The NAS itself will likely outlive the drives inside, just the nature of things. Hard drives follow a sort of curve when it comes to failure, most fail either immediately or in a few 10000 hours of run time. Other factors include the drives being too hot, the amount of hard power events, and vibration.

Lots of info on drive failure can be found on Backblaze’s Drive stat page. I know you have shucked drives, these are likely white label WD Red drives which are close to the 14TB WD drive backblaze uses.

My Synology NAS was running for 6+ years before I replaced it last year. And the only reason I replaced it was to upgrade the hardware to be able to act more like a home server running some more demanding services.

I’ve since given the NAS away to a friend who is still running it… As always back up your data just in case, but I wouldn’t expect the hardware to crap out on you too soon

With a free os: indefinitely

With a proprietary os: hope and pray the maker doesn’t discontinue it tomorrow

Your NAS will last as long as your storage medium.

HDD lasts 5-10 years, SSD lasts like 10+

I had a Drobo 5N for over 10 years. It lasted longer than the company itself.

Imho there’s no reason to change or upgrade if your current setup works and you’re satisfied with it. Keep your money, you’ll see what the market has to offer when you need it.

I’ve bought a Synology DS415+ back in December 2014. So it just turned 9 and it’s still kicking. (Even with the C2000 fix.)

Although Synology stopped delivering updates, I’ll keep it as long as it does what I need it to. However, my next device will be a TerraMaster where I’ll install OMV on. Can’t get a NAS with custom OS in a smaller form factor.

I’d say 6-12 years. Maybe including about 1 hard disk failing. I forgot what the mean to failure is for a harddisk. And in a decade I probably have all the disks filled to the brim, my usage pattern changed and a new one has 10x the network speed, 4x more storage and is way faster in every aspect.

I had my DS213+ for a bit over 10 years, with no failures of any kind, just a bit of drive swapping for more storage space. Finally upgraded last year to a 4-bay with better performance and Docker support, but I would have kept using the old one otherwise.

What do you mean by “last”? I know it’s a common term, but when you dig deeper, you’ll see why it doesn’t really make sense. For this discussion, I’m assuming you mean “How long until I need to buy a newer model?”

First, consider the reasons you might have for buying a newer model. The first is hardware failure. Second is obsolescence - the device cannot keep up with newer needs, such as speed, capacity, or interface. The third is insecurity/unsupported from the vendor.

The last one is easy enough to check from a vendor’s product lifecycle page. I’ll assume this isn’t what you’re concerned about. Up next is obsolescence. Obviously it meets your needs today, but only you can predict your future needs. Maybe it’s fine for a single 1080p* stream today, and that’s all you use it for. It will continue to serve that purpose forever. But if your household grows and suddenly you need 3x 4k streams, it might not keep up. Or maybe you’ll only need that single 1080p stream for the next 20 years. Maybe you’ll hit drive capacity limits, or maybe you won’t. We can’t answer any of that for you.

That leaves hardware failure. But electronics don’t wear out (mechanical drives do, to an extent, but you asked about the NAS). They don’t really have an expected life span in the same way as a car battery or an appliance. Instead, they have a failure rate. XX% fail in a given time frame. Even if we assume a bathtub curve (which is a very bold assumption), the point where failures climb is going to be very unclear. The odds are actually very good that it will keep working well beyond that.

Also of note, very few electronics fail before they are obsolete.

*Technically it’s about bitrate, but let’s just ignore that detail for simplicity. We’ll assume that 4k uses 4x as much space as 1080p

TL;DR: It could fail at any moment from the day it was manufactured, or it could outlast all of us. Prepare for that scenario with a decent backup strategy, but don’t actually replace it until needed.

As I can’t predict the future I believe you should juice it until the last drop, that way at least if it fails you wouldn’t regret it… pray&luck 🙏🤞

What about building your own NAS? If you’ve the time / skills you can pick a very small micro ITX motherboard and a NAS case and build your own. This way you can run open-source software and it will have more features / expandability and potentially last way longer.

Using unraid is nice because you can keep replacing drives with lawyer ones as you need, or adding new drives to the array. It’s very flexible that way, despite some of its shortcomings.

I’m still running a DS414 filled with WD Red drives. I’ve only swapped out one of the drives as it was starting to have issues. I’ve considered upgrading for more features (Docker, Home Assistant etc) but can’t justify the expense just for “nice to have” instead of “need”. Realistically it only stores Linux ISOs that I get with Download Station.

I’d be more concerned about the longevity of the drives than any NAS itself. I moved from commercial NAS appliances to a self-built one. It turns out that they cost about the same (depending on the hardware configuration you end up choosing, evidently), but are MUCH better performance-wise.