Should You Use SSDs For Your NAS? 

Save yourself and watch at 1.75x speed

As a Synology Service Center. We don't recommend Sata SSD's at all. Unless the SSD is rated for a NAS. Or a Video Surveillance drive. Or if used as a Cache drive. Mainly the reason why we don't recommend them here is the controller chips on them. They die fast. The controller chip. Be it Phison, USBEST, SMI, or Samsung. They can only handle so many 100's of thousands read writes before they start to break down. And can die suddenly. Not the ram on the SSD's that dies. Its the controller chip that has to pass all those ram chips info to you. Usually its slower as it dies. But can be overnight dead. Now you might think read writes are only from what you send and receive from the NAS. But no. Internally in many certain raid configurations. The drives are also passing data between themselves. Like internal integrity checks, SMART data updates, parallel data movements and whole lot more you don't interact with. On mechanical drives. There is no main central controller to pass through. There is, but its not like a SSD controller. And with mechanical you kinda get a warning of it breaking down. At least so you can react asap to change that. Hope this helps too. Great Video here!

The performance bottleneck for many of the 4 bay and smaller Synology NAS units is the network. Synology really needs to standardize on 10G NICs, or at least 2.5G

Yep, I have switched to all SSDs. I have a Lenovo 1L 7500T with a 4 TB SSD, a 2 TB NVME and and external USB hub (Sabrent) with 4x2TB SSDs. Here in the UK SSDs seem to be about double the price of HDDs. Power consumption and noise were both factors in my choice in switching to all SSDs.😊

Power consumption, physical size, and heat is much better with SSDs than HDDs too. I was able to take an old small form factor desktop (Lenovo E73), install a 6-bay Icy Dock enclosure with 2TB SSDs, TrueNAS Scale, and a LSI controller card and have a reasonably inexpensive NAS that is fairly compact and doesn't consume that much power.

Synology is shooting themselves on their foot by prohibiting to use other drives than theirs. They are also not adding the 18-20-22 TB spinning drives to the compatibility list to push for their own Toshiba Synology branded drives. Also, they are including quite old processors to their NAS models instead of using modern ones with better performance to run containers and other things.

I re-created my DS1621 a few months ago. I added 2 SSDs in SHR as the system volume. So all apps are installed here. The Syn Drive database. The Plex database and temp files. Photos DB. Etc etc It is blazing fast compared to before 👍🏻😁🤓 And sooooo much quieter.

Very helpful thank you, I’m now considering Sata ssd’s as I’m approaching near the time to upgrade. 👍

Perfect video, exactly what I was looking for.

Switched to full SSD's on my DS1019+ 3 years ago, i totally love it ! My NAS is a 14W beast, in a total silence 😜

I do IT forensics, so alot of data and need speed, we use 8 bay Synology NAS with 10gbe and drives as 8x 4TB SSD + 2x 2TB nvme for RW cache. I burn many SSD and we started with the Samsung EVO, but they are really bad as there controller dont seems to handle the load and gives many CRC errors and then the SMART data says the drives are bad... So we have changed to Samsung 4TB PRO that just works and stabile but it seems that Samsung dont make that any more, so now we have changed over to WD Red NAS 4TB SSD and they work very well... So SSD in an NAS 🙂depends on your use case and see then as disposable IT, meaning that we know it is limited time before the are dead in the way we use them. Then we have other NAS for Slow storage where we archive data and they are running with normal harddisks+ssd-cache, because cheaper, bigger and works fine for archive data where we dont need the high random IO and speed. So yes my use case is not normal and can not be compared to others, but what i will says is that not all SSD work well in NAS and dont buy Samsung EVO SSD

Good thing this didn't come out yesterday when I purchased my first setup 😅 Definitely considering this down the road, especially since I'll still have 4 open bays. Thanks for all the info, Will! 🙏

Informative, as always, Thank you for the content. Regarding using m.2 ssds for caching, would you suggest it if users are caching large files (4-10gb / each) and the files are not always the same? Example: Users watching video lectures stored on the NAS, but every user is watching a different lecture simultaneously? I'm not sure if this makes sense, but any advice would always be appreciated. Thanks again. Keep up the good work!

How would you update an existing NAS / storage pool from HDDs to SSDs?

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 💰 *SSD prices have significantly dropped, making them a viable option for NAS setups.* 03:11 🔄 *SSDs outperform hard drives significantly in random read and write operations, offering a massive performance advantage.* 05:41 📊 *While hard drives currently offer higher storage capacity, SSDs excel in power efficiency, silent operation, and faster RAID rebuilds.* 08:52 ⚙️ *SSD longevity concerns have diminished; calculating terabytes written and RAID configurations can ensure their durability.* 11:02 🔄 *NVMe SSDs can be used for caching, enhancing NAS performance, but Synology restricts their use as main storage due to pricing and compatibility.* Made with HARPA AI

I recently installed Radarr, Sonarr, Plex, qBittorrent among other things on my NAS, and now the noise is driving me crazy. I am debating replacing the main drive where all my docker containers are with an SSD, would that help make it quieter? All my other content is on the other drives and they are in separate shares. qBittorrent and Plex would still need to be hitting the other drives for things.

GREAT video! I have been looking for this information. I have a DS923+ using Toshiba N300 14tb drives; sounds like it is ready to take off. I want to switch this over to Samsung 870 8tb drives. Can you share how to migrate old hard drives to the new SATA SSD drives on an existing system? I am running a 2.5gb network. Thanks!

great video. been thinking about swapping out my old 3.5" to 2.5" ssds

I have just built a TrueNAS Scale server with a new XL case and PSU, second hand Xeon, Supermicro MB, and 128 GB ECC RAM. The 8x 4TB Red drives are still half the price of the latest SATA HDD's. When I need an extra pool in a year or two, they will probably be the same price by then. When it comes to NVMe's, I'm looking at the "now older" PCIe Gen 3's. They are very cheap for things like ZIL, L2ARC, DeDup, and all those other Pool add-on's.

What are your thoughts about an OWC Thunderbay 4 mini with SSD for direct attached storage ( DAT allows Backblaze backup ) - i am using Lacie BigDoc currently - and backed up on site to SYNOLOGY NAS

And I also aim that using SSDs for the more I/O intensive applications can extend my HDDs lifespan.

You recommend the samsung evo but i read everywhere that they fail often. Any opinion on this?

Thank you for posting this video 📹. You have a new subscriber. Keep up the great work. This was a very informative video 🎥.

My use case is just an Apple Time Capsule HDD to SSD replacement for future reliability. Your brand and type recommendation?

It seems that there's no easy way to switch from hard drives to SSDs on synology? Seems that synology does not support mixed SSD and hard drives on a single pool, therefore you cannot organically switch to SSDs by swapping one drive at a time. Is my understanding correct?

I have the 716+ii with 5 bay expansion - with raid 5. My question is what bays is best to use to upgrade to ssd , to ssd for read write cache? ssd advisor recommend 8gb Sata only.

Will you do a video showing how you choose to install SSDs in one of your NASes? Thanks for your incredible source of info!

Hi Will, thanks a lot. Perhaps some videos comparing performance differences in different applications for future videos! For example ds photos browsingetc etc. Keep it up, great videos! /from sweden🎉

Incredible information. Great to know how far SSD technology has come. And drives, to be honest. Do the Synology drives allow hot swap of SSDs too?

I wish synology would release a NVME NAS as the asustor ones.

Question, I create Archviz projects and files are getting huge so i was looking into NAS for my storage needs. Can the nas system works as everyday use to access and load files or stricklty for backup?

Upgrading Process? I have watched this channel a lot and learned a lot. I bought a DS923+, and set it up with 4 off 8TH hard drives. The setup went well with help from this channel. But I'm moving the unit into a small office, with good battery backup. however, the noise from the Mechanical drives is too much. So I'm definitely looking to invest $2000 AUD. to upgrade to 4 off 4TB Samsung EVO drives. the drop in capacity is no issue. I currently run SHR and have 21TB available, but I'm only up to 3.5 TB. So the approx 11-12TB I will end up with is plenty. my biggest Question is what's the best method to change over the drives. do I swap 1 at a time letting it rebuld 1 drive at a time, thus no setup again required. or do I do a Hyper backup to an external drive, and swap all at once, then try to restore? I have no Idea, there may be other ways? a reply with advice would be appreciated.

i really enjoy your videos I have a Kingston NVME 1 TB and put it into a usb c enclosure. When I plug it into then USB 3 port it’s only transfers @ 30MB/sec it’s a synology DS214+ I just wanted to use it as a Time Machine backup. Thanks Malc

Can you mix hdds and ssds in the same Nas box - I.e. upgrading a drive at a time as funds allow?

great video, my experience with storage is very long, i can tell you that SSD`s are great for hot data and consumer grade devices work well in less dense or intensive environments with not much io transactions , lets say a personal or small group NAS. When you move to a very dense and intensive IO such as production VM clusters, consumer grade ssd become very difficult to evaluate in terms of durability. Solid state drives improve a lot over the years but they are still less reliable, overall life time measure in total io transactions. I think long term storage or "cold" storage will be ok in HDDS and can provide a multi decade lifetime. Best solution for General use in my opinion is hybrid, HDD array accelerated by an ssd Array working as a cache. In busy systems you can kill consumer ssds in weeks or months, hdds can last years. In the other hand Datacenter level HDDS can last decades on constant operation with a fail rate of 1% to 2% per year. I recommend long term storage to be on hdd or tape. The reason is we don't know how long will an ssd survive even offline. I don't have that experience yet, HDDS are proven tech in this area, i'm 51, some customers keep data on hdd's for over 20 years and they work well, CDS in the other hand (CDR or DVDR) don't last as longer, the material fall apart over the years at least you store it in controlled conditions. Simple solution for a NAS desktop can be hybrid, 2 hhd's for cold and long term data and 2 SSD's for hot data, best of 2 worlds. Best Regards

On a NAS with 2.5" bays, can one transition to SSDs gradually, one bay at a time ? Can a btrfs volume be hosted on a mixed hardware (HDD + SSD) ?

I have a 4bay Synology DS920+ with Data protection. Can I install these one at a time over the course of a few weeks?

I do. I changed from a DS720 to a DS923 exactly to be able to use the M.2 bays as storage pools. There I let databases, containers and VMs.

How do you find the lifespan of SSD's in NAS's with heavy write loads? I have not had the issue of non-synology drives not building volume. I guess your milage may vary on that.

Very informative, thank you! 🙂

Can you gradually upgrade a Synology with HDDs to an all SSD setup?

In another channel on youtube it was advised to move to an SSD the Plex LIbrary from a NAS. Would you recommend that? I'm copying my PlexMediaLibrary to an external SSD (it's btw taking forever and not completing).

I recently bought my second Synology NAS, a DS223. I decided to populate it with a pair of Crucial MX500 2.5 inch SATA SSD's. Within the space of about a month my NAS experienced crashes on both storage pools (one for each SSD). I lost all data on my 4Tb drive the first time around. Then, just a couple of days ago, I receive two emails. The first informs me that the /swap partition has degraded. A few seconds later the second email tells me that my root partition has degraded. Then, storage pool 1 crashes. I am forced to wonder if the use of SSD's is causing these frequent, and catastrophic, crashes. My other Synology, A DS1821+, with six HDD's has never given me a problem in the 14 months I've had it. So ... is there a problem with using unsupported SSD's? Or, is this a symptom of Synology continuing to reduce the choice of compatible drives to the point where, for the DS223, the only HDD's/SSD's listed in the NAS's compatibility list are those from Synology. Could these failures be a form of artificially induced problems due to lack of compliance? Hmmm ... I've just ordered a Synology HAT3300 6Tb HDD and will install that instead. I wonder if all my crashes will mysteriously stop.

Yes this was very helpful. Thank you

In 1997, I paid $500 for a 5Gb HDD, and I thought that was the bees' knees. My oh my, how far we've come!

Are you RAID striping the SSDs? Also, is the Samsung your preferred choice?

Great video ! I'm currently planning to upgrade my 8x2TB raid 5 array with ssd. By the past, i was worried about price and endurance. That's not th case anymore ! Waiting for a good deal and i go on with ssd. The major concern, for me, about my "old" hdd is electrical consumption. Should drop 24/7 electrical consumption from 80 to 30w. that's a huge difference. Planning to keep hdd only for my backup storage array which is spinned down most of the time ;)

Hi Eill, thank you very much for the video.

Thoughts on the Qvo drives (quald level cell with burst writes/reads)? I'm thinking 80GB at full speed burst is enough for most, it's not like I'm constantly reading from the drives, I mostly like to access data instantly and have it not be on a mechanical drive.

Hello @SpaceRex! Can I backup my DS220j to an external HDD that is connected to my Windows PC? I can't see to figure out a way to do this backup on the network. I check all your videos with HyperBackup and USBCopy but most of the functions reffer me to plug the external drive to the Synology NAS and I want to do the backup through my Windows PC on the same network as the NAS.

just a heads up, sometimes i run the nvme option for caching... Amazon likes to pull fast ones and samsung I refuse to use anymore because they sell the "international" ones and getting support for them in the states is not gonna happen. Had this issue with a customer.

Bro, your guide for the Portainer + Docker helped me alot running a qBittorrent on my RPi4B, however Im experiencing a memory leak of something. qbit seems to hog all the memory buff/cache when it's downloading, even just 1-2 torrents at a time. I'm downloading directly to a mounted hdd via usb 3.0| Do you have like a guide on how to properly setup qbit that would be great

I have wd my cloud ex2 ultra 2 bays nas hard drive go in at the top are there any adapter plates for this design as they have no hard drive caddy?

A 3 minute presentation jam packed into 15 minutes. This guy repeats himself. A LOT.

Just had two 970 Evo Plus 500gb drives go “critical” on my Synology due to hitting the manufacturer defined lifespan. They still functioned perfectly but they would no longer mount. They lasted about 3 years so I popped in 1TB versions so I can get 6 years of use. Keep in mind these were for caching a dedicated backup server with a lot of reads and writes every day so most folks can expect more life than that. Just keep an eye on the SMART data

Just purchased my first synology 1522+. I’m looking at what hard drives to get and still might be a little confused. Based on performance and let’s say money and not having huge amount of storage isn’t a issue is there much of a difference to buy all SSD for the slots vs all HDD with the NVME caching.

@10:27 - cudos for the realistic audio fx and beat boxing skills 😂

Thanks for all the content. Don’t they need to be synology ssds nowadays? Can you still add samsung ssds? Their website says it will not work. Thank you.

Thank you for the great review and insights on the NAS products. I've been planing to upgrade from my current DS220+ to DS1522+, however I'm concerned that according to Synology compatibility lists, they no longer support any third-party 2.5 SATA SSD drives! Do you know if I can still use other SATA SSD brands with the DS1522+?

Hello, super cool video. Just one question. I have a DS923+ and installed 3 HDDs in SHR. Now i want to install 1 SSD in the 4th slot. The reason why I wanna do this ist to install the DSM just on this one SSD an use the 3 HDDs just for storage. Is it possible to install the DSM just on this one SSD? The reason for this is most of the time I don't use the NAS for Active working so the HDDs could go into supsend mode. But because the DSM is installed on the HDDs it nearly never happens.

Im a little confused about the throughput of HDD vs SSD when you use RAID to protect your data. Im really needing a high level of data protection, so im looking at options like Raid-6. I don' t want to get caught in a Raid-5 rebuild which itself causes another drive failure due to the high workload rebuilding the Raid-5. When running Raid-6 on HDD vs SSD, can you stil maintain high throughput levels? Our office servers have 10GB SFP+ and im looking for a NAS which can support 25GB SFP28 so that multiple servers can access the NAS with only small impacts. I need to be around 20-25TB total storage. Ive heard of NVMe being used as a cache for the HDD/SSD in some systems. Im just looking for some good options to consider.

Hi SpaceRex I have just brought: Synology DiskStation DS1821+ 8 Bay [under your inspiration = thx man]. If I was to to set it up this way: I put two 4TB SSDs in Bays1 and 2; in RAID-1. And I put six Ironwolf 22TB HDD in Bays 3 thought to 8; in RAID-5 Could I label (or effectively use) this configuration as two “separate” NAS; where I use the 4TB for my current work files [giving me speed]… And, I use the RAID-5, containing the Ironwolf 22TB HDDs, for archive storage [giving me size]. Is this even possible (within the same DiskStation Unit)? Is this a good idea? Can I move the files internally, from the RAID-1 to the RAID-5 (and vice versa), within the DiskStation? What are the unknown “newbie” problems with doing this? Cheers JetBoy

is it possible to swap hdd with sdd through dsm? or hdd can only swapped with hdd and sdd can only swapped with sdd?

im from ksa... ur channel is very useful, keep it up

The other day I was looking at SSDs and noticed that the WD Red 4TB SSDs were $100 off. Not sure if it was a mistake, but bought 6 of them and installed them in a DS1821+. Very happy with the performance, but I disagree with your comment at 10:20 the NAS is not completely silent. In fact, with the SSDs I found the stock fans obnoxiously loud. I swapped the stock fans with Noctua fans, and it is much better now, but unfortunately the PSU fan is noisy and can't be easily replaced. Overall very happy with my setup though.

I wonder what a good way to start consulting is? I offered a menu for Tech advice and help. I have not had anyone reach out.

Having recently setup my new NAS with SSD cache, the transfer/write speed is limited not just by the NIC you're using, but also the drive speed. I can get up to mid to high 500 MB/sec between my Asustor AS5404T using a pair of SK Hynix P31 Gold M.2 in RAID 1 configuration as cache, going to my PC's OS drive, which is a WD SN850, using 2.5 Gb NIC and switch with Cat 5e cables with SMB multi-channel activated in ADM. If the file is transferred from my PC from a mechanical internal HDD, the speed is reduced to high 100 MB/sec. I have 4x Seagate Exos Mach.2 HDD in RAID 5 as main drives in the NAS.

Hi Will. Thank you so much for all the videos you post on your channel, so helpfull, so well done! I use multiple Synology's in different places and I'm looking for a way to upgrade my all network : Would it be possible to publish an explanation oor overview on How to go from Microsoft active directory Server to Synology Directory Server. Thanks a lot - Alex, from Paris, France

Thanks, buddy, for another excellent review! Will, you truly are a NAS oracle. Your videos have helped me every step of the way of getting my dream Synology setup I was initially leaning towards the WD red since it was reputed for high endurance. I have the 6bay synology nas, with approx 2.4 tb used, with wd red spinning 2tb hardives. WD red sata nas are 2500, and was tempted to replace all my drives with the wd red stata ssds. However, wd red sata ssds are quite expensive, for example, Samsung 870 qvo are significantly cheaper and are 2880 TBW for a 2tb ssd, cf 2500 wd red. Thus, I may be looking to go towards Samsung 870 QVO 2 TB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (MZ-77Q2T0). what the best way to repalce these, can i remove one drive at a time and let the system rebuild each time. Or, should i backup onto 6tb external drive and then replace them all, and rebuild from the external drive.

I do a lot of audio/visual/voiceover work and rely on my network drive....but it failed. My Synology DS220+ failed and killed both 8TB WD Red drives in the process, hopefully, the data can be recovered. Synology sent a new unit, however, I've lost faith in hard drives and am considering replacing them with SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA III SSD 8TB 2.5" Internal Solid State Drives....your thoughts? I also plan to now backup ALL data to an external HD and keeping it on the shelf (updating weekly).

Thanks for the video, it was really helpful! I appreciate the effort you put into creating content. One small suggestion for future videos: consider using a script or talking points to help streamline your presentation. This might help in avoiding repetition, making your videos even more engaging. Keep up the great work!

Is it realistic to consider setting up a 6 or 8 slot consumer(DS+ DSxs+) Synology unit with one bank/volume of 3 or 4 SSDs for fast, frequent read/writes, and another bank/volume of 3 or 4 spinning rust drives for larger capacity to store less frequently accessed files? Would this get that "best of both worlds" benefit based on current drive costs, or is it asking for a difficult setup or longer term problems?

Will Seagate Ironwolf 125 4tb SSDs work on a Synology 1821+ ?

Hi Will, would you recommend NAS SSD like WD Red, which are quite pricy (400€ for 4 TB)?

What about having an SSD as your main system drive and then an HDD for your backup drive in a Basic setup?

I used synology for doing vfx production using 4K footage , 8 bay sata. Enough for me. If you can add additional 10Gbps network, it would be great.

Since the Samsung SSD's are not on the compatibility list through Synology, what is the ramifications for installing all ssd's within their drives? Last thing I want to do is have disks that will not be usable down the line.

The biggest disappointment for me with the new NVMe support is the Syn drives are SOOO darn small. Like I said, I made the system volume as two SSD. But that ate two slots 😞 If I can get 4 (or 8) TB NVMe drives to work as a volume, I can get my slots back 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

I agree with you about SSD longevity. However, while their lifespan may be much longer now, their lifespan is still finite. IF you bring a new NAS online using all SSDs, and every one of those SSDs begin their life together, and the writes that are imposed on them are almost exactly the same throughout their lifespan, then when they DO finally fail, they will likely all fail at or around the same time. That's something you want to keep in mind with a RAID because if you have only one drive for fault tolerance and you happen to lose two or more drives in rapid succession, then you've got a real problem. If I were to configure an all SSD RAID, I would plan on preemptively replacing drives well before they got close to the end of their lifespans.

Is is possible to have two raid arrays on Synology NAS devices one SSD and the other spinning hard drives?

I picked up 4 crucial 4TB MX500’s and have them in a pool in my 1621+ in raid5. Love it. The other two disks are 16TB iron wolf for data i dont access that much. I use the SSDs as backup for my TrueNas all NVMe machine. I think the 4TB mx500’s are like $210 now. Cheap.

Can i use this ssd drives for databases ?? I have a physical server with hdd 1 tb hosting sql server 200 gigabyte can i host this vp on synology full flash ssd and work properly ?

Can I use normal SSDs available in the market, or are there specific SSDs to be used?

But can you yave thqt wouod you still see a difference if you had a nvke as a cache drive in the nas with mechanical drives?

Running 4x 4TB SSD on DS620slim over a year. Small form, Silent, quick response for file storage, iPhone backup. Now, I am planning add two more 4TB or 8TB SSD to complete the 6-bay setup. Also, expecting new DS6XXslim may coming soon.

Thankyou. Exactly what a dummy like me needed. Much to consider. Regards

Can you mix hard drives and the SATA SSDs? I have a 4-bay DS920+ with 2 4TB Seagates. Could I add 2 4TB SSDs in the 2 empty slots?

Need 80TB of storage.... SSD has gotten cheap ? 😂😂😂😂

I’ve noticed that the Samsung evo ssd is not on the compatibility list. Will it still work okay?

Note Synology ssd cache caches random read and write io (not often accessed data) sequential data will not get cached (dsm6 did let you do it had a tick box to cache sequential as well but was removed in dsm7 because why cache sequential io, hdds do it plenty fast enough)

What about a DIY NAS with TrueNAS or Proxmox with a ZFS Pool with 10Gbe? Would then NVME SSDs make a difference from SATA SSDs?

What about Video editing with low random IO?

For a home office setting: 4-bay Synology NAS, 1-SSD (for Volume 1) and 3-HDD (for the remaining drive bays, preferably in a RAID setup). Would you recommend such a setup? Are there any downsides, if one should configure their NAS this way?

If I don’t have raid and JBOD spinning disks I.e bay 1: movies hdd bay 2: music 3: security camera and if I add a NVME to my 923+ I can’t work out with this video if it would help

Of course, for an enterprise solution, you just add more memory. ZFS cache is amazing.

One downside I would think about is the recoverability of data (let's say both drives in a raid burn out due to some power issues). HDDs would be easier to recover (replacing the board or using professional services) than SSDs. Am I wrong?

I went all SSD with the DS620slim from Synology some years ago and while I can't use the full speed because of just 1 GB connection limitation I am still loving it because it's so dead silent (working remote from home) and very responsive. But all the ssds were f**king expensive (6x 4TB drives) I have to say and it's sure not worth for everybody

Does the speed really make a difference for those of us with typical home 1gbps wired networks? Wouldn't that be the bottleneck?

Is Synology compatible with SSD drives?

Nice video :-o) Got four 2TB crucial in RAID5 in an Icy Dock - I'm not going back. Only got one "real" HDD left in the house. But I do worry about the erasing/destruction of the disks when EOL. I guess you have to physically destroy each and every flash chip.