What's new

Is there any NAS unit with OS residing on Flash or eMMC memory?

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

Raindrop

New Around Here
Hello,
I had an old D-Link DNS-321 unit for about 10 years which worked great but obviously its too slow by today's standard. I was hearing great things about Synology units for years so I upgraded to Synology DS-218 few months ago.
In my old D-Link unit, the OS was installed on the Flash/eMMC memory. I did not realize that modern NAS units use the hard drives to install the system OS. To make long story short, I am having many issues with Synology unit primarily due to OS being installed on the hard drive. Mainly the hard drive hibernation feature does not work. Even when hard drives are not been accessed still the trivial things like clock sync, e-mail alerts, using DDNS or using a USB printer can wake up the hard drives or does not let it go to sleep to begin with. I have been in contact with Synology support and submitted my system logs but I was told that Synology support does not have any solution to my issues.

So now I am looking for alternative NAS units. I am wondering is there any modern 2-bay NAS unit available which uses on-board Flash/eMMC memory to install the OS rather than using RAID hard drives?
Thanks.

Raindrop
 
Last edited:
Hello,
I had an old D-Link DNS-321 unit for about 10 years which worked great but obviously its too slow by today's standard. I was hearing great things about Synology units for years so I upgraded to Synology DS-218 few months ago.
In my old D-Link unit, the OS was installed on the Flash/eMMC memory. I did not realize that modern NAS units use the hard drives to install the system OS. To make long story short, I am having many issues with Synology unit primarily due to OS being installed on the hard drive. Mainly the hard drive hibernation feature does not work and even trivial things like clock sync, using DDNS or using a USB printer kills the hibernation functionality. I have been in contact with Synology support and submitted my system logs but I was told that Synology support does not have any solution to my issues.

So now I am looking for alternative NAS units. I am wondering is there any modern 2-bay NAS unit available which uses on-board Flash/eMMC memory to install the OS rather than using RAID hard drives?
Thanks.

Raindrop

QNAP NAS' operate the same way (OS is on the HDD's). But they have no issues sleeping.

I suggest getting a model which you can install 4GB+ of RAM and also more than 2 Bays even if you only populate 2 of them now. That will allow the drives to stay powered down but the NAS still 'awake' and responsive to network requests.
 
Hello,
I am really disappointed in Synology regarding hibernation issue. Their support told me 'Just about anything can wake-up a hard drive so we cannot look into this'. Look at this official link: https://www.synology.com/en-us/know...Synology_NAS_from_entering_System_Hibernation

So due to my bad experience I built a NAS based on OpenMediaVault and Odroid-HC2 last week. Even this unit wakes up the hard drive 5 to 6 times a day randomly when the only PC configured to use the Odroid is turned off.

So I looked-up the QNAP and it seems that it has also similar issues since the OS/QTS resides on the hard drives. QNAP also has a knowledge base articles outlining the limitation of their spin-down feature. Look at following articles.

https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/why-are-my-nas-hard-drives-not-entering-standby-mode/

https://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/Find_out_which_process_prevents_the_hard_drives_from_spindown

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
QNAP NAS' operate the same way (OS is on the HDD's). But they have no issues sleeping.

My QNAP TS-453Pro keeps the OS on a 512MB Disk on Module (DOM), and pops that into RAM on startup - the storage array holds the user data (shares, VM's, containers)
 
FWIW -- I don't spin down my drives in my NAS - most drive failures occur on spinup, and a spinning disk that is idle uses very little power..
 

Similar threads

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top