this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
25 points (93.1% liked)

Selfhosted

38705 readers
158 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
25
SSD only NAS/media server? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/selfhosted
 

Hello!

I am getting the parts together for a tower server build. I plan on running Jellyfin, maybe dive into arrs and nextcloud for 2 users total, wireguard only for external access as it's not the main focus for now.

Situation: if I have access to refurb/used 4TB enterprise HDDs at the same price as 1.9ish TB enterprise SSDs.

I'd take lower capacity as it is not that big of a concern for me rn. I want to have somewhat redundant storage of my documents, photos, but otherwise it's not gonna be a giant media vault overflowing with movies.

Question: In terms of noise, shipping concerns and longevity, would you go with SSDs instead of HDDs? Is it lower maintenance?

I can of course buy spinners later if I find flash only to be restricting in any way, and add to the rig as needed.

Speed would not be an issue in any case. This is for TrueNAS scale, so zfs. I am planning to buy 3-4 disks now, and add more if needed in 6 months time or later.

I am eager to hear others opininons on this. Thanks!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (23 children)

Failure rates for sdd are better than hdd but generally not by a lot. I've read that hdds can have a higher "crib death" where new drives have a higher failure rate, but after like a year they are solid. Unless you're buying thousands of drives you're unlikely to notice though.

I've never heard of "noise" being an issue for an hdd - especially if you have it in any sort of enclosure. If you're not sitting right next to it you shouldn't notice.

The biggest differences are performance and cost. If you want speed go ssd. If you want cheap go hdd.

My desktop systems run ssd where performance really matters to me. I get hdds for my file server where I want bulk storage.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (9 children)

The noise is only an issue because of how small my appartment is. I can't really isolate noise in here. I would think it also depends on which drives I get. I read that some are louder than others.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I have very recently acquired 4x18TB Seagate Exos drives for a fresh server. I parked them in an old case I had lying around where i was barely able to secure them all with screws, and cooling was especially problematic. Noise was horrible. standby noise was already audbile in the entire room. and when writing data while parity calculations were running, you could hear it in the entire apartment. The noise travelled through the wooden floor into every other room.

I have now moved the server and the drives into the fractal define 7 case. the drives rest on specially made rubber bearings that came with the case. the sides are noise isolated. the system is running with 6 fans total, 3 of which are 120mm corsair fans repurposed, and 3 are 140mm from the define 7. the server is now close to noiseless. vibrations do not rattle the case as with the old one. the rubber bearings isolate most of the vibration anyways. all that is left is a bit of head clacking, which gets isolated away from the case sides.

long story short: the drives are only half the story. you need a proper enclosure that is noise isolated. the define 7 is comparatively huge, but it gives you immense room to grow and was truly a godsent regarding noise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the insights on the case and drives!

I have an old Silverstone case with about 6 of the old style 3,5" drive mounts and 3x5,25" bay. Originally I had a Samsung 1TB drive in it (which is still kicking around somehow pulling torrent drive duty) I remember it being louder in that case then in my new one. So I'll have to test it out. If i can get my hands on some rubber bearings and if they help any at all.

I am not planning to go that big on storage for now tho. It sounds like serious work. I am doing this so I can be more comfortable. Aside from updates, I want to dial it in once and forget it unless I need to touch it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Since you're going to go with 4TB drives, they may already make less noise just based on that. At these lower capacities (would have been an insane thing to call 4TB drives a couple years ago lol) they're built differently.

If you're not gonna use a "proper sound isolated case", let me share these two ressources for custom sound dampening cases: https://silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=70364
https://silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8240&sid=d238d6b11e22a2ee94bdd902078aa1ec

Both taught me a handful of things about what I can do beyond buying an isolated case to reduce noise output. Maybe they will be of help to you too. Best of luck!

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (19 replies)