SSDs, HDDs, and lots of conflicting info

[H20nly]

what’s a NAS?

it stands for Network Attached Storage.

it usually is an enclosure that houses multiple drives. typically, you can assign the NAS an IP address so that you can access the files from anywhere on your network. So for example, you could keep the NAS in your living room attached to your router, but you could still hit it from your garage or bedroom studio as if it was connected to you workstation.

i think the part that fishmokey was speaking to has more to do with the RAID array aspect of them. depending on which version of RAID you decide to implement, you can lose 1, 2, and in some configurations more, drives before you lose data. since drives in a RAID array are semi-redundant, the typical hard drive failures can be easy to fix by plopping in a replacement drive and letting the RAID set rebuild.

if you're interested, QNAP makes a good NAS. then there are all the usual suspects like Western Digital, Seagate, Dell, etc.

[H20nly]

(and yes, APFS file transfers are crazy fast in High Sierra. Multiple GB files in just a couple seconds, scary).

Cross disks?

that would be the definition of a file transfer.

i suppose you could (would) argue about partitions or folders being on the same disk. this would not matter, since the transfer would still travel across the bus (i.e. off the disk then back on it)

the speed of the files being transferred is usually affected more by the number of files than the size. so a 10 GB "file" that consists of 100 smaller files could be faster than an 5 GB "file" with 10,000 smaller files. there are other factors to consider (such as size of "smaller" files), but this behavior has been fairly consistent in my experiences at work and/or home.

[Stromkraft]

(and yes, APFS file transfers are crazy fast in High Sierra. Multiple GB files in just a couple seconds, scary).

Cross disks?

that would be the definition of a file transfer.

i suppose you could (would) argue about partitions or folders being on the same disk. this would not matter, since the transfer would still travel across the bus (i.e. off the disk then back on it)

the speed of the files being transferred is usually affected more by the number of files than the size. so a 10 GB "file" that consists of 100 smaller files could be faster than an 5 GB "file" with 10,000 smaller files. there are other factors to consider (such as size of "smaller" files), but this behavior has been fairly consistent in my experiences at work and/or home.

The reason I asked for a clarification from Tarekith is because the features of AFPS where local moves are more or less instant (more than before is the relevant part). A File Transfer is a transfer between two computing endpoints and you're right this is very seldom used for a transfer on the same disk. Which could of course be quite large and have multiple partitions and otherwise logically behave like multiple disks.

[Deleted part which meaning could be misunderstood]

[Tarekith]

Easy there man, you're already on your last warning for these forums and I have no patience for snide comments like that from you.

I've been busy and haven't had time to reply, but it was transfers on the same disk that I was referring to that are almost instantaneous with APFS. Even transfers to my USB3 external drives seem to be quicker too though.

[kites]

Nada, and I'd even get my wife's employee discount on top of Prime deals. Oh well not too far away from Black Friday.

(and yes, APFS file transfers are crazy fast in High Sierra. Multiple GB files in just a couple seconds, scary).

Thanks for mentioning this ,I just updated to High Sierra with the newly acquired 2014 MBP - having not been able to so with an early 2008 Mac Pro on El Capitan. After I got that Transcend drive kit, I formatted it to APFS and enabled Trim, not too shabby! I’ll eventually format and enable all my externals too. As a bonus the thunderbolt 2 enclosure it came with is getting read/write speeds faster than my internal.

[kites]

what’s a NAS?

it stands for Network Attached Storage.

it usually is an enclosure that houses multiple drives. typically, you can assign the NAS an IP address so that you can access the files from anywhere on your network. So for example, you could keep the NAS in your living room attached to your router, but you could still hit it from your garage or bedroom studio as if it was connected to you workstation.

i think the part that fishmokey was speaking to has more to do with the RAID array aspect of them. depending on which version of RAID you decide to implement, you can lose 1, 2, and in some configurations more, drives before you lose data. since drives in a RAID array are semi-redundant, the typical hard drive failures can be easy to fix by plopping in a replacement drive and letting the RAID set rebuild.

if you're interested, QNAP makes a good NAS. then there are all the usual suspects like Western Digital, Seagate, Dell, etc.

Sounds very useful, especially for larger working studios- appreciate the info.

I WAS thinking of setting up a RAID with my old HDs and more current SDs to make more use for them. As little as I understand, I’ve gathered that making a RAID Array is particularly useful for creating backups to multiple drives while allowing their potential read/write speeds to be exploited. Is that close to a scenario it can do?

The issue with MBP users, is that one could only do that with an external RAID enclosures that could limit each drives performance because of its SATA to USB/ Thunderbolt connections. Right?

Anyone set one up with a laptop?

[mikb]

As little as I understand, I’ve gathered that making a RAID Array is particularly useful for creating backups to multiple drives while allowing their potential read/write speeds to be exploited. Is that close to a scenario it can do?

I believe you can do either or, not both. That is either you can save copies of the same data on multiple disks at normal speeds, or you can save the data faster to many disks in the RAID as if they were one drive much faster as you're writing with multiple write heads to multiple places. I don't see how you could do both, except if the backup was to an additional disk and made in a second stage. You don't need a RAID for that though.

I think you'll find that RAIDS with SATA HDD connections have very little speed improvements on big SSDs in enclosures. Especially if the SSD can be connected with Thunderbolt 3 externally and PCIe internally.

What can be beneficial is the cost per storage unit amount, which may favor HDD RAIDs. But RAID enclosures aren't necessarily exactly cheap. They are indeed an option, certainly for second line storage.

[H20nly]

@kites

The idea of the enclosure is more about adding on disks that are going to be shared by multiple computers and/or cannot fit into a single unit for whatever reason. If you have a drive fail, it's much easier to swap out one of the drive trays from the enclosure than to rip a workstation or server apart. You also do not have to power anything down to swap that drive if you configured it for redundancy (mirroring).

RAID can be used for redundancy (RAID 1) or speed (RAID 0 aka striping), but not exactly both. Certain configurations will slow down the overall drive performance but that varies... there is RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10. The best one for both extra speed and redundancy is probably RAID 10, but it's been a while so I may be a little rusty... You can google it.

We typically use RAID 5 where I work, which gives us excellent redundancy and allows us to still access the data with a drive down and/or while the RAID set is being rebuilt after the drive is replaced. We use this to make sure that Xrays and MRI studies are saved for up to 10 years and so that the information is at the doctor's fingertips. We also use a RAID 5 setup for our virtual environment where we have about 22 virtual machines.

RAID 0 is the one that gamers used to use to make their hard drives perform faster... If you want your music files safe... I'd stay away from that, if I were you. 5400 and 7200 rpm drives are dying off fast. SSDs are so lightning quick that i honestly cannot think of a good use for RAID0... because if one drive goes down the whole thing is done. Way too much risk for gains that you likely would never notice in an SSD based system.

RAID 6 is cool, but it's probably the most expensive... I would't recommend it for your home/studio. With RAID you pay for the redundancy by sacrificing drive space... and RAID 6 is a piggy in that regard.

You should definitely look into it further if you are looking for long term storage of large data sets.

good luck!

[jestermgee]

^^ Good overview of RAID

Always remember too that RAID is a "Redundancy" solution, NOT a backup solution. It can be used within a dedicated backup solution to also provide redundancy (if a drive fails it can be replaced with no/little data loss) but should never be used within a single PC as a way to say "I have RAID in my computer so i'm safe". There can be cases where you may have a power surge or a major failure in your PC or even just a virus or misconfigured RAID setup where if you are not really up to speed with it you can end up losing your entire data. I have personally had a power cable and data cable pinched within a high end machine that zapped all the drives, DVD Rom and Motherboard when the machine was powered on which if I didn't have a separate backup I would have been screwed.

As mentioned, there is loads of info out there on setup and solutions and worth a look even just for a better understanding.