For lower-end models like my DS218j that doesn't support SSD cache, will installing SSD in the drive bays make a big difference vs HDD?

I understand that the transfer speed is still capped by the gigabit connection. Both HDD and SSD exceeds gigabit.

Mostly I am just finding the DSM to be a big laggy and not snappy enough.

Well J models are on the low end but still you will feel the kick of an SSD for sure.

Agree with Rusty. I'll give you an example: 2012 Mac Mini with 500GB 2.5" HD upgraded to 500GB Samsung 850 SSD. The machine went from a crawl to very zippy. Disk read/writes from ~60MBps to 500MB/s.

The main benefit is that when RAM gets exhausted the OS will write inactive app RAM allocations to disk. This read/write activity will be limited by the speed of your disks and affects the responsiveness of the whole computer.

I could've increased the Mini's RAM to 8GB but that would just mean even more disk access when that memory got exhausted, though would that more time and apps to get there. I saw in other Macs that SSD was a really good alternative to extra RAM ... provided you have enough RAM for your active apps.

Check your usage in DSM to see if you are experiencing max'ed out RAM. The downside: SSD are a lot more expensive per TB. I upgraded to a DSM + model so I could add more RAM without having to rely on the disk.

fredbert said:

I upgraded to a DSM + model so I could add more RAM without having to rely on the disk.

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And now I agree with @fredbert on this matter. One more reason why I upraded all my devices with RAM, but now both 718 and 918 will get an additional SSDs just to make them super fast .

Still the fact is SSDs are storage capacity limited.

Where is the DSM installed and ran on? One of the disks in the drive bay or elsewhere?

If the speed of my NAS is limited by the gigabit connection, then how would I feel the difference switching from HDD to SDD? Unless the DSM is installed and ran on the SSD.

braveheart0707 said:

Where is the DSM installed and ran on? One of the disks in the drive bay or elsewhere?

If the speed of my NAS is limited by the gigabit connection, then how would I feel the difference switching from HDD to SDD? Unless the DSM is installed and ran on the SSD.

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It is installed on a volume that’s not visible to the user from dsm side, across all the drives accessible during the initial installation and 1st volume creation.

Still your nas is limited by gigabit speed only when it comes to network transfers not the os and local operations. So running it on an ssd will have a number of benefits.

Rusty said:

It is installed on a volume that’s not visible to the user from dsm side, across all the drives accessible during the initial installation and 1st volume creation.

Still your nas is limited by gigabit speed only when it comes to network transfers not the os and local operations. So running it on an ssd will have a number of benefits.

Click to expand...

so it is installed across all of the physical drives? So If i use SSD instead of HDD, the DSM will be running on SSD speed?

braveheart0707 said:

so it is installed across all of the physical drives? So If i use SSD instead of HDD, the DSM will be running on SSD speed?

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If the installation is done while ssd is installed then yes. Also your volume of f it’s created on the ssd all data that’s hosted on that volume will be on the ssd as well

braveheart0707 said:

So If i use SSD instead of HDD, the DSM will be running on SSD speed?

Click to expand...

It is up to what you will run on the SSD and if the SSD is not overperformed vs rest of environment (LAN, WAN, “j” architecture components, etc.)