Advice on Network attached Storage??

Only high end Synology units support BTRFS. Generally only models with a + in the model as BTRFS requires more cpu horsepower than SHR/EXT4.

But yes, one nice thing about Synology is that if you want to replace the unit or upgrade or whatever, you can generally just pull the drives, shove them into a new chassis and be back up and running in no time.

At some point, I’ll probably upgrade to a 12bay unit with BTRFS and 10gb ethernet…

That’s another thing I forgot to mention. If there’s any RAID, LVM, or BTRFS pools, windows access is a big fat “nope.” I’ve never had synology, so I don’t know what their default configuration is, or how much flexibility you have in configuring the low-level disk layouts.

This has really been the most needlessly complicated, expensive, time consuming setup I’ve done in a log time. Basically the only real advantage to this system is that you can pool data and access it from multi PCs. That said, its the function I needed more than anything! To overcome the drive compatibility issue of the NAS I made a backup to an 8TB USB drive that I will just update twice a year when do the SSDs with my programs on them. That way if the NAS dies I still have instant access to the data.
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I appreciate you guys so much. I cant say enough about the level of expertise, and willingness to help others that you all continuously show. Thank you.

Windows tends to be forgiving meaning it won’t delete what it does not copy. The files are likely there somewhere.

I have just about got this all set, but I am wondering, do you guys know how (or if its even possible) to make the second drive in the NAS to incremental copies of the data? Basically when I make an update to an XLS spreadsheet in drive A, the information gets copied to B. But not by making a whole new copy of the entire drive and then deleting the old copy.

I believe this is called a “snapshot” and as far as I know it is possible but I haven’t personally messed with it.

I think that in a 2 bay NAS the drives are typically mirrored (1:1 copy). This means that your storage is only 1/2 the total capacity of 2 drives, but the upside is that if you loose one you shouldn’t loose any data. “RAID is not a backup” is the mantra we repeat in IT.

There may be some NAS manufacturers that provide that option in their software, but I am not aware of any that do. Incremental backups are great for saving space, but you have to have the full backup file + any incrementals to restore the file if something went bad, so that would defeat the benefit of your redundant disk.

If you are wanting file versioning/history for your files so you can go back to a specific version (maybe you make a bad edit and then need the old file?) that is a feature built into windows.

How to set up file history in Windows

My NAS is setup for Raid 1(mirroring). Not really incremental but I just want as little interaction as possible with the NAS so I just leave it as a mirror setup.

I am also wondering if its normal for it to constantly be making noise. It sounds like a little coffee pot under the bench, which I would expect if any files were being accessed, but it basically never shuts up. It seems like when I first got it that it would shut up after a while, so I am wondering if I did something to it. It does have a task manager but I cant get it to give me an “end task” option.

The noise is normal, some hard drives make (a lot) more noise than others, so you may or may not hear the idle noises. But yes noisy drives will sound like you describe.

It also sounds like you want to schedule regular snapshots if you want to keep old versions of files for a while. This is a very good idea to help protect against ransomware. I try to schedule snapshots for 2-3 times a week, and keep at least a months worth. This is because if you get ransomware you may not know it for a week or two, it slowly encrypts your files in the background.

It may be some “housekeeping” of some sort in the background (indexing, defragging, who knows).

When I’d offload dozens of gigamegs of data onto a NAS, it’d go from pretty uneventful and quiescent before, to the flurry of activity when it’s actually doing the copying, and then even when it’s over it’d keep bonking away in the background.

If even let it set a day or more, so I could turn it off when it was all done with everything, but it’d just keep going. Unmount, turn off., etc., then back on, and everything’s okay, nothing wrong. It could take a long while for it to “catch up” and be done.

I don’t know if you noticed it but that “System Partition Failed” message might be worth investigating. You should go into the Storage Manager and see if the error is for one of your hard disks.

Yeah, that looks to be a possible source of trouble if not the sound too. Did you use new HDDs in the NAS? Synology should have some disk tools that might be able to fix the disk in question if it isn’t a physical issue.

Yikes! I ended up going with the ASUS RT-AX89X router and the speed and coverage is amazing. I tried to connect a drive to create an FTP/Samba/Cloud but realized that it needed to be formatted NTFS

I’m still going to go with my original plan of getting a NAS with a 10 gig SFP/copper port

Hey all, I seem to be having some trouble with my Synology NAS. It seems EVERYTHING, updates, security settings, passwords all hinge on the drive in bay one. I setup two factor authentication and it works fine with drive one installed in bay one, but if that drive is not installed the system fails. If I put new drives into the NAS, (including one that was in the NAS when I setup two factor) without the drive that was in bay one installed I get locked out. It still asks for two factor, but when I put in the code (correctly) it fails every time. Not only that the emergency backup codes (like the ones you can have emailed) do not work either.

Does anyone know why this might be or how to fix it? I cant really call the spare drives a “backup” if drive one has to be in tact and installed for the other drives to be accessible.

You’ll probably find a lot more knowledgable synology users at the synology community site than here.

I’ll be interested to hear how this turns out. I’m thinking of getting a synology myself and plugging it into the 10 gig port on my new ASUS router

P.s. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as ass flashlights. For proctologists? http://assflashlights.com/

10G port probably won’t help much…i’ve got a DS420+ here and it has 1G ports

Ahh… I’m not even sure what I’ll do with them yet. I’ll probably get a multiport 10g switch and plug each of the CAT 8’s into it. I’d like to have 10 gig between my network room and my office for sure

Try Syncthing, I used it before and it works great