SanDisk
Should You Be Using SSDs in Your PLEX NAS?
Should You Be Using SSDs in Your PLEX NAS?
#SSDs #PLEX #NAS
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I must be dumb because I don't understand where most of the discussion in this video came from. If I understand correctly, the conclusion is that across four disks you save a constant 22 watts, which is ~500 watt-hours per day or ~16 kWh per month if the disks were to be spinning 24/7 – which is about 7 AUD monthly, for me. All the stuff about transcoding or resolution or the "CPU advantage" (?) that you're not seeing at 5:30 – I must be too sleepy to see what you mean….
If you're streaming media off a NAS for a family server youre only really sipping data off it.
What would be far more useful is if these devices could spin down/power off with quick reboot when not in use. When its idle they should be using next to 0 watts. Most people won't be using it for at least some hours a day. We shouldn't need several hdds spinning 24/7 when you may only grab the odd file now and then for a few hours in an evening.
You do if youre running lots of users or some use or database that needs low latency then sure. Ssds all the way, or run HDDs 24/7. But most NAS seem overpowered for a media server
they need to increase ssd capacity to the home user. we need cheaper larger ssds though. 8tb is very expensive and too small to go back for. 16tb for 8k pricing now and it would kill normal hd's id bet across the board. power/space/speed
i compleetly switched out my server recently due to the dell server i was useing just at idle was pulling with no hard drives nearly 40watts and full use with video card+ hardrives was pulling neraly 100w at idle so built a system with a 12600k matx and hardrives now olnly pulls around 30w idle
Who the heck can afford SSD's for bulk storage (not me)? Here in NZ, I can buy (locally) an Exos X18 16TB for ~NZ$670, the cheapest 8TB SSD I can find is (a Samsung 870 QVO) ~NZ$1,379!
That represents a cost per TB of $44/$172. You've got to be very wealthy to buy high capacity sata SSD's and the M.2 situation is even worse.
Latency, noise, and electricity pushed me towards all SSD. The only issue is that the price kinda offsets a lot of the benefits.
For difference in price you can buy Solar panel
Thank you for this. You could also add noise and temperature differences to your comparison.
I don't understand why you're comparing SSD and HDD on CPU intensive tasks, when most of the energy is usually used to keep the system running in idle. Thus, I don't see why SSD's are only worth it if you have large media files that need to run CPU intensive transcoding. The difference in energy usage between SSD and HDD is still there even at idle and you're not doing any CPU intensive task, because the HDD has to be constantly spinning in order to respond quickly to requests, while the SSD can just sit mostly idle and then instantly respond when needed.
The Kingston DC600M is an incredible SSD for NAS, comes in up to 8TB capacity, incredible TBW, and the capacitors on the drive means that in the event of power failiure when data is being written, the data should have enough time to be written before drive shuts down. Cost is aboit £1 per 10GB though. But these are data centre drives (hence the DC in name)
I feel like if u have 1gig hdds are still the way unless u need low power. 2.5-10gig u should have a ram cache or ssd cache to really help those peak and burst activities. But plex is so low bandwidth u should just stay with hdds
The size limitation and costs of running SSD's in such an application make it difficult to justify…
For me, I'm not as worried about power consumption as I am worried about cost. Right now 8TB SSDs are very expensive compared to 8TB HDDs. In my server, I have a pretty fast SSD cache drive and plenty of RAM, which solves most of the transcoding issues. My server only has an i3 CPU, but Plex makes full use of intel QSV, so I have never seen high CPU power draw during transcoding in typical use, even with multiple users. The other reason for not going with SSDs for my media storage is that I don't fully trust them. When SSDs die, they are typically just gone with no warning. When HDDs die there is usually plenty of warning (SMART errors, bad sectors). Having at least a little bit of warning saves a lot of headaches, especially if you have time to migrate the data off a failing drive. Rebuilding an array with a completely failed disk is a massive pain.
Would definitely use an ssd plex media server if they had 20TB drives
One thing that pushed me toward SSD's is "Noise Level"! Yea it's more expensive but silence is golden!
My raid 5 hdd setup 8tb of storage can get , 330 Megabytes a second, the speed of the internet is like 112 Megabytes, I really don’t need SSDs 🙂
buy 2x 16TB, put them in mirror and you are done: 16TB of usable space already redundant for 600$. Try to have 16TB of usable space on SSD: it is 8x 4 TB and that is already 2k$. So 1400$ difference – that will give you lots of kWh 😉
So yes, SSD is more energy friendly but less pocket friendly (overall)
I just had an 8tb ssd fail a few days out of warranty. I cant afford to replace it so I’ll be getting an external hard drive. This is on a mini pc backup server.
Just my anime library takes up 2.5TB (and growing), having that all in SSD is gonna take me years to earn back in even the most ideal of scenarios.
Alll SSD for no noise, low heat, fast response. 4TB sata ssd's were down a lot compared to now. Not sure why they've shot up $100 or more recently. 4TB TLC nvme gen 3 with SLC cache was as low as $170. Now back up ~$220. 8TB QLC drives are fine for some types of storage, but they are extremely slow when writing past cache, like 150MB/s slow. There's no reason manufacturers can't release better faster 8TB or even 16TB drives. They seem to only save that for enterprise, although those high TB enterprise drives use a lot of power.
Good idea to consider the 2.5" SSD's and not NVMe's for now. I've tried for best of both worlds with HDD's by having a main NAS that has RAIDZ2 and stores my films/TV Series, but it's only turned on every week or so. When it does turn on, my daily NAS pulls any recently added films/TV series and puts them on a dedicated 14TB HDD (Toshiba CMR, £230) that's powered down when Plex isn't being used. It's about half full at the moment. The daily NAS also has 3 x 4TB in RAIDZ1 for daily use storage (docs, photos, videos, work files and SyncThing, etc.).
I have a Topton based NAS that backs up my daily NAS when enough files have been changed, and 2 other NAS's that backup the main and daily NAS (RAIDZ1 and RAIDZ2). If the 14TB HDD in the daily machine completely fails, it's no bother as I wouldn't have lost anything. Just get a new drive, install and pull from the main NAS.
(This took years to slowly buy the needed drives, but I prefer to buy one 14TB HDD for £230 than TWO £500 8TB SSD's).
Will there be a difference if I put my Plex directory on an SSD and the content on Nas HDD?
am running plex on windows server , 2012r2 and i make media drive tierd with some 125gb ssd 4tb hdd and i notice the library thumbnail load much faster , i think is still not worth it have a ssd only nas base on power consumption alone , but cash drive ssd are woth it ,
Hybrid solutions have always been the best ones
I googled exactly this topic today at noon… Thanks for that. The prices are still too high and if you have a large movie collection it's not worth buying an SSD yet. That's why I'm going to run a large WD Red. Thanks and a thumbs up👍
What I did with my QNAP TVS-672XL was I used 6×4 TB HDD in raid 5 for the primary drives. That Is my PC and Plex media backup, stored documents, graphic art. Qnap apps, etc. and then I used 2x2TB NVME SSD's stiped giveing me 4TB as my primary Plex Media and Plex server app drive. My logic was since SSD's lifespan is mainly based on writes, it makes sense to put something on it that isn't going to be overwritten over time. I generally only save my videos in 1080p as I feel the quantity is more valuable than 4k video quality and sizes. I can still upgrade the 2tb drives to 4 TB drives to double the library if and when that time comes.
Thank you. I just can't bring myself to spend the difference on SSD drives. 12tb enterprise refurbished drives are a thing.
I would suggest that our multimedia NAS's are, on average, idle 95% or more of the time. So, a long term ( say 1 week ) of idle power consumption comparison may actually be a better comparison. My h874 is the one closest to my living area and it's always clacking away and that has to mean power being consumed whether is in use or idle. Always enjoy your videos Robbie. Thank you.
good comparison but the HDD (spinning rust) will unlikely to see 5 to 6 years before screwing up.
A SSD will carry on working and on a plex system, very few writes are performed so the SSD is lekely to have a long life
Sure, for small storage nas a SSD is idea. When you have 60tb of data is the problem
Now the important question that nobody seems to be asking. What if you do the same test SSD only vs HDD but the HDD one has SSD cache ? How big of a difference is there going to be there ? What scenarious will have mesurable difference ? I think it is really important to look in to this because it could bring the best of both, low price and low power consumption. There are going to be IFs and BUTs still, it should work. Please look in to this. Thank you.
very good question
Thanks for making this video. I was considering this question at the moment, so timing is perfect.
Could you tell me where to find the test videos?
What about fast forwarding media and skipping scenes etc. I would assume a high bitrate 4k media would load quicker if i fast forward it or skip a whole scene? Or is that all down to the cpu? Iam sure that woukd be some differences. Iam just thinking responsivness surely has to be different. Iam considering to go to ssd on my synology nas from hdd for this reason only. Loading times when i fast forwarding or going back is a bit laggy on high bitrate media. Not as smooth i would like it to be. So iam wondering would it make a difference in that scenerio
are the drives setup in raid or just single drives? multiple hdds can really stack up power consumption right?
If your network speed is slow, or your HBA is slow, then fast drives may not make the whole system faster.
Thank you. Exactly what i'm tinkering at this weekend. It would be interesting to see the same tests streaming to three or four different devices simultaneously and if the power exponent is significantly divergent.
I would love to go the SSD route. But unfortunately self streaming personal collection havs accrued tens of TBs.
OneLove 💙
Me running a TS-253D with 16Gb ram and a 1Tb WD-Red SSD. NAS is as silent as a corpse.
Use both… System, apps, database, etc. on the SSD, the media itself on HDD.
I work for Syn….. and your channel has become my go to during my training there. I love all of it. Please keep at it.
HDD's are dead. You could buy a 61TB SSD for around £5000. Thats £80/TB. Soon the price will half. Do not waste your money on HDD's it is an old, dead technology.
Thanks!