Question Types of Storage you use

Mahboi · Sep 13, 2024

Because SATA SSDs and m2 SSDs have almost exactly the same price/size ratio, I have left any and all SATA SSDs behind a long time ago. However the costs of any SSD are thus always high.
I've been thinking that my storage is a little tight (<1To remaining) for high quality video recordings. I can afford to record 4K videos at CQP 20, but my 1To will turn into 200Go in a matter of a few months. So I've started reconsidering a hybrid solution, half SSD (applications, system, large non streamable data like games that have to load 12Go in RAM the start) and half old HDD.

Napkin math says that even a 25Go/hour movie yields a 7Mo/s streaming time. Any non-dying HDD will yield at least 50Mo/s, most will yield thrice that.
So for media storage, movies, musics, etc, when it's only streamed, the only downside seems to be a greater latency on spinning the disks. Once it's spinning, a modern HDD should start sending data under 10ms(most claim under 6ms), which isn't significant enough for a movie to start or a song to be played ever so slightly later than with an SSD.

I'm curious who stayed on HDDs, who has a hybrid, who went full SSD and wants to jump back into hybrid.
(multiple options in case you have multiple computers)

In2Photos · Sep 13, 2024

Depends on the use case. My gaming/photo editing PC is all NVME. Kids PCs are all NVME. Older web browsing laptops are all SSD. My unRAID server is all HDD.

Mahboi · Sep 13, 2024

In2Photos said:
Depends on the use case. My gaming/photo editing PC is all NVME. Kids PCs are all NVME. Older web browsing laptops are all SSD. My unRAID server is all HDD.

Yeah loading a HQ photo can be a burst usage, but for movies or songs, which should still be the biggest space takers, I don't think any serious advantages come from faster SSDs.

CakeMonster · Sep 13, 2024

I really dislike the M2 form factor for upgrading, its a pain to remove a big graphics card, navigate around a big CPU heatsink, and then unscrew the M2 heatsink. SATA form factor with cables is clearly superior, but its not realistic for new SSD's. I still run HDD's because of backup and they're easy to remove, again because of SATA form factor.

In2Photos · Sep 13, 2024

Mahboi said:
Yeah loading a HQ photo can be a burst usage, but for movies or songs, which should still be the biggest space takers, I don't think any serious advantages come from faster SSDs.

The advantage for SSD over HDD for movies and songs, really any large amount of files, is write speed when you are moving/migrating everything over. One of the reasons I don't have any SSD cache drives in my unRAID server is that I don't write much. Files get written one time, and in small amounts at a time. I mostly read files from the server and the HDD are fast enough for that purpose.

Mahboi · Sep 13, 2024

In2Photos said:
The advantage for SSD over HDD for movies and songs, really any large amount of files, is write speed when you are moving/migrating everything over. One of the reasons I don't have any SSD cache drives in my unRAID server is that I don't write much. Files get written one time, and in small amounts at a time. I mostly read files from the server and the HDD are fast enough for that purpose.

Plus for servers I imagine the main bottleneck is typically going to be the network anyway. Few people bother pushing their local NAS to full disk power unless they have a large amount of users. Especially if any endpoint is WiFi.

Tech Junky · Sep 13, 2024

Mahboi said:
servers

I use mine as my router which means direct wan connection and least amount of bottlenecks.

For data I use a U.3 drive that hits 6.5GB/s and a cheap M2 of the same speed for the OS. The U is 15TB which is sufficient for me. All flash makes things snappy and never waiting for anything. Single U is the same as a laptop spinner in size at 2.5" and fits just about anywhere. Since it's flash it's lightweight and mounting options are plentiful.

mindless1 · Sep 13, 2024

All information is known, why this topic?

Either you are willing to pay a premium for part, or all of your storage, or you aren't.

My file server doesn't have m.2 capability (unless I were to add a PCIe card but no real benefit), but SATA OS drive, then HDD bulk storage. Clients, those that support m.2 have it, then SATA. A couple have external HDD for offline backup, and more than one SSD in same systems.

Bulk video gets put on SSDs while I'm working with it, saving or editing, or if it will be watched soon, then moved to HDDs for long term storage.

What is Go or Mo? It should be GB or Gb, etc.

mikeymikec · Sep 13, 2024

I only switched out my old SATA SSD for Linux because my current case isn't as SATA friendly as I thought it would be; I kind of regret replacing my ancient ~2010 era case because it was far superior for loading up with storage drives. It makes me sad because I wanted to keep running that 'old' Samsung 840 PRO for as long as I could!

1TB M.2 Win11
1TB M.2 Linux
4TB HDD data

mindless1 · Sep 13, 2024

^ ?? You can shoehorn in an SATA SSD just about anywhere, if you don't care how it *looks*. It can be left loose, or drill a couple holes somewhere to add screws, or strapped down with a few inches of duct tape.

dlerious · Sep 13, 2024

I have m.2, SSD, HDD, and optical (bluray). Missing LTO mainly due to cost of drives.

Shmee · Sep 13, 2024

I have 3 NVMe m.2 drives, but also 3 SATA drives, one of which is a HDD, all in my computer. The only issue with going all NVMe is that a lot of boards have additional SATA ports for extra storage, but only a couple m.2 slots.

Mahboi · Sep 14, 2024

Seems the consensus is pretty strong that all-NVME is just not a good option.
Also more people still use HDDs than I thought.

WelshBloke · Sep 14, 2024

2 NVME drives and a bunch of SATA SSDs in (fake)raid.

mikeymikec · Sep 14, 2024

mindless1 said:
^ ?? You can shoehorn in an SATA SSD just about anywhere, if you don't care how it *looks*. It can be left loose, or drill a couple holes somewhere to add screws, or strapped down with a few inches of duct tape.

Mine was hanging in mid air because the 3.5" SATA bay that's allegedly good for two is really only good for one, and the other option was supposedly a mounting point behind the PSU which I'm really not a fan of.

(Fractal Design Focus G)

MangoX · Sep 14, 2024

My main pc has just a single NVMe.

On my compute node, it's running all NVMe, using all the onboard slots, as well as a 4-slot PCIe expansion card with bifurcation in the primary PCIe x16, and an additional dual slot card. In total I have 9 NVMe SSDs on this machine.

In addition to that I have two TrueNAS Scale machines for backups. One has 10x HDDs, and the other 8x HDDs.

All these systems are using just over 525w in total when idle.

Mahboi · Sep 14, 2024

mikeymikec said:
Mine was hanging in mid air because the 3.5" SATA bay that's allegedly good for two is really only good for one, and the other option was supposedly a mounting point behind the PSU which I'm really not a fan of.

(Fractal Design Focus G)

Oops.
Just bought a 12To HDD after hearing opinions from here.
And I got a Fractal Mini C.
Hopefully it won't be hanging in midair.

BTW someone(prolly a CPS) is currently dumping past warranty 8/12/16To Seagate Exos X16 drives left and right for a dirt cheap price. They're 5+ years old ofc, but if they're still in good shape, I'll give a short report here. I expect that they'll still be mostly in a good state, I'm mostly worried about noise/poor mechanical state.

Mahboi · Sep 14, 2024

MangoX said:
In addition to that I have two TrueNAS Scale machines for backups. One has 10x HDDs, and the other 8x HDDs.

All these systems are using just over 525w in total when idle.

Oh TrueNas has basically taken OpenZFS and runs a zillion extra apps as plugins on their store. Interesting. The home Cloud becomes easier each year.

MangoX · Sep 14, 2024

Mahboi said:
Oh TrueNas has basically taken OpenZFS and runs a zillion extra apps as plugins on their store. Interesting. The home Cloud becomes easier each year.

Pretty much. One of them is running a W2022S VM with Plesk, while the other is running 4 services atm: wireguard vpn, pihole, sftp server, and plex

mikeymikec · Sep 14, 2024

Mahboi said:
Oops.
Just bought a 12To HDD after hearing opinions from here.
And I got a Fractal Mini C.
Hopefully it won't be hanging in midair.

I don't know what the Mini C is like, but the Focus G has a 2x 3.5" bay mounted perpendicular to the board and I'm pretty sure the connection end of the drives are supposed to point towards the back panel. The bottom bay points straight towards the bottom of the rear panel where there's a rim going around to meet the side panel, and while there's some room, I wondering (if I could be bothered) if I mounted the HDD upside-down and then run the cables from top to bottom that I might get a tidy arrangement. If so, it would also allow me to use the GPU stand/support I bought which I currently am nervous about using because it has a magnetic base and would be right on top of the HDD in the top bay.

- edit - Hmm, the Mini G has the same <expletive> basic design as the Focus G. I would be interested to know whether you can make good use of the very bottom 3.5" bay. I'm getting two quieter fans for my case so I might have a play around then. I'm not happy about how untidy it looks right now.

The thing is, I'm not OCD about how tidy the inside of my case has to be, but a) being able to easily see what I'm doing and b) not having to unplug / fish through cabling in all kinds of directions would be nice.

The other maddening thing is, looking at a photo I took of my current build (post removal of 2.5" SSD), there's actually a point where the rim on the left side panel actually drops like it's supposed to allow for cabling to get to those drives easily yet I'm 99% certain I tried to have the drives that way around!

Mahboi · Sep 14, 2024

mikeymikec said:
I don't know what the Mini C is like, but the Focus G has a 2x 3.5" bay mounted perpendicular to the board and I'm pretty sure the connection end of the drives are supposed to point towards the back panel. The bottom bay points straight towards the bottom of the rear panel where there's a rim going around to meet the side panel, and while there's some room, I wondering (if I could be bothered) if I mounted the HDD upside-down and then run the cables from top to bottom that I might get a tidy arrangement. If so, it would also allow me to use the GPU stand/support I bought which I currently am nervous about using because it has a magnetic base and would be right on top of the HDD in the top bay.

(correction it's Meshify Mini C)
It's all back bays for me, seems very different. I only have space for 2 3.5" below and 3 2.5" on top, but I haven't used any of them yet. And if the 12To enterprise HDD isn't bad, I shouldn't use any of them anytime soon.
Also you got a nice case, mine was bought before I switched to 4K and lawd getting a 313mm Sapphire Pulse 7900 XT in a 315mm case is errr...possible. If only the 7800 XT didn't take so long to come out, but oh well. The airflow hasn't completely burned the card yet.

Brainonska511 · Sep 14, 2024

Depends on the computer.

My desktop is using 2 NVME drives only. I had an older 1TB hard drive I was using for backups, but I took it out.

My wife's computer has OS on an NVME drive, an older SATA SSD for secondary storage/some games, and a larger hard drive for bulk storage.

HTPC has an old SSD for the OS and a 3 TB hard drive for my media collection.

mindless1 · Sep 14, 2024

mikeymikec said:
The other maddening thing is, looking at a photo I took of my current build (post removal of 2.5" SSD),

Umm, there's about a dozen places you could put one or more 2.5" SATA SSDs in that case as configured.

1) At least two could be mounted on the back perforations in front of the bracket screws. Yes it would block the screws. It takes approx 20 seconds to unscrew a couple screws to regain access.

2) On the floor of the case between the 3.5" HDD rack and the PSU.

3) Under the 3.5" HDD. Secure with screws through bottom of case like you "could" do with #2, or leave it lying loose, or get a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter which is about $1 on ebay. If not screwed down, you could fit about 4 there.

4) Put it on top of the 3.5" HDD rack, looks like you could fit at least 4, SATA SSDs stacked there.

5) Between the PSU and HDD rack, but instead of parallel to the floor of the case, on-end, parallel to the motherboard tray.

6) Two SSDs would fit in the area to the right of the motherboard, parallel with and/or mounted to the case right-side panel.

7) There may be several more spots on the case right side panel, behind the motherboard tray where more SSDs would fit,

8) You could fit at least 3 more SSDs under the 5.25" bays.

9) Another SSD would fit above the CPU 'sink, side-mounted to the rear of the case after a couple holes are drilled.

10) 4 SSDs could be mounted up top where the perforated panel is. Mount them with stand-offs if you want some gaps to let the top remain an exhaust.

11) 1-2 SSDs could be mounted on the side of the 5.25" rack.

12) Do you really need 2 x 5.25 optical drives? Each bay slot would hold 4x more SSDs.

Adding all this up, not even counting just duct-taping them to the removed left side panel (room for about 6+ more SSDs, lol), there is still room for approximately 25 SATA SSDS in that case and that's just the low hanging fruit, does not consider making custom brackets and bays to mount.

Also I did not mention another mounting alternative, velcro. For example, piece of velcro on side or bottom of 5.24" rack, piece of velcro on SSD, solved, comes off quick. Those would be my first two choices if not just in the 3.5" rack under the HDD. I see that the bottom of the 5.25" rack is skeletonized, but this is not a problem, just velcro to the lower 5.25" drive or throw a piece of plastic or metal sheeting in to put the velcro on.

mikeymikec · Sep 15, 2024

@mindless1 When I said 'in mid air' before, the drive was leaning partly on top of the 3.5" rack.

I realise there's *room* in the case to do lots of weird setups, but the point of buying a half-decent case is that proper mounting points are actually available to practically use (both in terms of securing drives and being able to wire them in without doing things that will kill SATA cabling or the connections on say a SATA SSD).

mindless1 · Sep 15, 2024

^ IDK if I've ever had a case that had 2.5" mounts for SATA SSDs. I just got 3.5" to 2.5" adapters when I wanted them in 3.5" bays. It would be a negative thing to me if a case devoted space for 2.5" when 3.5" can do both.

I can appreciate wanting to buy a case that has features you want, but if you didn't...

I don't understand "kill SATA cabling or the connections". You can get SATA cables with 90' angle plugs if you need them, and a typical cable length has been plenty for any case I've put them in.

Question Types of Storage you use

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