Does m.2 2280 nvme ssd make sense?

[Francesco Cinque]

Hi guys, I've just purchased a new nas (ds1821+) and I'm guessing if bye or not the m.2 2280 nvme ssd.

What are the advantages? Being a professional photographer I use the nas as the archive for all of my pictures. Does the expense make sense? What is the suggested size/brand?

Thanks!

 

[Rusty]

Working with large files that have no changes you will not see a big benefit of the cache. On the other hand, working with platforms that use a large number of smaller files, DB platforms, or virtual machines, cache will give you some boost in performance.

If you are using the nas as a pure archive location, imho, you would be throwing money away.

 

[WST16]

Being a professional photographer

Nice photos

 

[Francesco Cinque]

Working with large files that have no changes you will not see a big benefit of the cache. On the other hand, working with platforms that use a large number of smaller files, DB platforms, or virtual machines, cache will give you some boost in performance.

If you are using the nas as a pure archive location, imho, you would be throwing money away.

One of the most frustrating thing for me is browse my pictures. Once I open a folder it takes a lot of time to load all the miniatures and is always laggy. Does it improve that speed?

Nice photos

Thanks!

 

[Rusty]

Does it improve that speed?

Personally I am nowhere near your use case, there are people on the forum that might give a more accurate opinion on this, but maybe you could just share how exactly are you browsing your images. Are you using any specific platform, app, protocol, and if so, what?

 

[Francesco Cinque]

I just open the folder using photo mechaninc Homepage - Camera Bits, Inc. or the regular finder

 

[fredbert]

For what it's worth there is the SSD Cache Advisor. Not sure it's that accurate in determining cache size as it analyses usage for all shared folders in a volume, and I have most heavy use on backup folders that don't need cache.

Have you already used 10GbE? I would monitor the network and disk performances when you are attempting to view a typical folder of image files and see what is peaking.

 

[Rusty]

I just open the folder using photo mechaninc Homepage - Camera Bits, Inc. or the regular finder

I would agree with Fred here. If you are using a basic SMB access with access over Finder, then there is no searching that is unsupported by some indexed platform to help on that front. On the other hand I haven't used Photo Mechanic, but I guess it should be a better solution then Finder.

Still, if the files are large in size, then, as said, a better network speed might help more then the cache itself. If the network is not the bottleneck, you could look towards the cache as a potential solution.

 

[jeyare]

Francesco,
some “dictionary” alignment is necessary to understand your state:
1. yours “archive” means save the photos to the NAS for don’t touch for long time stage. Or it’s a catalog for active editing stage?
2. Are you connected to the NAS over WiFi? Or describe your LAN.
3. How many photos and their size in a single folder when it’s “laggy”?
4. Did you mean “is always laggy” during the first photos upload to the NAS or exactly always?

 

[Furbz85]

Francesco,

I had the same question. So I have purchased one yesterday. Just to find it out on my own: There is no answer to thuis question on the internet.

If you have the patience: I will review it.

 

[Jan Janowski]

Situation here is different. If I don’t specify up front there is no $$ extras ‘later on’.. (other than failure which she’s understanding on) — no funds are available later on! So I buy ‘full up’ or have remorse later.
About the best senario I can provide. Both 720+’s have NVME Cache’s. 718+ Obviously does not. Same sized 7200rpm Ironwolf’s are in both.. All SHR.
720+ is faster on retrieval, or store, be it Ironwolf’s or 7200 Baracuda’s (In second 720+) than 718+. All 3 have 4GB Ram added. Perceived speed difference is notice-able. This is home environment, though multiple shared folder sync’s are going on.

At one point I swapped the caches: 2x Seagate 510 128GB ‘s with 2x Samsung 256GB’s in the 2x 720+’s to see if I could determine a speed difference between Cache MFG’s, sizes.
I did not notice any difference.

 

[jeyare]

Perceived speed difference is notice-able.

First:
720+ vs 718+ are two different models from the CPU, MB, Bus, .. point of views

Second - Network performance vs CPU
unless you use a dedicated network card (718+ and 720+ case), all operations belonging to network traffic are managed by the CPU. Then it really depends on whether you use different CPUs when comparing performance of both NASes.
Both NASes uase Intel Celeron J series, However,
- 718+ has J3455
- 720+ has J4125
while both of them have 4cores, devil is hidden in more deeper level:
base clock freq: 1.5GHz vs 2.GHz and 2.3GHz vs 2.7GHz in turbo mode (old vs new model)
while you will run in turbo mode for all cores, you will get 2.2GHz for the old one and 2.7GHz for the newer model.
it will get +33% in PassMark CPU test to the newest model.

 

[Jan Janowski]

Agreed..