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Drives for NAS DS411j

C

Craigy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 14, 2003
403
48
New Zealand
Getting a Synology 411j that I will be connecting through my airport extreme via gigbit ethernet.

Question is should I get 5400rpm drives or 7200rpm drives?

I normally always buy 7200 but wondered it they would be 'too fast' to be a benefit using the NAS over gigabit ethernet.

Anyone had experience of this?

Cheers
Craig
 
Craigy said:
Getting a Synology 411j that I will be connecting through my airport extreme via gigbit ethernet.

Question is should I get 5400rpm drives or 7200rpm drives?

I normally always buy 7200 but wondered it they would be 'too fast' to be a benefit using the NAS over gigabit ethernet.

Anyone had experience of this?

Cheers
Craig
Click to expand...

It depends how many you're putting in it, the 411j is a decent NAS for the price but it couldn't keep up with the data delivered by 4 x 7200 drives (nor can a 1Gb link for that matter). Seagate's 5900 RPM drives are a decent compromise, slightly faster than the 5400 but cool, quiet and low power consumption. 2TB sell for less than £60 here in the UK.
 
Craigy said:
Getting a Synology 411j that I will be connecting through my airport extreme via gigbit ethernet.

Question is should I get 5400rpm drives or 7200rpm drives?

I normally always buy 7200 but wondered it they would be 'too fast' to be a benefit using the NAS over gigabit ethernet.

Anyone had experience of this?

Cheers
Craig
Click to expand...

If you can afford them, get WD Caviar Blacks. These are considered Enterprise drives as they do not have the power saving function which is supposed to be what caused some of the WD Caviar Green drives to fail. I have a Drobo S with 5 x 2TB Caviar Blacks. Also they spin at 7200 RPM and I only stream, so 7200 RPM should be fine for your Synology.
 
Last edited:
Well I don't think I'm going to set up any kind of Raid setup, so I guess I was just curious if the data transfer speed of gigabit ethernet 'warranted' the need to put 7200 drives in the 411j.
 
Craigy said:
Well I don't think I'm going to set up any kind of Raid setup, so I guess I was just curious if the data transfer speed of gigabit ethernet 'warranted' the need to put 7200 drives in the 411j.
Click to expand...

Then why have the Synology? The object of such a device is to provide backup as well as the ability to serve files. I had a WD My Book that crashed and took my entire iTunes library with it. Luckily Apple let me download every thing again. While waiting for my Drobo to be delivered, I purchased a WD Space Share to serve as an intermediate backup solution. Now I have the Drobo as my main storage/backup device connected directly via Firewire to my Mac Mini. I do daily backups of my Drobo to my WD Space Share to insure data integrity. Loose your stuff once and it will change your mind about having a RAID.
 
sapporobaby said:
Then why have the Synology? The object of such a device is to provide backup as well as the ability to serve files. I had a WD My Book that crashed and took my entire iTunes library with it. Luckily Apple let me download every thing again. While waiting for my Drobo to be delivered, I purchased a WD Space Share to serve as an intermediate backup solution. Now I have the Drobo as my main storage/backup device connected directly via Firewire to my Mac Mini. I do daily backups of my Drobo to my WD Space Share to insure data integrity. Loose your stuff once and it will change your mind about having a RAID.
Click to expand...

Sorry - I meant not using Raid 0 for speed. I plan to put 2 x 2TB drives in to start as Raid 1. So the question should be will 2 x 5400 drives in Raid 1 saturate the 1000 mbits/sec ethernet link or should I be putting 7200's in there.

I liked the idea of the low heat / energy saving 5400 drives, but did not want to do this if there was any loss in performance over gigabit ethernet.

I've explained myself properly now ;-)
 
Craigy said:
Sorry - I meant not using Raid 0 for speed. I plan to put 2 x 2TB drives in to start as Raid 1. So the question should be will 2 x 5400 drives in Raid 1 saturate the 1000 mbits/sec ethernet link or should I be putting 7200's in there.

I liked the idea of the low heat / energy saving 5400 drives, but did not want to do this if there was any loss in performance over gigabit ethernet.

I've explained myself properly now ;-)
Click to expand...

Much better. :)

Hard one to answer. I would guess that if you are streaming, then maybe but then again not sure. Let me detail my network and you can decide maybe.

I have a Drobo connected to my Mini which is functioning as a media server. Everything then streams to the Apple TV where it is connected to my Sony TV. My 16 year old daughter will stream shows via her MBA, my 5 year old will stream shows (Disney movies and such) to an iPad, I stream to my MBP, and my wife might watch something over my iPad. This all at the same time, same network. My backbone is CAT6 but I will be upgrading this to CAT7 in a few months or so. I think, and I could be wrong here, but your Synology and 5400 RPM drives should be okay. BTW I have seen my network function fine all while doing the above as well as performing Time Capsule backups from all of the computers. Hope this helps.
 
sapporobaby said:
Much better. :)

Hard one to answer. I would guess that if you are streaming, then maybe but then again not sure. Let me detail my network and you can decide maybe.

I have a Drobo connected to my Mini which is functioning as a media server. Everything then streams to the Apple TV where it is connected to my Sony TV. My 16 year old daughter will stream shows via her MBA, my 5 year old will stream shows (Disney movies and such) to an iPad, I stream to my MBP, and my wife might watch something over my iPad. This all at the same time, same network. My backbone is CAT6 but I will be upgrading this to CAT7 in a few months or so. I think, and I could be wrong here, but your Synology and 5400 RPM drives should be okay. BTW I have seen my network function fine all while doing the above as well as performing Time Capsule backups from all of the computers. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...


Thanks for that. I think I'll go with 2 x 5400s for now. Now the question of Raid 1 or Synology Hybrid Raid...mmmmm
 
Craigy said:
Thanks for that. I think I'll go with 2 x 5400s for now. Now the question of Raid 1 or Synology Hybrid Raid...mmmmm
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with Synology Hybrid RAID, so I went and looked it up. It looks like it's an implementation of LVM. I think with your planned 2 disk NAS it won't make any difference initially as you have only 2 disks and they are both the same size. Where it will come into its own is if you later decide to add more disks, especially if they are different sizes to the two you have.

Coming back to your original question, with 2 x 2TB 5400s you may find the disk to be a bottleneck on writes, but probably not a significant one. By the way, if you want to know what the 411j is capable of throughput wise, this site has benchmarks for most NAS systems. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com They have data for the 411+ but not the 411j. I believe the 411j is a slightly lower spec consumer version of the 411+, however, if it offers the same throughput as the 411+ then a single 5400 disk (which is what you effectively get in RAID1) would probably struggle to keep up.
 
speacock said:
I'm not familiar with Synology Hybrid RAID, so I went and looked it up. It looks like it's an implementation of LVM. I think with your planned 2 disk NAS it won't make any difference initially as you have only 2 disks and they are both the same size. Where it will come into its own is if you later decide to add more disks, especially if they are different sizes to the two you have.

Coming back to your original question, with 2 x 2TB 5400s you may find the disk to be a bottleneck on writes, but probably not a significant one. By the way, if you want to know what the 411j is capable of throughput wise, this site has benchmarks for most NAS systems. http://www.smallnetbuilder.com They have data for the 411+ but not the 411j. I believe the 411j is a slightly lower spec consumer version of the 411+, however, if it offers the same throughput as the 411+ then a single 5400 disk (which is what you effectively get in RAID1) would probably struggle to keep up.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. See what you mean.

I think I may go with 7200s then in that case.

Cheers
Craig
 
Honestly, the disks are not the bottleneck for the 411j. It's the processing capability for the SHR parity. You'll get write speeds of around 30-35 Mbps regardless of the drives. Read speeds on the WD Greens I've seen peak around 80Mbps. I'd go for cheap drives with a good warranty - that way if/when they die you can RMA them.
 
blevins321 said:
Honestly, the disks are not the bottleneck for the 411j. It's the processing capability for the SHR parity. You'll get write speeds of around 30-35 Mbps regardless of the drives. Read speeds on the WD Greens I've seen peak around 80Mbps. I'd go for cheap drives with a good warranty - that way if/when they die you can RMA them.
Click to expand...

That sounds like the 411J doesn't perform quite as well as the 411+ then? At 30-40MB/s writes, a single 5400 or 5900 should be OK.
 
Cool vs fast

Have been using Syno boxes for years and have been through the pain (and expense) of initially going for 7200rpm drives for performance, then watching them toast themselves, causing me to replace them with cooler WD Green drives. I had 6 drives to replace in all. I can't see any drop in performance but they run a lot cooler, so much so that I have now switched off hibernation (I got fed up with iTunes losing its link to the media drives while the RAID arrays spun up).

I'd go for cool.

Cheers
 
sapporobaby said:
If you can afford them, get WD Caviar Blacks. These are considered Enterprise drives as they do not have the power saving function
Click to expand...
Hate to point out that the WD caviar black drives are NOT enterprise drives. Enterprise drives have a significantly higher MTBF rating then consumer drives and are also significantly higher in price.

I'm not saying the Black drives are bad, in fact I have them in my desktop, but make no mistake they're not enterprise drives.

@OP,
When I was searching for drives I had a bit of difficult time finding the specific drives on that were in stock and on the compatibility sheet of my NAS unit (Qnap). I'd find a few drives both 5400 and 7200 that you can easily buy and then see which one has the best ratings. I'm not totally sure you'll notice a huge decrease in speed on the 5400rpm drives mostly because of the gigabit connection is your main bottleneck.
 
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