2.5" HDD ?

Mechanically an adapter like that looks like would work. You can't use an enclosure that doesn't bring the sata and power connectors to the standard positions for 3.5" drive.

Whether it is a good idea (or would be really compatible) is another question.

Are you thinking about using SSD? I've seen one post from someone who did that with apparent success, but I've never seen a followup. I doubt that the NAS firmware supports TRIM.

If you installed an SSD the NAS would complain due to not getting SMART values I think. SSDs are not compatible.

mdgm wrote:
If you installed an SSD the NAS would complain due to not getting SMART values I think. SSDs are not compatible.

I've seen that posted here, but the SMART values I see with my two PC SSD drives look pretty normal (with several extra parameters). They report a temperature of 0 (they apparently have no sensor), and also show reallocated sector count of 0. Pending Sector Count is missing, but the usual parameters are there.

I confirm the adapter work on readynas duo and ultra2, I found it here: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=44727
There are some photos.
There are also some other DIY solution.

I am not interested in SSD for a NAS, I would like a 2.5" HDD because it's easier to re-use in a mini-itx pc in case I would like to build a small home server one day (or USB-HDD or a smaller nas or whatever). It's more flexible to reuse than "big" 3.5.

It is also supposed to be lower consumption and less noise (even if there are some good 3.5" for nas).

As there are some compatibilities issues with readynas (otherwise, there would not be a part of the forum dedicated to this), I would like a lot to had some experiences returns from people who already tried one.

I focus on 1TB but any feedback is interesting.

Currently, I have a readynas duo with 1TB 3.5" HDD (I would add the 2.5" in raid with this one).
My other 3.5" disk is almost dead (it's what's SMART told me at least).

mdgm wrote:
If you installed an SSD the NAS would complain due to not getting SMART values I think. SSDs are not compatible.

I'd have thought the issue would be not SMART but rather TRIM i.e. you'd have to use special SSDs that don't need the OS to do TRIM. :?

One of the things the NAS uses to control the fan speed is hard disk temps. Also the NAS uses SMART values to help detect some pending disk failures before they happen. So if it sees a disk temp of zero it probably thinks the SSD is failing/dead. The NAS is not programmed to handle differences between hard disks and SSDs.

mdgm wrote:
One of the things the NAS uses to control the fan speed is hard disk temps. Also the NAS uses SMART values to help detect some pending disk failures before they happen. So if it sees a disk temp of zero it probably thinks the SSD is failing/dead. The NAS is not programmed to handle differences between hard disks and SSDs.

I haven't tried it, so I guess I don't know how it would treat a 0 disk temp. I do know that one person posted success when installing SSDs into an ultra using a disk carrier that looks pretty similar to the one on this thread - viewtopic.php?f=24&t=45393#p279492 There were no followup posts, so of course we don't know how it worked out longer term. I think TRIM is the obvious issue, though if I understand it correctly it would hurt write performance more than read performance.

Anyway, we are off topic, since doubleplouc doesn't want to use SSD drives...

doubleplouc wrote:
I am not interested in SSD for a NAS, I would like a 2.5" HDD because it's easier to re-use in a mini-itx pc in case I would like to build a small home server one day (or USB-HDD or a smaller nas or whatever). It's more flexible to reuse than "big" 3.5. It is also supposed to be lower consumption and less noise (even if there are some good 3.5" for nas)....

Back on topic... I haven't tried this. But I do know from experience that many consumer drives that are not designed for RAID don't do so well in a NAS. If you want to try it, I suggest

(a) using whatever vibration/shock mount stuff that comes with your adapter. If there is nothing, you could pick up some silicone washers.
(b) I would also suggest using JBOD/independent RAID-0 with one volume per drive. I think a lot of the drive incompatibilities are related to maintaining the raid array when a read or write fails. So if your volumes don't span multiple disks, you might be on safer ground.
(c) as always, keep a backup on another device.

Hi, all

doubleplouc wrote:
I focus on 1TB but any feedback is interesting.

I used HGST HTS541010A9E680 1TB with Ultra 2 (X-Raid2 but single drive) for a short period. No trouble. Also, I have been using Seagate ST9320320AS 320GB x2 with Duo (X-Raid) and HGST HTS545050B9A300 500GB x2 with Ultra 2 (X-Raid2) for around 2 years without any serious trouble. Don't ask about the HCL and guarantee.

StephenB wrote:
I haven't tried it, so I guess I don't know how it would treat a 0 disk temp. I do know that one person posted success when installing SSDs into an ultra using a disk carrier /snip/ so of course we don't know how it worked out longer term. I think TRIM is the obvious issue, though if I understand it correctly it would hurt write performance more than read performance.

I tried Intel X25-M G1 with Ultra 2 (X-Raid2 but single drive) and it worked fine. Its SMART could be seen from FrontView (Pic1, Pic2). The shown temperature was 1C/33F while in RAIDar Protocol, it was -1C/31F. Actually, this SSD does not report temperature in SMART and so this temperature should be dummy. The problem was that FrontView failed to show correct values of two important SMART attributes for this SSD, "Available Reserved Space" and "Media Wearout Indicator". See the differences of these attributes of the same SSD by utilities on PC (Pic3, Pic4, Pic5). It makes SMART from FrontView almost useless.

As for TRIM, in my opinion, even after certain period that a SSD will not have been trimed, the SSD will still keep enough speed for NAS usage. As you know, the response speed of NAS is already saturated using current HDD which is relatively much slower than SSD. Of course it depends on the SSD though.