I bought the DiskStation DS918+ a few minutes ago. Now the next step, which NAS hard drive is enough for this baby. Considering my last question about the 4K HDR transcoding or not, which speed is required? Preferably, I want low power, low noise. I wanted Seagate IronWolf but they don’t do more than 4 TB versus WD Red up to 10 TB for 5400 RPM. Otherwise, for Seagate IronWolf 12 TB at 7200 RPM will be my ultimate choice but I’m scared of the decibel level it will generate next in the same room has my home theatre.
I will run a Plex Server, 1 Time Machine backup and manage 4-6 web sites for personal uses.
5400 RPM are quieter (obviously) then 7200 because the heads will also move slower (slightly slower seek time). The rotational latency increases by 33% (it takes 1/3 longer for the same sector to come under the heads again). This is only a factor if doing a lot of short reads (photos). Video streaming (Gigabytes vs Megabytes) won’t be detectable at all.
WD Red Pro 7200 is quieter than HGST
I have all three types of drives for a total of 16 drives sitting next to me at my desk. I only hear the QNAP when I hammer on it but that’s a case design issue and not a drive issue.
In order of noise: WD 5400 (Red) -> WD 7200 (Red Pro) -> HGST 7200
Be advised, since WD acquired Hitachi, the two technologies are merging into the WD line resulting in better/faster but also quiet drives.
If I understand well, use 5400 RPM drive have no impact for the usage I project to do, quieter, use less energy and cost less and I will be able to flawlessly still do any operation with the Plex Server can do related to future 4K usage, ex. transcoding?
It will only takes more time to process for examples thumbnails and self backup?
Am I right?
@ChuckPA said:
5400 RPM are quieter (obviously) then 7200 because the heads will also move slower (slightly slower seek time). The rotational latency increases by 33% (it takes 1/3 longer for the same sector to come under the heads again). This is only a factor if doing a lot of short reads (photos). Video streaming (Gigabytes vs Megabytes) won’t be detectable at all.
WD Red Pro 7200 is quieter than HGST
I have all three types of drives for a total of 16 drives sitting next to me at my desk. I only hear the QNAP when I hammer on it but that’s a case design issue and not a drive issue.
In order of noise: WD 5400 (Red) → WD 7200 (Red Pro) → HGST 7200
Be advised, since WD acquired Hitachi, the two technologies are merging into the WD line resulting in better/faster but also quiet drives.
5400 RPM drives will still do everything any other drive will do. They just do it a little slower (when at the high end of performance) but do everything using less energy.
The ONLY discernible difference is if you are literally hammering the drive at it’s maximum 200 MB/sec output rating. A 7200 RPM drive will complete the same “jaw rattling” performance test 30% quicker than a 5400 RPM drive. Does that matter when it comes to streaming, transcoding, or anything Plex? NOPE, not one bit
Thank you very much @ChuckPA! Happy to see and follow an experienced Plex member like you. I learned many things for the last few weeks / months, here and there. Waiting patiently for the right moment to invest in my next media server upgrade.
I knew you use a QNAP, but I was really in between both but I read many times Synology was a little bit more expensive but quieter and less energy consuming. I was waiting for a 4K transcoding solution. Now I will reach my goal to switch my Mac mini + my Promise Pegasus R4 + 6 external HD (all this combine, use a lot of energy, heating up a lot (over 45 °C in my cabinet) and decibel can be high sometimes)…
… to the a DiskStation DS918+ with 4 X 10 TB WD Red. Dream come true after 6 years!
Very exciting and thank you very much (AGAIN!) for your advises / replies. Special mention to @trumpy81 too.
There is one general recommendation with the DS918+ (or any of the X18+ family)
For those which come with 4GB or less of memory, bump it to 8GB of memory.
HW transcoding is the primary use. The ASIC in the CPU is fast. The more memory sitting there, the more it can do.
Also keep in mind, DSM + PMS will chew up a good 1+ GB together before you do anything.
Go look at the Resource Monitor → Task Manager
On an empty system, you see:
Memory utilization (8 GB installed) without PMS installed is 7344 MB available. There’s the first 800 MB as DSM itself. This is pretty normal for Linux now.
admin@moesern:~$ uname -a
Linux moesern 3.10.102 #15266 SMP Mon Mar 26 15:08:28 CST 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux synology_avoton_1815+
admin@moesern:~$ free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7973 307 132 13 7533 7344
Swap: 6831 112 6719
admin@moesern:~$
Resourceful information. Thanks! I read on the Synology forum someone who have installed 2 X16 GB of RAM in a DiskStation DS918+ and recognized it!
Well, the specs mention 8 GB and not 32 GB. I have a doubt. :lol: Do you have a recommandation for the RAM brand I can buy for this product? Maybe not from Synology, probably more expensive.
@ChuckPa said:
There is one general recommendation with the DS918+ (or any of the X18+ family)
For those which come with 4GB or less of memory, bump it to 8GB of memory.
HW transcoding is the primary use. The ASIC in the CPU is fast. The more memory sitting there, the more it can do.
Also keep in mind, DSM + PMS will chew up a good 1+ GB together before you do anything.
Go look at the Resource Monitor → Task Manager
On an empty system, you see:
Memory utilization (8 GB installed) without PMS installed is 7344 MB available. There’s the first 800 MB as DSM itself. This is pretty normal for Linux now.
admin@moesern:~$ uname -a
Linux moesern 3.10.102 #15266 SMP Mon Mar 26 15:08:28 CST 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux synology_avoton_1815+
admin@moesern:~$ free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7973 307 132 13 7533 7344
Swap: 6831 112 6719
admin@moesern:~$
The maximum amount of memory the J3455 can address is 8 GB.
Memory Specifications
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type)
8 GB
Memory Types
DDR3L/LPDDR3 up to 1866 MT/s; LPDDR4 up to 2400 MT/s
Max # of Memory Channels
2
ECC Memory Supported ‡
No
Glad I came across this thread as I had the same question regarding drive speeds as I’m trying to fine tune my DS718+ which is equipped with 2 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf drive @ 5400 rpm; my DS has the same CPU as the DS918+. Plex has been struggling on my NAS when transcoding on the fly but it’s now working fine since I upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 6GB and performed a data scrubbing and defragmented the disks. Only when the NAS is busy with other tasks do I see issues when streaming HD content. Indexing, for example, which can run for many hours if not days or large file copies can have an impact when streaming.
Did you know that the DS918+ supports up to two M.2 NVMe 2280 SSDs for fast system cache creation? I would consider trading up to the DS918+ if those SSDs would make a difference for transcoding and streaming. If so, what size would make a difference? Would a single 250GB SSD be sufficient?
@mw4925 said:
Glad I came across this thread as I had the same question regarding drive speeds as I’m trying to fine tune my DS718+ which is equipped with 2 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf drive @ 5400 rpm; my DS has the same CPU as the DS918+. Plex has been struggling on my NAS when transcoding on the fly but it’s now working fine since I upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 6GB and performed a data scrubbing and defragmented the disks. Only when the NAS is busy with other tasks do I see issues when streaming HD content. Indexing, for example, which can run for many hours if not days or large file copies can have an impact when streaming.
Did you know that the DS918+ supports up to two M.2 NVMe 2280 SSDs for fast system cache creation? I would consider trading up to the DS918+ if those SSDs would make a difference for transcoding and streaming. If so, what size would make a difference? Would a single 250GB SSD be sufficient?
The SSD helps only if you have a large library. It helps because a SSD has zero seek time and zero rotational latency. This means it will populate the posters faster. That’s about the limit of what you’ll see. IF you have a large library, a couple hundred posters to do all at once, it will be quite visible.
Be advised, PMS on a SSD is hard on the SSD due to all the writing. They do burn out somewhere around 200 TB (most of them) with a max of 300TB safe TBW (Total Bytes Written). For some, that’s 10 years. For others, that’s 6-18 months. A complete YMMV scenario
Ok - my library isn’t that large and won’t be as I use Plex primarily as DVR and delete programmes once I’ve watched them. If the SSD won’t improve performance when it comes to transcoding/streaming, I might as well just stick with my DS718+ and up the RAM to 2x4GB to hit that “sweet spot”
I installed the 2nd 4GB stick, i.e. I now have 2x4GB RAM installed in my DS718+; with that, I had hoped it would resolve playback issues with certain recordings but, unfortunately, this hasn’t come true - see new thread issues-playing-certain-recordings-on-ds718-and-apple-tv-4th-gen
Happy to see and follow an experienced Plex member like you. I learned many things for the last few weeks / months, here and there. Waiting patiently for the right moment to invest in my next media server upgrade.
I read on the Synology forum someone who have installed 2 X16 GB of RAM in a DiskStation DS918+ and recognized it! 
