Anybody owns a Synology NAS?

[RancidLunchmeat]

I do not think I mentioned it before, but I would invest in a UPS for your NAS as well. I have an APC with USB connections and the synology has software that you can program so when you connect it to the UPS via USB it will shut down and restart based upon using battery power from the UPS or not.

 

[Malo]

I do not think I mentioned it before, but I would invest in a UPS for your NAS as well. I have an APC with USB connections and the synology has software that you can program so when you connect it to the UPS via USB it will shut down and restart based upon using battery power from the UPS or not.

Yep agreed. Have an APC for my NAS and core components.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Been a while but I went ahead and bought a DS216j, the cheapest one I could find.

Software and performance are fine, I only use it for storing my media files that then got played through Emby/Kodi running on a Intel NUC so very light use.

I am disappointment by the amount of noise this thing makes though. I live in a one room apartment and fan and hdd noise is clearly audible at night, even with the fan on its lowest setting. It supposed to turn off the fan when its not needed but it doesn't look like that is happening even though the disks are below 30 degrees Celsius.

My NUC is much closer to me and that is inaudible. Before I bought the NAS I had a USB disk hooked up to that and that was inaudible as well after putting it on a makeshift sock noise absorber.

I believe the fan is pretty easy to replace so I'l open it up and see what is possible but it is kinda disappointing to see Synology using such lousy fans and users having to shell out another 20 bucks for a silent fan.

 

[Malo]

The only time I hear my fans on my 5-bay is during startup. Could be due to the size of it allowing some better airflow.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

No the fan is just noisy. I found a Ainex 92mm fan that is rated as only producing 13db and its a 3pin just like the one in the Synology (I think). 800 Yen so I can live with that.

I wonder if putting the case on its side, so that the disks or spinning horizontally, decreases noise as well. The USB case I used had a vertical stand as well and it would produce a noticeable vibrations. I don't know anything about physics but wouldn't gravity pulling at a horizontal disk put a more equal stress on the disk as opposed to having it spinning vertically?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Hmm.. Trying to figure out what the "j" naming convention means. Did they just add the "j" to the back of their "standard" model numbers?

edit: Nope, it looks like they just added another budget series above the "se". There's quite a premium to go from the DS216j to the DS216, and quite a difference in terms of processing power as well as tool-less swapping of drives. I wonder if they also use higher quality fans?

I have no sound issues with my DS214.

 

[Davros]

Ive seen sata labelled as nas drives how do they differ from normal sata drives

 

[Malo]

Ive seen sata labelled as nas drives how do they differ from normal sata drives

You already asked that question in this same thread with an answer.

 

[Davros]

welll bugger me
why didnt you remind me....

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

To hijack the thread -

I'm thinking of expanding my DS214 to add surveillance (i before e except after c? WTH?) station to run my two Foscam's that currently only have SD card storage. My 6TB of storage is almost gone, so I need to expand. One issue is that I have my two 3TB in Raid 0 and I'd like to change that to probably SHR. In order to maintain the data on the Raid array, provide additional space and switch to a redundant and safer storage technique, how many drives will I need? I'd like to have a Raid Array that can hot-swap failed drives, preferably. So if 1 of the drives fail, and I can replace it without losing the data. I'd also like to be able to systematically upgrade the drives in the future as storage sizes increase.

Can this be done with only 4 drives, or am I going to need to get a much larger setup with expansion unit capabilities? Is anybody familiar enough with the various Synology devices to give advice?

Thanks

Oh, and I'd like the fans to be quiet as well.

 

[Malo]

Well a mirror gives you redundancy, so 2 drives are all that's needed. And your NAS is only 2 bay anyway?

My recommendation is to get a 5 bay and put 3 drives in it SHR, allowing you to expand easily. SHR is handy when your drives aren't identical size.

I have a DS1513+ which is 5-bay and can be expanded with additional 5-bay addon units that are mostly dumb units with the electrics to control and hot-swap the drives.

 

[Davros]

To hijack the thread -

To doubly hijack the thread
colicab wernt you the one who put 6 ssd's in a striped array ?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Well a mirror gives you redundancy, so 2 drives are all that's needed. And your NAS is only 2 bay anyway?

My recommendation is to get a 5 bay and put 3 drives in it SHR, allowing you to expand easily. SHR is handy when your drives aren't identical size.

I have a DS1513+ which is 5-bay and can be expanded with additional 5-bay addon units that are mostly dumb units with the electrics to control and hot-swap the drives.

Yeah, current NAS is 2 bay. Was looking at the DS1515+ which has come down a bit in price, I imagine because the DS1517 is on its way soon. I think my best bet is to get an external 3.0 6TB drive and backup my NAS, create the new SHR 5 disk array on the DS1515+ and then transfer the backed up data onto the new NAS?

With SHR, I can add new drives whenever I want and they can be of varying size? Trying to figure out how to not have both an used 6TB USB drive and a DS214 lying around doing nothing helpful after I migrated all the data to the DS1515+ as described ahead.

edit - Hmm... I guess what I need is a HDD docking station that can handle a 6TB drive and allow me to transfer over USB3.0 using the Synology backup feature. Then, I can just set up the DS1515+ with the old drives in SHR, transfer the data and then install the 6TB drive into the DS1515+. It won't give me any extra space until I add an additional 6TB drive, but then I'd have 12TB of storage with a free drive.

Seems like the way to go. Anybody got any reasons not? Anybody got any good HDD Docks that would do the job?

To doubly hijack the thread

No! Bad Davros! That's a bad Davros!

 

[Malo]

edit - Hmm... I guess what I need is a HDD docking station that can handle a 6TB drive and allow me to transfer over USB3.0 using the Synology backup feature. Then, I can just set up the DS1515+ with the old drives in SHR, transfer the data and then install the 6TB drive into the DS1515+. It won't give me any extra space until I add an additional 6TB drive, but then I'd have 12TB of storage with a free drive.

Yes that's exactly what you want to do.

SHR works in blocks of space instead of whole drives and combines parity redundancy as well so you should end up with extra space still.