I acquired the DS918+ as a replacement for my DS116 which has a single 4TB WD red.
I have a 100/100 connection.
I have Plex installed on the DS116.
I have max, 3 users streaming 720p or low bitrate 1080p, from the DS116 at the same time, which makes it buffer a lot because of the weak cpu, no hardware transcoding etc.
So I’ve gotten a DS918+, and plan to setup everything from scratch. I’m planning to use 2 or 3 of the 4 bays for the main media folder, in some kind of raid for extra read performance. The 4th bay will be used by an ssd for docker etc. I will also install dsm to the ssd.
So I’ve got 3 bays left for the media. I’ve debated with myself over and over, about whether to run 3 disks in raid 0, 2 disks in raid 0, 2 disks in raid 1, or 3 disks in raid 5, and not been able to come to a conclusion, as I hate things about each of those raids. But the most important thing is that it will read fast enough for the streams to not buffer because of the disks.
I’m unsure about where the bottlenecks might be, whether the disks aren’t even an issue no matter if I just run a single disk. I plan to use plexpass and hardware transcoding.
If it doesn’t matter what disk setup, for this low a number of streams at those bitrates, then I would rather use as few disks as possible, so that I can split the media into 2 groups, where one is for the very frequently accessed media, and the other is for the infrequently accessed.
I have the 918+ and use the 1st 2 (WD 10TB Red) drives utilizing Synology’s “RAID” and have had 4 concurrent users on at one time with no one reporting any issues with the streams.
All my movies and tv shows are on that setup above and no one has complained about a lack of quality and I have a 100/100 connection like you do as well.
After I upgraded the RAM to 16GB (it does support and register 16GB even though the documentation states 8GB), I have had 6 concurrent users (all my peoples) with no degradation to the streams.
when it comes to the RAID portion…
your bottle neck is most likely the Processor not the storage.
the difference in HDD read speed is insignificant
choosing which to use will depend more on what you are trying to achieve with the files in the long term, mainly hardware failure.
RAID 0 - has little if no benefit at all because for the most part your data just sits there. It’s written once and read many times or sometimes none. Yet when 1 drive fails all data is lost. should never be used.
RAID1 - is just a copy this gives a safety net of not down time if 1 drive fails (as far as Plex having access). But you would benefit more from keeping a copy on the older box. Even with a local copy if its important a copy should be kept separately.
RAID5 - give you the option of a bigger volume and room to maneuver if you experience HDD failure. Either replacing the drive or copy/move files to a new location.
JBOD - lets you keep things separated and the loss of one drive doesn’t take down all your other data. This is also the only one that limits wear and tear to the drive that is actually being used when and only when it’s being used.
I personally use mix of RAID5 and keep a copy on JBOD (external drives).
The only reason I’m considering raids is because of the potential that the head has to dart around on the disk if 3 different movies are being watched, and that this would cause some buffering. Also I figure the head seeks would be spread out over the disks, to minimize the wear. But I might be wrong.
I also considered JBOD for one volume with everything in it, but you still need to use tools to get files off the remaining disk if one fails in a JBOD, as far as I’ve read. In Plex I should be able to add different Disks’ media. For example: movies on disk1, docu on disk2 etc.
right & wrong are abstract thoughts in this situation, its more about managing the data. All storage media degrades over time even if not used/touched. So it more about what are you willing to lose and what time frame will you sacrifice to recover data, the shorter the more expensive.
if one drive has the data, that’s the only one that need to spin up. if 5 drives have 1/5th of the movie then all 5 have to spin up. In addition if 5 people are watching a movie then its even worst because the heads will have to jump around on all 5, never a chance of one person on 1 HDD and one person on another.
in this scenerio
Raid1 is the most expensive followed by Raid5 but you get 0 down time from 1 HDD failing. JBOD is the cheapest and you lose everything on it from 1 HDD failing, but HDD are so cheap it’s cost effective to buy additional and keep copies.
I use RAID5 to maintain up time and keep copies on external drives that I can quickly plug in and recover data.
Data recovery is the worst game plan to have 1) it is extremely expensive 2) extremely time consuming 3) not 100% 4) so, so expensive even if you do it yourself.
