SSD vs. Hard Drive

[bighalverson]

Hey guys, I have looked and looked over several different forums to see if anybody has tried fast SSD's in their NAS device but could not find any information. I have several Intel SS4200-e upgraded with Dual core procs and 1GB ram on each. The hard drives are 4 WD 750GB Black Editions. Using mirrored as opposed to parity so I guess its Raid 5. My question is, would I see a significant performance increase upgrading to 4 Patriot Torqx 256GB SSD's in a Raid 5 config???

 

[Staj]

SSD's

SSD's use either MLC (multi level cells) or SLC (single level cells). The SLC's are faster and more reliable and obviously more expensive. SSD's should not be defragmented otherwise you decrease their half-life. I had an SSD running windows which promptly failed within a year. The same thing happened with a number of SSD users. Also Microsoft has come out with a new filesystem for SSD's called exFAT which will increase the life of your drive. As SSD's are still in their infancy I would not recommend them for redundant data storage. If however you just want to load windows and not store any real data on the drive then get an SLC SSD and format with exFAT.

 

[thiggins]

Save your money. Network overhead will eat up any performance gains you hope to get from using SSDs.

 

[bighalverson]

Thank you guys for your input. I was about to go and throw down a ton of cash for those SSD's. I am currently using WD 750GB Black editions on all of my NAS boxes, would I get any increase in performance upgrading to WD 1TB RE3 with the dual processors and 32MB Cache?

 

[claykin]

Thank you guys for your input. I was about to go and throw down a ton of cash for those SSD's. I am currently using WD 750GB Black editions on all of my NAS boxes, would I get any increase in performance upgrading to WD 1TB RE3 with the dual processors and 32MB Cache?

Don't waste your $$. Save it for higher performance NAS hardware down the road.

 

[bighalverson]

Thx Clay, how does the Qnap TS509 Pro compare to the Intel ss4200-e in terms of read speads. Large files from 1g to 4g?

 

[bighalverson]

One final question, as far as upgrading the processor from the Intel Celeron 1.6 to a Dual Core Allendale at 2.0+ and ram from the 512 to 1gig. Has anyone here seen any real world performance gains in read or write speeds??? Does the extra processing power help when multiple read requests are made? Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thx

 

[thiggins]

If reads are coming from different clients, the limiting factor will probably be drive seek time. If you're really going to be hammering the NAS with multiple users, invest in enterprise grade drives like the Seagate ES.

 

[bighalverson]

Thanks T. I am looking at the right now. I have read that these drives have problems with synchronization. Have you had any experience with these drives on the Intel SS4200-e?

 

[thiggins]

Thanks T. I am looking at the right now. I have read that these drives have problems with synchronization. Have you had any experience with these drives on the Intel SS4200-e?

No. Sorry.

 

[BriComp]

Contradictory advice

I have been watching this thread and to my mind some of the advice seems a bit contradictory!!

1) Don't buy Solid State drives you will be limited by GigaBit LAN.
2) If there are a number of clients then limiting factor will be drive seek time.

OK
1) for large file transfer YES Lan Speed will probably be the limit. You will need a drive that can provide 110MB/s as a minimum transfer speed. This usually means a maximum transfer rate of double this - 220MB/s. Not many single drives can manage this!!
When you look at smaller sizes of file transfer the HDD drive throughput drops considerably, SDD does NOT.

2) Access times for SDD are in terms of HDD speeds instantaneous. 15k SAS drives have access times of about 5-6mS. SATA drives around 10+mS.

I am running 15k SAS drives in Raid0 which have a MAX throughput of 250MB/s. When we get to small file transfer the speed over the net drops and is certainly quite a way from GigaBit speed.This is to such an extent that I have been considering investing in an SDD to live with the RAID0 array on the server.

 

[bighalverson]

Thanks Bricomp for your input. Geez, there really are a lot of factors when it comes to data transfer over a network.

 

[corndog]

Save your money. Network overhead will eat up any performance gains you hope to get from using SSDs.

Not to mention the calculation overhead of RAID5 parity.

 

[bighalverson]

Upgrade CPU and Memory?

I upgraded to Celeron 1.6 CPU in the SS4200-e Nas to a 2.7Ghz Wolfdale Cpu 800fsb. I also upgraded ram from the 512mb to a 1Gig stick. I would have used a 2 gig stick but I read on the forums that the EMC software only sees up to a 1Gig stick. So, does anyone know if there are any real world performance gains by upgrading said processor and memory????

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Thank you guys for your input. I was about to go and throw down a ton of cash for those SSD's. I am currently using WD 750GB Black editions on all of my NAS boxes, would I get any increase in performance upgrading to WD 1TB RE3 with the dual processors and 32MB Cache?

WD RE3 drives...pretty much the best enterprise grade desktop HD out there...long life and good performance. I picked up some nice WD Black Editions also over the holidays, Newegg had an incredible sale on the 750 gig models, 49 bucks each I think they were on black friday. Solid 5 year warranties on both these drives, MTBF way above 1 million.