Hi there, I have an older TS-1685 that is set up with 12 drives (10TB each) in RAID 6. I also have 4x 1TB Samsung 860 EVO drives set up as RAID 10 that were set up for cache. 2 of the EVO drives just gave me a warning that they have unrecoverable read/write errors and should be replaced.
My question is, should I replace these? I recall some time ago someone telling me that I wasted money on these drives because they do me no good in my setup and that I wasted my money buying them. I primarily do video editing. Do they do me any good as cache drives for video editing, or should I just remove them and forget about it?
Or, if cache is helpful, should I replace them with the same 860 EVO drives (this model is pretty old now), or should I do 870 EVO. Should I look at bigger drives, same size, or downgrade all of them to 500GB but with brand new drives? These are all at least 6 years old right now.
I appreciate any feedback you can give me. Thanks!
When the SSD in your cache shows a warning but hasn’t actually failed yet, the best thing to do is remove the cache from the system.
The system will then flush the cached data back to the HDDs, and you can continue using your NAS normally with just the HDD pool.
(We can later discuss whether you want to replace the SSD, rebuild the cache using the remaining two drives, or simply go without a cache.)
Basically, since you’re a video editor, whether the cache makes a difference really depends on your workflow.
If you’re working with RAW footage or doing rough cuts and initial edits, the cache usually doesn’t help much — unless your cache capacity is huge, large enough to hold all the RAW data.
But if you’re doing smaller tasks like motion graphics, subtitles, sound effects, or adding ad logos — things that involve lots of small files — the cache will make a more noticeable difference.
Of course, if you follow the suggestion and temporarily remove the SSD cache so that you’re working entirely off the HDDs, you’ll be able to feel the difference in performance and decide what works best for you.
I tried removing the cache. It took the server offline and “flushed” the cache to 100% (within about 1 minute), but then just hung there. I couldn’t do anything and even the physical qnap was unresponsive to button pushes.
I forced a reboot and the drives show up again as cache, so I manually unchecked each volume that was being cached on those drives and it began flushing again. It’s been an hour and is at 1%. The server seems very unstable right now.
Ok, I don’t remember the order, but I physically removed the drives, rebooted, etc. and eventually I was able to “remove” them via the software, flush the cache, and now it no longer exists.
I [don’t] do a lot of raw editing, but we also do a lot of post FX with After Effects.
The TS-1685 was great for its day—but it’s old. You NEVER needed the SSDs in there for caching; it did absolutely nothing for Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Apple FCP X, or AVID Media Composer. The TS-1685 was replaced with the TVS-h1688X, which is a fantastic 12-drive system, like the TS-1685. In this model, which runs the QuTS operating system, I install two 500GB SSDs in slots 1 and 2—not for cache, but to run the QuTS OS as Storage Pool 1, RAID 1 configuration. Then I install all 12 SATA drives and make that Storage Pool 2—and that is where I put the video media. I have installed a ton of these for professional video editors. This model will easily support 6 editors doing full-res 4K if they have a 10G user interface on their computers (I use the QSW-M3216R-8S8T switch to connect everything together).
But now the TVS-h1688X is “old” (it’s still great)—and the new TVS-AIh1688ATX is the new hot model. This looks just like the TVS-h1688X, but it has a better CPU, and it has four U.2 NVMe slots, which are crazy fast (and crazy expensive). So if you were willing to spend the money for the four U.2 drives, you could actually put a QNAP 25G SFP28 card in this model and get 2200 MB/sec to your 25G client computers. As I write this—I was literally on a Zoom call with QNAP in California and a new client—and I am now told by QNAP that the U.2 to M.2 adapter is END OF LIFE—I still need to confirm this—but I was going to say that if it IS still available, you could use the U.2 to M.2 adapter and still get crazy fast performance using M.2 drives in these 4 slots, instead of the U.2 crazy price drives. Like I said—I just heard this—I have no idea of the accuracy of this, and there are 2 different U.2 to M.2 adapters from QNAP—so I need to confirm if BOTH are EOL, or just one of them—
What you will find is that if you are dealing with EXR sequences or uncompressed image sequences—these are hard for SATA drives to play back. Even if you see 1000 MB/sec with AJA system test. So on existing TVS-h1688X systems, I tell people to buy a QM2-4P-384 card, put it in the QNAP, put 4 M.2 drives on that QM2 card, and now you can play back anything—even with 10G. That’s the difference between MB/sec performance and IOPS as far as “real world performance” goes.—
As far as modernizing your TS-1685. It’s time for an upgrade.
Bob, I appreciate that. I have the TVS-h1688X which was added later for additional space. The 1685 was our first QNAP and it is definitely old. I don’t care about having the “hot” model, but if the 1688X is old, it sounds like you recommend upgrading to the TVS-AIh1688ATX? Over Christmas break, it might be a perfect time to make the upgrade.
To be honest, I’m lost on some of what you’re saying, so I might need to ask more questions as I plan it out. We don’t do anything with EXR or uncompressed image sequences, and don’t mind making proxies for projects that are unusual (we’re going to be working on some 8k content next week).
Hi Stephen - you can ask me any questions you want, and I will answer you in detail. I can also build your new system for you correctly. Just email me directly - my email is shown on every post here. I build QNAP systems ONLY for professional video editors and post facilities.