First off, I’d normally ask this question on a datahoarding forum, but this one is way more active than those and I’m sure there’s considerable overlap.
So I have a Synology DS218+ that I got in 2020. So it’s a 6 year old model by now but only 4 into its service. There’s absolutely no reason to believe it’ll start failing anytime soon, and it’s completely reliable. I’m just succession planning.
I’m looking forward to my next NAS, wondering if I should get the new version of the same model again (whenever that is) or expand to a 4 bay.
The drives are 14 TB shucked easy stores, for what it’s worth, and not even half full.
I’d say 6-12 years. Maybe including about 1 hard disk failing. I forgot what the mean to failure is for a harddisk. And in a decade I probably have all the disks filled to the brim, my usage pattern changed and a new one has 10x the network speed, 4x more storage and is way faster in every aspect.
I’d be more concerned about the longevity of the drives than any NAS itself.
I moved from commercial NAS appliances to a self-built one. It turns out that they cost about the same (depending on the hardware configuration you end up choosing, evidently), but are MUCH better performance-wise.
What do you mean by “last”? I know it’s a common term, but when you dig deeper, you’ll see why it doesn’t really make sense. For this discussion, I’m assuming you mean “How long until I need to buy a newer model?”
First, consider the reasons you might have for buying a newer model. The first is hardware failure. Second is obsolescence - the device cannot keep up with newer needs, such as speed, capacity, or interface. The third is insecurity/unsupported from the vendor.
The last one is easy enough to check from a vendor’s product lifecycle page. I’ll assume this isn’t what you’re concerned about. Up next is obsolescence. Obviously it meets your needs today, but only you can predict your future needs. Maybe it’s fine for a single 1080p* stream today, and that’s all you use it for. It will continue to serve that purpose forever. But if your household grows and suddenly you need 3x 4k streams, it might not keep up. Or maybe you’ll only need that single 1080p stream for the next 20 years. Maybe you’ll hit drive capacity limits, or maybe you won’t. We can’t answer any of that for you.
That leaves hardware failure. But electronics don’t wear out (mechanical drives do, to an extent, but you asked about the NAS). They don’t really have an expected life span in the same way as a car battery or an appliance. Instead, they have a failure rate. XX% fail in a given time frame. Even if we assume a bathtub curve (which is a very bold assumption), the point where failures climb is going to be very unclear. The odds are actually very good that it will keep working well beyond that.
Also of note, very few electronics fail before they are obsolete.
*Technically it’s about bitrate, but let’s just ignore that detail for simplicity. We’ll assume that 4k uses 4x as much space as 1080p
TL;DR: It could fail at any moment from the day it was manufactured, or it could outlast all of us. Prepare for that scenario with a decent backup strategy, but don’t actually replace it until needed.
I’ve bought a Synology DS415+ back in December 2014. So it just turned 9 and it’s still kicking. (Even with the C2000 fix.)
Although Synology stopped delivering updates, I’ll keep it as long as it does what I need it to. However, my next device will be a TerraMaster where I’ll install OMV on. Can’t get a NAS with custom OS in a smaller form factor.
Still running a ds210+ i bought second hand about 8 years ago… Hosts a website and downloads torrents… Not much else. Think it’s about time i upgraded.
Using unraid is nice because you can keep replacing drives with lawyer ones as you need, or adding new drives to the array. It’s very flexible that way, despite some of its shortcomings.
I have the same model as you and I also wonder when it will explode lol (mostly because I have it in my ROM and can hear when it is struggling).
I have it with lots of docker containers (I can’t help it, it is my only server) and the drives never cease to spin.
I actually don’t recall since when I have it but it must be similar as you as well…
Just as of recently started to do clean up of containers and such, mostly because I did a fuck up (I deleted with Portainer all my unused volumes which, strangely enough for me, got rid of Portainer’s volume, I needed to recreate all my stacks/compose from portainer each one, so I cleaned up some stuff in the process).
Both DS220+ and DS224+ has been a pleasure to setup, but I wouldn’t replace your DS218+ just because. Just make sure your RAID is healthy and your backup too.
An alternative to a standalone NAS is to setup your own little ITX server. Only if you enjoy tinkering though, Synology is definitely easier.
At home I’m currently running Server/NAS/Gaming PC all in one.
It’s a Debian 12 KVM/QEMU host with an m.2 NVME disk for host OS + VM OS and 2x16TB Seagate Exos disks in RAID1 for data storage. The other hardware is a B650 ITX Motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7600 CPU, 2x32GB DDR5 RAM and AMD Radeon 6650 XT, Seasonic FOCUS PX 750W PSU.
With my KVM/QEMU host, Game Server and Jellyfin Server online it eats about 60W-65W, so not that bad.
The GPU and an USB Controller is passed through with VFIO to a virtual Fedora that I use as a desktop and gaming client.
Just make sure to have a sound dampening pc case so you can keep the servers online without being bothered. The GPU goes silent when the gaming VM is off.
I just recently upgraded from my 2 bay NAS, simply because I ran out of storage and attaching more drives via USB just seemed silly at this point (I was already at 5).
I now have a DS2422+ 12 bay with 6x 20TB plates. And I very much expect the NAS to last past 10 years. HDDs can be added and replaced if you have raid setup. Not very feasible in 2 bay NAS.
The NAS itself will likely outlive the drives inside, just the nature of things. Hard drives follow a sort of curve when it comes to failure, most fail either immediately or in a few 10000 hours of run time. Other factors include the drives being too hot, the amount of hard power events, and vibration.
Lots of info on drive failure can be found on Backblaze’s Drive stat page. I know you have shucked drives, these are likely white label WD Red drives which are close to the 14TB WD drive backblaze uses.
I’ve got a 12TB Seagate desktop expansion which contains a Seagate ironwolf drive. According to the link you shared, I’ll better look for a backup drive asap.
Edit: the ones in the backblaze reference are all exos models, but i still have no profounf trust in Seagate.
Yes, according to their historical data Seagate drives appear to be on the higher side of failure rates. I’ve also experienced it myself, my Seagate drives have almost always failed before my WD drives.
But 10.000 seems on the low side, i have 4 datacenter toshiba 10tb disks with 40k hours and expect them to do at least 80k, but you can have bad luck and one fails prematurely.
If its within warranty, you can get it replaced, if not, tough luck.
Always have stuff protected in raid/zfs and backed up if you value the data or dont want a weekend ruined because you now have to reinstall.
And with big disks, consider having more disks as redundancy as another might get a bit-error while restoring the failed one. (check the statistical averages of the disk in the datasheet)
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I’d say 6-12 years. Maybe including about 1 hard disk failing. I forgot what the mean to failure is for a harddisk. And in a decade I probably have all the disks filled to the brim, my usage pattern changed and a new one has 10x the network speed, 4x more storage and is way faster in every aspect.
Had my Western Digital My Cloud since 2015.
my longest running drive is a WD. probably the same vintage with less uptime.
deleted by creator
Were you able to swap in a new one and copy everything back over?
deleted by creator
I’d be more concerned about the longevity of the drives than any NAS itself. I moved from commercial NAS appliances to a self-built one. It turns out that they cost about the same (depending on the hardware configuration you end up choosing, evidently), but are MUCH better performance-wise.
The NAS will most likely outlive the software support and by far the HDDs you are putting in them.
I had a Drobo 5N for over 10 years. It lasted longer than the company itself.
What do you mean by “last”? I know it’s a common term, but when you dig deeper, you’ll see why it doesn’t really make sense. For this discussion, I’m assuming you mean “How long until I need to buy a newer model?”
First, consider the reasons you might have for buying a newer model. The first is hardware failure. Second is obsolescence - the device cannot keep up with newer needs, such as speed, capacity, or interface. The third is insecurity/unsupported from the vendor.
The last one is easy enough to check from a vendor’s product lifecycle page. I’ll assume this isn’t what you’re concerned about. Up next is obsolescence. Obviously it meets your needs today, but only you can predict your future needs. Maybe it’s fine for a single 1080p* stream today, and that’s all you use it for. It will continue to serve that purpose forever. But if your household grows and suddenly you need 3x 4k streams, it might not keep up. Or maybe you’ll only need that single 1080p stream for the next 20 years. Maybe you’ll hit drive capacity limits, or maybe you won’t. We can’t answer any of that for you.
That leaves hardware failure. But electronics don’t wear out (mechanical drives do, to an extent, but you asked about the NAS). They don’t really have an expected life span in the same way as a car battery or an appliance. Instead, they have a failure rate. XX% fail in a given time frame. Even if we assume a bathtub curve (which is a very bold assumption), the point where failures climb is going to be very unclear. The odds are actually very good that it will keep working well beyond that.
Also of note, very few electronics fail before they are obsolete.
*Technically it’s about bitrate, but let’s just ignore that detail for simplicity. We’ll assume that 4k uses 4x as much space as 1080p
TL;DR: It could fail at any moment from the day it was manufactured, or it could outlast all of us. Prepare for that scenario with a decent backup strategy, but don’t actually replace it until needed.
I’ve bought a Synology DS415+ back in December 2014. So it just turned 9 and it’s still kicking. (Even with the C2000 fix.)
Although Synology stopped delivering updates, I’ll keep it as long as it does what I need it to. However, my next device will be a TerraMaster where I’ll install OMV on. Can’t get a NAS with custom OS in a smaller form factor.
Still running a ds210+ i bought second hand about 8 years ago… Hosts a website and downloads torrents… Not much else. Think it’s about time i upgraded.
Using unraid is nice because you can keep replacing drives with lawyer ones as you need, or adding new drives to the array. It’s very flexible that way, despite some of its shortcomings.
Ah, I see you also choke yours with softwarr…
I have the same model as you and I also wonder when it will explode lol (mostly because I have it in my ROM and can hear when it is struggling).
I have it with lots of docker containers (I can’t help it, it is my only server) and the drives never cease to spin.
I actually don’t recall since when I have it but it must be similar as you as well…
Just as of recently started to do clean up of containers and such, mostly because I did a fuck up (I deleted with Portainer all my unused volumes which, strangely enough for me, got rid of Portainer’s volume, I needed to recreate all my stacks/compose from portainer each one, so I cleaned up some stuff in the process).
At least 5 minutes.
Both DS220+ and DS224+ has been a pleasure to setup, but I wouldn’t replace your DS218+ just because. Just make sure your RAID is healthy and your backup too.
An alternative to a standalone NAS is to setup your own little ITX server. Only if you enjoy tinkering though, Synology is definitely easier.
At home I’m currently running Server/NAS/Gaming PC all in one.
It’s a Debian 12 KVM/QEMU host with an m.2 NVME disk for host OS + VM OS and 2x16TB Seagate Exos disks in RAID1 for data storage. The other hardware is a B650 ITX Motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7600 CPU, 2x32GB DDR5 RAM and AMD Radeon 6650 XT, Seasonic FOCUS PX 750W PSU.
With my KVM/QEMU host, Game Server and Jellyfin Server online it eats about 60W-65W, so not that bad.
The GPU and an USB Controller is passed through with VFIO to a virtual Fedora that I use as a desktop and gaming client.
Just make sure to have a sound dampening pc case so you can keep the servers online without being bothered. The GPU goes silent when the gaming VM is off.
I just recently upgraded from my 2 bay NAS, simply because I ran out of storage and attaching more drives via USB just seemed silly at this point (I was already at 5).
I now have a DS2422+ 12 bay with 6x 20TB plates. And I very much expect the NAS to last past 10 years. HDDs can be added and replaced if you have raid setup. Not very feasible in 2 bay NAS.
The NAS itself will likely outlive the drives inside, just the nature of things. Hard drives follow a sort of curve when it comes to failure, most fail either immediately or in a few 10000 hours of run time. Other factors include the drives being too hot, the amount of hard power events, and vibration.
Lots of info on drive failure can be found on Backblaze’s Drive stat page. I know you have shucked drives, these are likely white label WD Red drives which are close to the 14TB WD drive backblaze uses.
I’ve got a 12TB Seagate desktop expansion which contains a Seagate ironwolf drive. According to the link you shared, I’ll better look for a backup drive asap.
Edit: the ones in the backblaze reference are all exos models, but i still have no profounf trust in Seagate.
Yes, according to their historical data Seagate drives appear to be on the higher side of failure rates. I’ve also experienced it myself, my Seagate drives have almost always failed before my WD drives.
Interesting. When I researched drives for my NAS the general conclusion was to avoid the reds. Go with iron wolf.
🤷🏻♂️
Mine aren’t even on the list :(
Yeah they’re reds. Is there a way I can check how many hours they have on them? 10,000 is just over a year. They’re a couple years old now.
I’m not too concerned about them failing, I can afford to replace one without notice and they’re mirrored. And backed up in some other easy stores.
I wouldn’t start worrying until 50k+ hours.
There should be a way to view SMART info and that includes an hour count.
smartctl
But 10.000 seems on the low side, i have 4 datacenter toshiba 10tb disks with 40k hours and expect them to do at least 80k, but you can have bad luck and one fails prematurely.
If its within warranty, you can get it replaced, if not, tough luck.
Always have stuff protected in raid/zfs and backed up if you value the data or dont want a weekend ruined because you now have to reinstall.
And with big disks, consider having more disks as redundancy as another might get a bit-error while restoring the failed one. (check the statistical averages of the disk in the datasheet)
I believe the synology DSM should have a feature for this. Try the storage manager app and it should tell you SMART info.
That info can be found in the smart data for the drives, but I didn’t mean 10,000 hours, more like > 50,000