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👍
Yeah, my collection is pushing 20tb, myself, and thats...well, even getting just cheap sata SSDs in bulk that'd be about 1600 dollars (canadian) and require 10-20 bays and thats about the most cost efficient i can find. Its *doable* but...I can just buy two 12tb hard drives for half the price, get more space, and money left over for a redundant RAID drive.
Hybrid is the way to go. Probably 90% of what people stream off your Plex server is recent media. Put recent media on SSD, let the rest of your TBs of media sit on HDs that spin down.
I don't know how much you can push but please we need better Hardware. DSM is the only thing making me stay (it's really good). However, We need a new CPU not 4 years old CPU in a 2024 device.
@@kawaiisenshi2401 DSM is Synology operating system. It's a Linux based or built on top of Linux. But that's what make people buy a synology. Their software and apps are better than the others. Also, they have not been hacked before.
I've installed 2 cheap 476GB HP SSD's in my Synology RS3618XS which has (7) 10TB WD Red Pro drives in RAID 5. My server is mostly used for Plex. I consistently get a 95% hit rate on the SSDs as read/write cache devices. Large file copies hit 26GBps. Btrfs metadata (184GB) is contained on the SSDs. DSM is set to turn off drives after 15 minutes of idle time. Using a 10GBE NIC and disconnected the (4) 1Gbps ports. I have the speed and power to do whatever comes my way. Although 24GB of RAM is installed, it rarely uses more than 4GB.
My SSDs run around 3 to 4 degrees hotter than my HDDs on the same case and the SSDs with a better ventilation location inside the case. But silence true specially when everything else is quiet and you start hearing HDDs ramping up 😂
spoiler ssd 1/3 of power usage of hdd until ssds/nvme come in 8tb capacity without needing a 2nd mortgage, my 12 spinning drives will have to do for me
I agree that SSDs are ideal and I cannot wait until SSD capacity is just as large and as affordable as platters. I have half a PB of media. SSDs won’t cut it.
What I did with my QNAP TVS-672XL was I used 6x4 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.
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.
I think it's a about tradeoffs. I would love to have an all-SSD storage for my Plex data, BUT price per gig is still expensive and the most you can get, NVME or SATA on one drive is 8 terrybites at $600 to $1400 per drive for a total of 32 terrybites. Whereas I can buy two 22TB harddrives for $900. Granted I have zero 8k content, some 4k Movies and mostly 1080p bluray movies and tv shows.
buy 2x 16TB, put them in mirror and you are done: 16TB of usable space already redundant for 600$. 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)
Ive recently gone the other way from a 24tb SSD server to a 115tb HDD one. Its nice to get everything in the best quality. 4k remux quality episodes from disc go up to 25gb an episode.
Very informative. For my particular situation, my existing five disc NAS is fine. Most of my media is not that big so even though SSD are silent and run cooler, as far as I know (more reliably over time) it’s probably not worth the expense to upgrade. So thanks for the video. It was excellent!
My main focus if looking at power consumption would be to look at the idle power consumption as well. Not just the peak power usage of transcoding. The idle power consumption in a day is like to be a far more common occurrence, thus in the long run for saving energy more important.
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).
Im using intel nuc with proxmox and nvme ssd for plex and all my stuff in lxc containers. My nas only has HDD with 5x 20 TB HDDs for movies, photos, music, data etc. Try to buy 20 TB SSDs. When you have 600+ Movies good luck with storage on SSD....
How long would it take to recoup the expense of investing in SSD storage v the energy cost? That should have been the focus of the video. Get your calculator out and work out the sums. I would suggest switching off your nas whilst you sleep would save more!
I chose ssds for power consumption, but not in the sense of cost of electricity. This combined with the small form factor and a bit of wiring enginuity and you can fit a ton of ssds in an itx case. Currently have eight(8) 8tb samsung ssds(+4x8tb installed in the case mounts) on a single 5v line neatly installed in a 3d printed mount inside the gpu chamber of a fractal design mesh along with an aio. I have room and connections ready to go for another 8x ssd mount whenever i need it. Thats 148tb of storage + a transcoding machine within the size of basically a ps5. No noise, no heat, no latency.
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 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....
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.
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
I have a 14tb x2 (ironwolf pro) in a DS220+. If this setup would be SSD it would cost so much to the point it won't make sense. I won't be able to make the different (a 20w more in 5 years would cost me about $114 dollars in chicago)
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
I'm not sure what you mean by directory, but putting your metadata(preview thumbnails and the like) makes a huge difference for scrolling through your content if it's on an ssd. There's a special process to do it; you will have to look it up as there's no option in the plex settings. Definitely recommend at least a sata ssd, but an nvme makes your thumbnails lightning quick.
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 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
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.
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
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.
Hi bud. Input all the links in this guide here. Hope they are useful nascompares.com/guide/4k-1080p-hdr-hevc-and-uhd-files-to-download-and-test-your-plex-media-server-nas/
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 💙
I really don't think it would matter in the slightest for a power bill because the majority of energy spent in a hard drive is used to keep the plates spinning, with a second place perhaps being the actuators in the read head but those calm down as soon as content has been buffered. If it spins, it draws power, and everything else is a rounding error. SSDs are extremely effective whether they read or not. As this test showed, what kind of load you put on the NAS doesn't matter, the big difference is simply "does it have spinning plates or not?".
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.
I'm sitting on about 8tb myself, just anime, throw in everything else and I'm hovering near 20. Definitely not something I'd be able to run any time soon.
Unless their prices are the same (or within $10), I see no point in SSD over HDD. Even if they save power, how long would it take to get that return on investment from saving power?.......forever. Basically, just stick with 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 ,
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.
I was thinking along the same lines, but after doing some research and reading some reddit threads, it would not work for this scenario - i.e. Plex/Media server. Reason being a cache is used and prioritized for files that commonly /frequently accessed, so maybe the metadata for browsing the plex library might get cached, but movies that would be watched once or twice wouldn't make it to the cache. So unless you have like a kid that keeps watching a particular series over and over again it wouldn't matter. The closest I can think of is keep your plex install/library meta data folder on an SSD/NVMe + keep a temp movies folder on the SSD/NVMe. Add this temp movie folder to your Plex library. Place new movies or movies that you know you are going to watch in the near future in that temp library and then later move/archive to a standard HDD raid array.. It has a manual component to it, but think I will do it for TV series that I'm binging and movies that I have been waiting to watch... Hope this helps, cheers!
@@MrDpak Thank you for your comment. I know more now thanks to you. Still as you mentioned the reason it would not work is because data are not being cached imidiatelly. That makes sense but there must be way to force cache to do this. This is just software limitation in my eyes.
@@likilike501 Yeah, did think about that as well.. There are two parts to this, first the OS/software on the NAS - this is geared towards general purpose file storage, so the caching behavior is tailored to consider speed and efficiency for the most common scenarios. The concept in this case of copying a file to faster/efficient SSD media within the NAS and then serving it is way too much overhead for most scenarios and might end up consuming more power sometimes. The second part is the actual media server - Plex media server - here there maybe room to consider a tweak or script to copy and then serve but that is dependent on the Plex Devs implementing it and most likely they might not, as there is a question of predictability. Say you hit play on a movie cause you want to watch a movie like normal or preview the first few minutes or a demo a particular scene to your friends; in any case you will have to wait for it to be copied over to the SSD and then start streaming. Depending on the rip sizes (being anywhere from 1 to 100 GB) you might end up waiting a few seconds to a few minutes for it to start playing. Next consideration is space considerations/housekeeping - when does it delete the movie from the cache ? Delete if paused for 30 min or if not accessed for x hours or delete oldest movie if remaining drive capacity is less than 25% etc. There might be more intricacies to consider in terms of implementation but this is what I could think of.. : / Sucks but I am also looking for a better/more automated means of more power efficient and noiseless playback.. Only thing I could come up with was a temp library folder on the SSD/NVMe drive..
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.
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
@@BillyNoMates1974 I'd have to replace my hard drives four times to equal the cost of even the most cost efficient SSDs right now. Not even counting the cost of the system needed to handle that many SSDs. So that's a very, very long run.
MATE!! Thank you for being awesome, especially given how long you've been on the channel AND that you helped with feedback etc during inner circle zooms! I'm almost considering refusing/refusing your donation! That said, I just worked out how much of a loss we are making on the Computex coverage in 2 weeks time...and...well... *look of shame* I think your donation is sorely needed! Hope you enjoy it bud. There should be a follow up SSD vid later this week. Hope you are baring up well man and things are good!
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.
Gotta store the data somewhere till the SSD Rapture... But you could be right.! 🤔 Unless 3D laser CD storage leaves SSDs in the dust as they shoot ahead from history to first place. :)
Enterprise SSDs have been as low as $50/TB… but that is still 3-4x more than hard drives, and prices on nand have been going up since then not down. Price is king and flash has a long while to go even assuming hdds don’t improve.
One thing that pushed me toward SSD's is "Noise Level"! Yea it's more expensive but silence is golden!
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👍
Yeah, my collection is pushing 20tb, myself, and thats...well, even getting just cheap sata SSDs in bulk that'd be about 1600 dollars (canadian) and require 10-20 bays and thats about the most cost efficient i can find. Its *doable* but...I can just buy two 12tb hard drives for half the price, get more space, and money left over for a redundant RAID drive.
Yes, not even close yet. My Plex storage just passed 18 TB, so SSDs are not yet price competitive.
Looking at close to 300 TB 😭 No way SSDs are ever a sensible option
Hybrid solutions have always been the best ones
Hybrid is the way to go. Probably 90% of what people stream off your Plex server is recent media. Put recent media on SSD, let the rest of your TBs of media sit on HDs that spin down.
Use both... System, apps, database, etc. on the SSD, the media itself on HDD.
Sure, for small storage nas a SSD is idea. When you have 60tb of data is the problem
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.
I don't know how much you can push but please we need better Hardware. DSM is the only thing making me stay (it's really good). However, We need a new CPU not 4 years old CPU in a 2024 device.
@@hassan_ksuwhat is DSM??
@@kawaiisenshi2401 DSM is Synology operating system. It's a Linux based or built on top of Linux. But that's what make people buy a synology. Their software and apps are better than the others. Also, they have not been hacked before.
I've installed 2 cheap 476GB HP SSD's in my Synology RS3618XS which has (7) 10TB WD Red Pro drives in RAID 5. My server is mostly used for Plex. I consistently get a 95% hit rate on the SSDs as read/write cache devices. Large file copies hit 26GBps. Btrfs metadata (184GB) is contained on the SSDs. DSM is set to turn off drives after 15 minutes of idle time. Using a 10GBE NIC and disconnected the (4) 1Gbps ports. I have the speed and power to do whatever comes my way. Although 24GB of RAM is installed, it rarely uses more than 4GB.
Thank you for this. You could also add noise and temperature differences to your comparison.
My SSDs run around 3 to 4 degrees hotter than my HDDs on the same case and the SSDs with a better ventilation location inside the case. But silence true specially when everything else is quiet and you start hearing HDDs ramping up 😂
spoiler ssd 1/3 of power usage of hdd
until ssds/nvme come in 8tb capacity without needing a 2nd mortgage, my 12 spinning drives will have to do for me
Would love to see what the idle power consumption is on both
I agree that SSDs are ideal and I cannot wait until SSD capacity is just as large and as affordable as platters. I have half a PB of media. SSDs won’t cut it.
What I did with my QNAP TVS-672XL was I used 6x4 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.
Good info thx for testing
Latency, noise, and electricity pushed me towards all SSD. The only issue is that the price kinda offsets a lot of the benefits.
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.
I think it's a about tradeoffs.
I would love to have an all-SSD storage for my Plex data, BUT price per gig is still expensive and the most you can get, NVME or SATA on one drive is 8 terrybites at $600 to $1400 per drive for a total of 32 terrybites. Whereas I can buy two 22TB harddrives for $900.
Granted I have zero 8k content, some 4k Movies and mostly 1080p bluray movies and tv shows.
buy 2x 16TB, put them in mirror and you are done: 16TB of usable space already redundant for 600$. 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)
Would love to see the power consumption comparison between desktop & rack mount similar NAS. Like TS-435XeU-4G vs TS-431X3-4G
Watching these tests made me think if my micro pc with a N200, 16Gb Ram and 8TB SSD is overkill for a dedicated Plex Server...
It seems that the difference is consistently around 20W irrespective of the load.
Ive recently gone the other way from a 24tb SSD server to a 115tb HDD one. Its nice to get everything in the best quality. 4k remux quality episodes from disc go up to 25gb an episode.
Very informative. For my particular situation, my existing five disc NAS is fine. Most of my media is not that big so even though SSD are silent and run cooler, as far as I know (more reliably over time) it’s probably not worth the expense to upgrade. So thanks for the video. It was excellent!
My main focus if looking at power consumption would be to look at the idle power consumption as well. Not just the peak power usage of transcoding. The idle power consumption in a day is like to be a far more common occurrence, thus in the long run for saving energy more important.
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).
Im using intel nuc with proxmox and nvme ssd for plex and all my stuff in lxc containers. My nas only has HDD with 5x 20 TB HDDs for movies, photos, music, data etc. Try to buy 20 TB SSDs. When you have 600+ Movies good luck with storage on SSD....
How long would it take to recoup the expense of investing in SSD storage v the energy cost? That should have been the focus of the video. Get your calculator out and work out the sums. I would suggest switching off your nas whilst you sleep would save more!
I chose ssds for power consumption, but not in the sense of cost of electricity. This combined with the small form factor and a bit of wiring enginuity and you can fit a ton of ssds in an itx case.
Currently have eight(8) 8tb samsung ssds(+4x8tb installed in the case mounts) on a single 5v line neatly installed in a 3d printed mount inside the gpu chamber of a fractal design mesh along with an aio. I have room and connections ready to go for another 8x ssd mount whenever i need it.
Thats 148tb of storage + a transcoding machine within the size of basically a ps5.
No noise, no heat, no latency.
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 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....
very good question
Cheers
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.
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
For difference in price you can buy Solar panel
I have a 14tb x2 (ironwolf pro) in a DS220+. If this setup would be SSD it would cost so much to the point it won't make sense. I won't be able to make the different (a 20w more in 5 years would cost me about $114 dollars in chicago)
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
Can the LincStation N1 using Plex stream 4k with a 2.5g Ethernet network ?
Will there be a difference if I put my Plex directory on an SSD and the content on Nas HDD?
I'm not sure what you mean by directory, but putting your metadata(preview thumbnails and the like) makes a huge difference for scrolling through your content if it's on an ssd. There's a special process to do it; you will have to look it up as there's no option in the plex settings.
Definitely recommend at least a sata ssd, but an nvme makes your thumbnails lightning quick.
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 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
Would definitely use an ssd plex media server if they had 20TB drives
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.
Thank you. I just can't bring myself to spend the difference on SSD drives. 12tb enterprise refurbished drives are a thing.
If your network speed is slow, or your HBA is slow, then fast drives may not make the whole system faster.
ssd's help with random reads, which is what the advantage is about, even at slow network speeds
@@MisterPikolso just use hdds with ssd cache, best of both worlds
The size limitation and costs of running SSD's in such an application make it difficult to justify...
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
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.
Which model ssd? And were you just reading from it or were you writing to it all the time?
I only ask for my own sake. 😅
@@austinabbott1120 it was a 8tb qvo samsung
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?
Hi bud. Input all the links in this guide here. Hope they are useful nascompares.com/guide/4k-1080p-hdr-hevc-and-uhd-files-to-download-and-test-your-plex-media-server-nas/
@@nascompares Thanks a lot!
are the drives setup in raid or just single drives? multiple hdds can really stack up power consumption right?
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 💙
I really don't think it would matter in the slightest for a power bill because the majority of energy spent in a hard drive is used to keep the plates spinning, with a second place perhaps being the actuators in the read head but those calm down as soon as content has been buffered. If it spins, it draws power, and everything else is a rounding error. SSDs are extremely effective whether they read or not. As this test showed, what kind of load you put on the NAS doesn't matter, the big difference is simply "does it have spinning plates or not?".
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.
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.
I'm sitting on about 8tb myself, just anime, throw in everything else and I'm hovering near 20. Definitely not something I'd be able to run any time soon.
Unless their prices are the same (or within $10), I see no point in SSD over HDD. Even if they save power, how long would it take to get that return on investment from saving power?.......forever. Basically, just stick with 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 ,
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.
I was thinking along the same lines, but after doing some research and reading some reddit threads, it would not work for this scenario - i.e. Plex/Media server. Reason being a cache is used and prioritized for files that commonly /frequently accessed, so maybe the metadata for browsing the plex library might get cached, but movies that would be watched once or twice wouldn't make it to the cache. So unless you have like a kid that keeps watching a particular series over and over again it wouldn't matter.
The closest I can think of is keep your plex install/library meta data folder on an SSD/NVMe + keep a temp movies folder on the SSD/NVMe. Add this temp movie folder to your Plex library. Place new movies or movies that you know you are going to watch in the near future in that temp library and then later move/archive to a standard HDD raid array.. It has a manual component to it, but think I will do it for TV series that I'm binging and movies that I have been waiting to watch... Hope this helps, cheers!
@@MrDpak Thank you for your comment. I know more now thanks to you. Still as you mentioned the reason it would not work is because data are not being cached imidiatelly. That makes sense but there must be way to force cache to do this. This is just software limitation in my eyes.
@@likilike501 Yeah, did think about that as well.. There are two parts to this, first the OS/software on the NAS - this is geared towards general purpose file storage, so the caching behavior is tailored to consider speed and efficiency for the most common scenarios. The concept in this case of copying a file to faster/efficient SSD media within the NAS and then serving it is way too much overhead for most scenarios and might end up consuming more power sometimes.
The second part is the actual media server - Plex media server - here there maybe room to consider a tweak or script to copy and then serve but that is dependent on the Plex Devs implementing it and most likely they might not, as there is a question of predictability. Say you hit play on a movie cause you want to watch a movie like normal or preview the first few minutes or a demo a particular scene to your friends; in any case you will have to wait for it to be copied over to the SSD and then start streaming. Depending on the rip sizes (being anywhere from 1 to 100 GB) you might end up waiting a few seconds to a few minutes for it to start playing. Next consideration is space considerations/housekeeping - when does it delete the movie from the cache ? Delete if paused for 30 min or if not accessed for x hours or delete oldest movie if remaining drive capacity is less than 25% etc. There might be more intricacies to consider in terms of implementation but this is what I could think of.. : /
Sucks but I am also looking for a better/more automated means of more power efficient and noiseless playback.. Only thing I could come up with was a temp library folder on the SSD/NVMe drive..
Do you need specific "NAS" SSD's for a NAS or can you use any SSD's?
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 :)
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.
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
But who will pay for the 20tb worth of SSDs I'd need for my server? Because I can't.
@@kendrakirai true but in the long run you’d end up spending more money if you stay with hdd
@@BillyNoMates1974 I'd have to replace my hard drives four times to equal the cost of even the most cost efficient SSDs right now. Not even counting the cost of the system needed to handle that many SSDs. So that's a very, very long run.
Plus Hard drives have warranties for 5 years for that peace of mind.
Thanks!
MATE!! Thank you for being awesome, especially given how long you've been on the channel AND that you helped with feedback etc during inner circle zooms! I'm almost considering refusing/refusing your donation! That said, I just worked out how much of a loss we are making on the Computex coverage in 2 weeks time...and...well... *look of shame* I think your donation is sorely needed! Hope you enjoy it bud. There should be a follow up SSD vid later this week. Hope you are baring up well man and things are good!
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.
The same storage space on HDD cost about $900... It's an old technology, but it's still way cheaper for media storage.
now you are just horribly mistaken here
Gotta store the data somewhere till the SSD Rapture...
But you could be right.! 🤔 Unless 3D laser CD storage leaves SSDs in the dust as they shoot ahead from history to first place. :)
Enterprise SSDs have been as low as $50/TB… but that is still 3-4x more than hard drives, and prices on nand have been going up since then not down. Price is king and flash has a long while to go even assuming hdds don’t improve.
Ain’t gonna wait 10 years for that, when HDD are $7/TB