NAS speed - Sata drives vs M2 drives?

Mattcee2

Mattcee2

Mattcee2

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This may sound a dumb question but with my current Synology NAS (on a 10GB connection with x2 SSD drivers for caching) that's filled with x8 Sata 7200rpm Seagate EXOS Enterprise 16TB drives, when I pull big video files into my editing software, some files take a while to import and I can hear the the drives spinning up working for a short time and playback can be a little choppy despite having a 5090 GPU.

If I pull these same files from the M2 drive on my PC itself, everything is good and fast but I need far more storage than I can fit on my PC and moving files back and forth is a non starter.

My question is... If i were to use another NAS (such as the Asustor Flashstor 12 bay NVMe), which uses M2 drives instead of spinning SATA drives, would pulling files over the same 10GB network be any faster than my current NAS as I know there different variables involved?
 
Almost certainly, yes, but you could help by telling us what RAID you're using on the Synology and how big the cache drives are.
I had an Asustor AS6706T and just two NVMe SSDs in RAID1 were enough to read at 10Gbps.
 
Even with 10gbe your limited to 1,250 Mbps so M.2 isn't going to give you much more.

How do you have the NAS drives configured, different RAID will have different Read/Write speeds.
 
Mattcee2 said:
They vary between 10GB - 25GB
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Right, so best case on a 10gb connection those files will take between 8 and 20 seconds to read end to end sequentially - so then it comes down to how your software actually access the files.
If it's clever enough to only open small pieces of the file at a time, then you'll benefit from the improved random-seek latency of NVME or SSD over the spinning disk.
 
Snapshot said:
Almost certainly, yes, but you could help by telling us what RAID you're using on the Synology and how big the cache drives are.
I had an Asustor AS6706T and just two NVMe SSDs in RAID1 were enough to read at 10Gbps.
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Its running RAID 10 and I use x2 500MB M.2 cache drives. Would putting larger capacity or higher Gen M.2's make any difference?
The x2 I use now are pretty old and prob gen 2? (Samsung Evo 970 500mb & Sandisk WDC 500mb)
 
Mattcee2 said:
Its running RAID 10 and I use x2 500MB M.2 cache drives. Would putting larger capacity or higher Gen M.2's make any difference?
The x2 I use now are pretty old and prob gen 2? (Samsung Evo 970 500mb & Sandisk WDC 500mb)
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My understanding (and I am happy to be proven wrong) is that Synology builds up the cache based on what it thinks you are likely to be pulling bases on past usage (so I assume thats most frequently used files populate the cache). So, if the files you are using are new and especially if they are large: they probably won't be in the cache whixh will be why you can hear the disks spin up and seek. The only real control over what is in the cache is that having a bigger store means more files can be in the cache as far as I am aware.
 
Cheers all and I've ordered a UGREEN NASync DXP480T Plus as it looks nice and small and filling it with x4 8TB M.2 drives should be enough for my needs at present - and I can send the whole lot back if there's little to no improvement :)
One more question, The NAS comes with 8GB RAM but I can upgrade it to 64TB. Would adding any more RAM make any difference to the file transfer speeds and editing video from?
I'll be using the NAS purely for video file storage and video editing off with no need for anything else or any other progs/apps installing on it.
 
Mattcee2 said:
Cheers all and I've ordered a UGREEN NASync DXP480T Plus as it looks nice and small and filling it with x4 8TB M.2 drives should be enough for my needs at present - and I can send the whole lot back if there's little to no improvement :)
One more question, The NAS comes with 8GB RAM but I can upgrade it to 64TB. Would adding any more RAM make any difference to the file transfer speeds and editing video from?
I'll be using the NAS purely for video file storage and video editing off with no need for anything else or any other progs/apps installing on it.
Click to expand...
Which 8TB drives are you getting?
 
Mattcee2 said:
I've ordered a UGREEN NASync DXP480T Plus as it looks nice and small and filling it with x4 8TB M.2 drives should be enough for my needs at present
Click to expand...

Assume you are going to do away with the 10GbE then, and do th sensible thing and use 40Gbps Thunderbolt, and treat it a bit like a DAS?
 
Mattcee2 said:
This may sound a dumb question but with my current Synology NAS (on a 10GB connection with x2 SSD drivers for caching) that's filled with x8 Sata 7200rpm Seagate EXOS Enterprise 16TB drives,
Click to expand...
8x 7200rpm drives assuming RAID10 wont be far off maxing out a 10Gb connection. The SSD cache won't be used for sequential reads ever though

Mattcee2 said:
when I pull big video files into my editing software, some files take a while to import and I can hear the the drives spinning up working for a short time and playback can be a little choppy despite having a 5090 GPU.
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Sounds more like the drives are set to spin down on inactivity for power saving. Turn that off and that will make a big difference to first access time.
 
Journey said:
Assume you are going to do away with the 10GbE then, and do th sensible thing and use 40Gbps Thunderbolt, and treat it a bit like a DAS?
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Well, no as the Ugreen doesn't support that. I have x2 PC's so a NAS is better so I don't have to keep swapping any DAS around but I'm not opposed to it.
The problem is, for DAS units, there appears to be hardly any available which support M.2 drives only unless I've missed something?

The only one I've seen is the QNAP TBS-h574TX but thats pretty much double the price and seems out out stock at most place unless I want to part with £2k on Amazon.
It also has features (that makes it more expensive) that I just don't need and won't use.

The Asustor Flashstor also doesn't support connection via Thunderbolt I've learned and has something to do with issues with AMD drivers or something?
If you do know of any small-ish devices that supports Thunderbolt connection with a minimum of x4 m.2 slots, let me know :)
 
Armageus said:
8x 7200rpm drives assuming RAID10 wont be far off maxing out a 10Gb connection. The SSD cache won't be used for sequential reads ever though


Sounds more like the drives are set to spin down on inactivity for power saving. Turn that off and that will make a big difference to first access time.
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At first run in the morning, yes power saving does kick in but throughout the day when the NAS is in constant use, they still spin up and takes a while on certain larger files. Local M.2 drives even on 30GB files is pretty much instant to import.
 
Mattcee2 said:
At first run in the morning, yes power saving does kick in but throughout the day when the NAS is in constant use, they still spin up and takes a while on certain larger files.
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Then something is wrong, drives don't "spin up" unless they have power saving turned on - they should always be spinning
 
Armageus said:
Then something is wrong, drives don't "spin up" unless they have power saving turned on - they should always be spinning
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Its just on certain files that have been run through Topaz Video AI with a certain preset. Most video files are good and import quick but it just seems the NAS/Editing software seems to struggle with one specific encoded file even though they are all mp4 format.
When I say 'spin up', I probably mean you can hear the NAS working harder than usual.
 
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