The SSDs that I use for my boot pool for my TrueNas Scale installation have been driving me nuts with some occasional read/write errors, which render the pool DEGRADED. After trying out many things (see more details below), I decided on using other SSDs. However, I am a bit lost at which SSD to actually choose in order to not run into these exact same errors & problems.
In your opinion, what is the best SSD for a boot pool that is not awfully expensive? This is essentially a home NAS with some more important work-related documents stored on it as well. I have seen some recommendations for the Intel D3-S4520, and the Samsung 860 and 870, with some counterarguments for the latter two as well.
I use 2 Kingston A400 250GB SSDs in a mirror for the boot pool of my TrueNas Scale installation. The first write error happened roughly 1 month after installation, and then happened every single time after the SMART tests have been run on each Sunday (most of them happened when the catalog sync took place). Then, I changed SATA ports, but the errors kept happening. Then, I replaced the data cables, same thing, and then I replaced the power cables. However, errors still happen to this day. One of the SSDs failed spectacularly with 1000+ write errors and a ton of read errors, which totally bricked the SSD (the other SSD that was in the same mirror reported 1 TB of data written at this point on Disk Drill). I was dumb enough to replace it with a new A400 once again. For a while, the system ran perfectly, passing short and long SMART tests, but about 1 month later, the errors showed up again. The funny thing is that about 90% of the time, the SMART tests pass, especially if I start them by hand but they usually fail during the scheduled tests when the NAS has been running for a while. Essentially, the same things happen as described in this post (errors → DEGRADED status → zpool clear → scrub-> manual tests pass → then during the scheduled SMART tests, the tests fail → errors → boot is DEGRADED -< repeat). I have seen in this post that the Kingston A400 is not the best choice for a boot pool. Therefore, I would like to ask what is in your opinion the best choice for the SSDs?
Also, I moved the System Dataset to the SSD to reduce the noise coming from the NAS in the first month or so. Could this negatively affect the life of the SSD?
So I’m running TrueNAS Core on 1U rackmount server. I opted to run mirrored Sandisk SSD Plus models for my boot pool. I am not a fan of the A400 SSDs. We’ve used them in production for end user systems and had a pretty high and quick failure rate on them. That said I have a pair of SiliconPower S60 drives that I threw into end user computers for testing and they haven’t skipped a beat for 3 years.
Since you said it’s homelab but also holding important data I would personally recommend going with Samsung/Sandisk Plus/Crucial MX500 for price and reliability. I’ve never had an intel drive die so if you can get one for a good price I wouldn’t shoot that down either but usually they’re a bit higher on price especially new.
SSD Plus “works” but it’s really slow, I use it for OpenELEC which is fine but it bogs down very quickly so I haven’t tried to use it for anything else. I’ve had great experience with Sandisk Ultra 3D SSD / WD Blue (same hw, Marvell controller) and they’re not that much more expensive these day. I have yet to try SSDs with SMI controllers, I’ve always stuck to Samsung and Marvell ones for SATA for applications where I just want things to work.
The Crucial MX500 is really cheap in my country (basically the same price as a A400) and therefore a really attractive deal. However, I read that its cache may pose some problems in TrueNas (honestly, I do not know how bad that is).
Sandisk SSD Plus is not terrible either.
The same is true for the price of the WD Blue SA510 (is this perhaps the one you referred to @diizzy?).
Sandisk Ultra 3D is about 2.5-3x the price but still not too terrible.
In case of Samsung, which one would the two of you recommend? I believe read somewhere that the Samsung EVOs are also not the best when it comes to boot pools on TrueNas.
I’ve used intel drives in mine and had no issues so far (1year of use). I also went for some cheaper ones and just checked but my 24/7 system has a SanDisk SDSSDHP128G and I’ve no problems.
I did read that some people have had issues with MX500’s.
I’ve seen that sometimes 4TB SSDs are only 1.5 times the price of equivalent HDDs in my country at least (UK).
Having experienced it myself a few times, I would check SATA cables as I’ve had a few die on me and I initially thought it was a drive problem. Way easier to change the cable then wait for a tedious resilvering!
Finally Kioxia seem good and Wendell has nothing for praise for em.
Then I guess that the MX500 is also out of my list.
For storage, I use HDDs currently, these drives would be a part of the boot pool. Sadly, I have tried replacing the cables (both data and power) but the errors still kept on happening. I even plugged the SSDs to different ports on the motherboard, but to no avail.
Thank you for the Kioxia recommendation as well! I did not hear of them before but will check them out. By Kioxia, do you mean the Toshiba KIOXIA Exceria model? (It should be LTC10Z240GG8 for the 240GB model).
Just because some models of brand X is good doesn’t mean all are, the Kioxia (former Tosihiba) SATA SSD uses Phison S11 controller which isn’t all that common…
Unless you’re looking at saving like 10$ avoid the SSD Plus models…
Honestly, even though I would prefer drives that do not cost a fortune, I would also like to steer clear of cheap models.
Currently, I am thinking of using a combination of WD Blue SA510 (if you meant this one previously @diizzy) and/or Samsung 970 EVO, but I am still searching through the web to see if people encountered any problems with these.
With the Intel Optane drives being so cheap (32usd for a 58gb, 59usd for a 118gb one @Newegg) why not go for those? they should be higher quality than most of the cheaper consumer drives, they have PLP, and can do many more write cycles than most consumer drives.
I have been using them as boot devices (mirrored) for my proxmox server and they have worked excellent for the purpose (overkill, but at that price why not)
Exactly right. Wendell used them for metadata devices in one of his posts, since they are right about the good size for handling that in a mirrored config, but I have used them as boot devices for many a computer now, just do to its endurance; I do not worry about high numbers of log writes (which proxmox does if you cluster it)
Sounds like you’ve done some good diagnostics already, Does the board have NVMe? Perhaps you can use one of those for boot? I’ve heard plenty of times that dual SSD’s for the boot pool is overkill, with regular backups of the config. Of course I still did it with a few machines, what ya gonna do eh
Yes, it has 2 extra NVME slots (the last one disables the 3rd PCIe slot I believe, which I do not use). Honestly, I was thinking about this, too, as I have a cheap WD Blue SN570 1TB which is purely for VMs and app data, and therefore is being accessed and written to just about as much as the boot (since TrueNas Scale seems to do something periodically because of the apps, even if apps are not installed), and despite this, the drive has held on pretty well so far. However, I read that normal SATA drives should be a better choice for the TrueNAS boot pool (I do not know if this was only because the people who wrote those comments sticked to the tried-and-true SATA SSDs or if there is really any difference.)
For the dual boot, I would not consider it to be that important normally either, but seeing these errors happen in person, I was glad I went with dual boot, since I could go forward with my life even if the errros happened on one drive.
I think I now came to the conclusion that my best bet would be to use either 2x WD Blue 3d (250GB or 500GB) or 2x Samsung 870 Evo (250GB or 500GB) or (what I think I will probably choose) a mix of those 2 (meaning 1 from each).
(For the capacity, I would like to go for 500GB on both since there is almost no difference in price between 250GB and 500GB while the TBW increases, but it seems the 3D 500GB variant is out of stock currently in my country.)
Just to make extra sure: You meant the WDS250G2B0A and WDS500G2B0A models, right, @diizzy?
Honestly the nvme drives also seem quite tempting (not only because of their price but the extra 2 SATA ports that would then be free), but then I would only have 1 boot SSD as I would like to keep my 3rd SSD slot empty (in case I need to expand my VM pool or anything).
