10 years, SSD lasts like 10+
Not the batch of WD Red SSDs I got in 2022. 3 of the 4 have failed. I’m assuming the 4th is going to die any day now. Fortunately WD honors their warranties, and only one drive died at a time so the my RAID was able to stay intact.
I feel like I must have gotten 4 from the same bad batch or something. One dying felt like bad luck, but when another died every 3 months it seemed like more than a coincidence. And none of the replaced ones have died, just the original batch.
So how long does an SSD last? YMMV.
Imho there’s no reason to change or upgrade if your current setup works and you’re satisfied with it. Keep your money, you’ll see what the market has to offer when you need it.
I mean, I was bored at work yesterday so started browsing. This is more of a thought experiment than anything.
I had my DS213+ for a bit over 10 years, with no failures of any kind, just a bit of drive swapping for more storage space. Finally upgraded last year to a 4-bay with better performance and Docker support, but I would have kept using the old one otherwise.
I’m still running a DS414 filled with WD Red drives. I’ve only swapped out one of the drives as it was starting to have issues. I’ve considered upgrading for more features (Docker, Home Assistant etc) but can’t justify the expense just for “nice to have” instead of “need”. Realistically it only stores Linux ISOs that I get with Download Station.
Yeah, performance is not an issue for me. I stream some Linux ISOs and so do a few friends. Pihole, photos backup, documents backup. That’s about it.
Using unraid is nice because you can keep replacing drives with lawyer ones as you need, or adding new drives to the array. It’s very flexible that way, despite some of its shortcomings.
As I can’t predict the future I believe you should juice it until the last drop, that way at least if it fails you wouldn’t regret it… pray&luck 🙏🤞
I had a Helios that literally just started having trouble powering SATA disks a few days ago. I got it in 2019 I think, so only 5 years of life.
I use Linux LVM and either ext4 (for older volumes) or btrfs (for newer volumes, because I want the checksums across the data) so in principle I could throw the disks in a PC as a temporary solution.
I have put the disks in SATA to USB 2.0 caddies, and the Helios 4 kind of still works, but I’m ordering a couple of Orange Pi 5 and with USB 3.0 disk enclosures to replace it. It was kind of time anyway, since Nextcloud has dropped support for 32-bit CPU.
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Still running a ds210+ i bought second hand about 8 years ago… Hosts a website and downloads torrents… Not much else. Think it’s about time i upgraded.
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Were you able to swap in a new one and copy everything back over?
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The NAS will most likely outlive the software support and by far the HDDs you are putting in them.
What about building your own NAS? If you’ve the time / skills you can pick a very small micro ITX motherboard and a NAS case and build your own. This way you can run open-source software and it will have more features / expandability and potentially last way longer.
Could you run open source software on something like a Synology if they stop supporting it?
No always, and that’s the reason why I would never buy their hardware. There are some older models that can be hacked to install a generic Linux but the majority can’t. It’s just easier to get something truly open.
That sucks. Well, I still am fine with my purchasing decision. It’s a good stepping stone into learning out to network. In the future, I’ll definitely build it myself and get my own domain for remote access.
You don’t need to buy a domain for that. There are plenty free dynamic DNS options that will give you a free subdomain that will work perfectly fine for that.
Oh interesting. Links?
https://freedns.afraid.org/ , https://www.duckdns.org/ , https://dynv6.com/ , https://free-ddns.com/ , https://ydns.io/
Personally I always pick and recommend the first one as it has been reliable for ever. The second one is kind of the new kid on the block (but for a few years now) and the others may be commercial entities with other lines of bussines.
I had a DS212j for about 10 years before I replaced it, and it was working just fine, so I sold it on ebay. It just couldn’t keep up with the transcoding plex that I was using it for. Heck, 7 of those years it was running on a shelf in my garage getting covered in dust, and spiderwebs.
I imagine a + model will last even longer than that.
