Useful advice for my Synology D214SE. 😊 I have a 1x 2 TB & a 1x 1 TB HDD inside, but under SHR I can only use 1 TB of usable space. So I'm going to follow your example & get that full 3 TB of usable space. 😏
Hi David Don’t forget that RAID is used to protect your data should a drive in your NAS fail. So math is used to divide the data you have across the drives you have installed. Purely from a cost point of view you need to be careful with SHR and RAID, particularly if you only have a 2 bay NAS. I have found that as a general rule. When dealing with drives for a RAID, you should pair drives of the same size. This is so that you can minimise the chance of wasting hard drive space. A tip I have found useful when I’m looking to increase my storage capacity. Is to use Synology’s RAID Calculator first - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator?hdds= You can see what I mean, if you try using the RAID calculator and add 2Tb drives to the first two bays. This will create an SHR of 2Tb that has 2Tb of protection. However, if you replace one of the 2Tb drives with a 3Tb drive. You will have the same amount of storage space and protection, but 1Tb will remain unused. While this may not be a problem for you, I thought it best to let you know this before you purchase your replacement Hard drive.
Hi Thanks for this great series. I am a novice home user.I have a 2 bay DS218 with 2x 1.5Tb drives and have expanded that with 6Tb WDD drive connected by USB. I have tried to configure this as per your set up but the Diskstation still shows only the 1.5Tb Volume 1. It looks as though when you setup your media server on the USB drive this is Volume2 but I am unable to see how this is done. The option to create a new volume in Storage manager is greyed out. Please can you advise me how to have Volume 2 on the USB drive so this can be used as media server as per your setup.Thanks
A bad sector is where a tiny part of a hard drive appears to be defective as it no longer responds to read/write requests. So remapping is simply when a hard drive moves data to a different part of a hard drive that is not damaged.
Excellent instruction!!! However, this one confused me. The shared folders you created were in volume 1. Now volume 2 exists for your media. If you were to populate the public folder created in volume 1, for example, with images and video where does it reside? Volume 1 or volume 2? If you create a folder for media in volume 2 will you have to go back and add permissions for the users to access? Sorry if this sounds like it's coming from a newby. I am! Thanks.
Not a problem as you have made be realise that by Synology’s use of the term Volume, it could actually be a little confusing. So in MacOS the Macintosh HD is called a Volume, and refers to the hard drive of your computer. However on a Synology NAS, a Volume should be thought of as a pool of storage that can be either a single hard drive, or multiple hard drives grouped together to create a larger storage pool. In my example I have a single hard drive which I have called Volume 1. This is where the operating system, my network shares and most of the packages (applications) are installed. However as I want my NAS to act as a media server, I have also created a second Volume which consists of multiple hard drives grouped together to create a larger storage pool for my media files. There are three main reasons why I have done this. The first is that with the operating system on my NAS not being part of a RAID (multiple HD’s grouped together), my NAS should perform a little bit faster. The second relates to RAID itself, which if you apply best practise should consist of matching hard drives. So for example ideally you would use two 4TB hard drives, to create a 4TB RAID volume as that will provide redundancy in the event of a hard drive failure. As I’ m using a 2TB and a 3TB hard drive, if I was to use RAID 1, because of the way RAID works I would only have a 2TB Volume. So I used RAID 0 to mash the two mis-sized drives together to create a 5TB Volume. The final reason relates to the way Video, Audio and Photo Station install onto a Volume. When you install any of these applications, they will automatically create a Video, Audio and Photo folder into the same Volume that the package was installed onto. These folders will then act as a repository for the library of files that each specific application will be linked to. However, as the Video Audio and Photo folders can’t be moved once the application has been installed, we will have needed to have planned in advance our Volumes and storage spaces. So because media files will take up more storage space, we install the Video Audio and Photo Station applications onto Volume 2. As you will see in future videos, as the Video, Photo and Audio network shares will have already been created, we will simply need to give our users access permissions to those folders in order for them to upload, download or delete files. So returning to your queries, if you placed images and videos in your Public folder they would also reside in Volume 1. So if you were to create a folder called Media in Volume 2, because that folder will be new, in order for anyone to see its contents, you will need to set access permissions to your Media folder. However, if you plan to use Video, Audio and Photo Station you would not create a folder called Media on Volume 2, as those applications would not see the contents of the Media folder. Sorry I made this confusing, I hope this clears things up.
I recently decided to return my DS418Play as with SHR the folder hierarchy was copying over but not the files. Has anyone else had this? I was on mac on the latest version of DSM. Not sure if it was a DSM, SHR or mac with Synology issue. Frustrating to say the least.
Hi there, great series. Could you have all 4 drives in the NAS server combined into one giant storage volume including the original/existing drive with the DSM? Or would it make more sense to use a smaller HDD dedicated to the OS in your first slot and use the remaining 3 for a separate storage RAID array? Would love to be able to max all 4 slots with storage in a RAID 0 to get the most amount I can from the server, and then backup with an entirely separate device.
A single volume of drives is the more traditional way to go. However, I personally use a small HDD or SSD in the first slot, with the other slots used for a single volume RAID. Why I do this, is based on a mixture of un-substantiated personal logic and how old school Windows server engineers configure servers. Basically, a Windows engineer would use a smaller HD to install the OS, then create a RAID for the other drives. The thinking being that because RAID is slower, it would adversely effect the performance of the OS. While I suspect that the OS on a Synology NAS is installed in a different way to a Windows server. - community.synology.com/enu/forum/17/post/28126 I like the idea of having a drive dedicated to the installation of the OS, applications, and their databases being installed on a faster drive to boost the performance of my NAS. However, as you seem to be aware of the implications to using RAID 0. There is nothing to stop you from creating a single RAID 0 volume. Just make sure that you have a good backup and have practised in a full system restore (I would recommend documenting the process). Hope this help answer your query.
I recently installed a second 16 TB HD to use as SHR. I had followed your videos for setup of my Synology DS918+. My storage pool size on Volume 1 has not change but now "without data protection message" that appeared when I only had 1 drive has changed to "with data protection for 1-drive fault tolerance.) Does this mean that SHR is now active? Is there anything else I need to do?
I have a 2tb and i just bought a 12tb and i went through the expending syncing process which took a bit. I put it in the same volume but the storage hasnt shown that it was expended nor do i get any options to expend using the new HDD. Any idea whats going on? I have used up all but .5tb on my 2tb so i need to figure this out
I think that SHR or RAID is using your 12tb hard drive to simply act as redundancy for your 2tb drive. If you use the Synology Raid calculator - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator - you can see what I mean. If we add 2Tb into the first bay and 12Tb into the second. Both SHR and RAID 1 will only use 2Tb of your 12Tb drive and leave 10tb unused. This is simply the way redundancy works, and from your description what has happened. As I think your intension was to use Raid 0, as that would allow you to combine the 2tb and 12tb hard drives into a single 14 tb volume. However RAID 0 would give you no redundancy and because you only have a 2 bay NAS it would be very difficult to retrospectively create RAID 0. So I think you only really have two options. *** Important **** Please note that I have not tried any of the things I’m about to suggest. So if you decide to give any of these suggestions a try. Make sure that you backup all of the data on your NAS first. You really don’t what to lose anything important. ******************* Suggestion one - If you are using SHR you could buy a second 12 Tb hard drive and replace the 2tb hard drive. As long as your NAS is using SHR, and redundancy is in place, you should be able to swap out the 2Tb drive and create a single 12Tb Volume. Suggestion two - This option is the one I would probably use if I were in your situation. What you are looking to do, is separate the two drives so they are two separate volumes. This will mean that you will have a 2Tb Volume where you will have DSM and applications such as Hyper backup, Web Station, VPN Server etc. Then you will have a 12Tb Volume were you would have full access to all of its storage capacity to store your documents, video, photo and music files. In order to get this option to work correctly, you will need to uninstall Video, Audio and Photo Station (if you are using them) and then reinstall them to the 12Tb Volume. That way the Video, Photo and Music folders will be re-created on the 12Tb Volume rather than being on the 2Tb volume. The only downside to this option is that you will have no data redundancy. However, as long as you make regular backups of your data this should not be a major issue. Sorry I cant be of more help, and please let us know what you decide to do and how you got on.
Yes, both SHR and RAID are designed to allow you to add new drives to an existing volume without the loss of folders or data. However, I would recommend that you make a backup of your data before you start trying to expand a volume.
Hello there, I am "new" or rather noob with NAS :). Have a 218 (2 slots!) , was installed one 4TB HDD for a year ago, everything went fine, but there is no more free place on it. I would like the extend the storage capacity, so I bought the same winchester. I tried to add the secound one, they are in SHR, but I do not see it as a storage. Now I am surfing the net to find a solution. Is there any solution where I do not need to erease everything from HDD 1, to be able add HDD 2 and make a RAID 0?
Unfortunately, because you are using a NAS with only 2 HD slots that are using SHR you will not be able to easily expand your total storage to 8TB. Instead your NAS will use the second 4TB drive to create redundancy to protect your data. You can see what I mean if you take a look at the Synology RAID Calculator - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4%20TB This leaves you with three options. The first would be to replace your NAS with a newer 4 bay model, and then purchase additional HD’s to create a configuration (4TB 4TB 8TB 8TB) that would give you more storage within the confines of SHR. Alternatively, you could fit your second hard drive to your existing NAS, but rather than add your hard drive to your existing Volume, create a new volume. This would give you two 4Tb volumes, but a total storage capacity of 8TB on your NAS. You would then move a couple of network share folders from one Volume to the other to free up space. To find out how to move network share please take a look at this Willie Howe video - ua-cam.com/video/pe6w0jGxiOU/v-deo.html The problem with this option will be if you have a network share for something like a movie library. Due to the size of video files, movie libraries tend to rapidly grow. So moving a 3Tb network movie share to a 4Tb drive would only offer a short term fix to your problem. The only other option I can think of is a combination of the previous options. So if you were to purchase an 8TB External USB HD and connect that to your NAS. You could use the external HD to add 8TB of storage to your NAS. Then by moving your largest network shares over to the external HD you would give yourself more storage space. Sorry, I can’t think of any better solutions. Maybe someone else might have another alternative?
I know backing up is important. But if you have a Synology and you backup in the cloud. What's the point of having a Synology then? I can use the cloud solution only.
There are many reasons/advantages to using a NAS over cloud storage. However, I will offer what I think are the three most compelling. Firstly a NAS is much more than just a backup device, it can host websites, act as a VPN server, be a media server, provide file,VM, or docker services, to name just a few of the things it can do. Secondly, cloud storage is a very expensive option when you start to scale it up. For example while 2Tb of Google Drive cloud storage for £79 a year may seem like a reasonable deal. If you calculate its cost over a five year period. Using cloud storage will cost you roughly £365. storage (on Amazon), it is initially more expensive at roughly Finally, you have to question how private cloud storage is? If you are using a NAS, you know that no one else is farming, or giving secondary groups (ie governments or corporations) unauthorised access to your data.
@@mydoodads thanks for your reply. I actually meant: people advise to have a NAS + cloud storage as backup. It is advised to have both as data redundancy. But as you say, a NAS can offer lot more.
@@ozkanb Apologies, I understand and can see you point. I think the amount of Data redundancy really does come down to how paranoid you are about losing data.
QQ: I only had a 2 TB HDD (let's call it HDD1) when I first had the Synology. After few weeks, I bought a 4TB HDD (let's call it HDD2). Is it possible for me to set the HDD2 in such a way that the first 2TB will be an exact replica of HDD1? The second part of HDD2 (the last 2TB) I want to use for media - like movies n series that I do not need a backup for. Please answer me... I do not want a 6TB without backup. A quick note, I am planning to update the HDD1 to another 4TB soon... But am not sure if I have to transfer ALL of the Data all over again.
I tried this solution: (www.synology.com/tr-tr/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/Without_data_protection) SHR consisting of only one drive Add another drive to an SHR storage pool consisting of only one drive. Insert a new drive in your Synology NAS.1 Go to Storage Manager > Storage Pool and select the single-drive SHR storage pool. Click Action and select Add Drive from the drop-down menu..........(THIS 'ADD DRIVE' IS NOT ENABLED.) Select the newly inserted drive to add to the storage pool.2 Click Next. Follow the wizard to finish.
Just installed a new 6TB into a DS218. When I got to the part asking which raid I wanted I chose Raid 0 as this is the back up from 2 drives plugged into imac. However I clicked next, the button (Next) dimmed slightly and stuck there, 10 minutes, nothing... Tried going backwards to make sure everything was OK, and as soon as I chose Raid 0 the next button was still greyed out. Have had to go with the JBOD option. Also before the end I was asked if Btrfs or EX4 ! Which you seemed to jump past ! Had to google that one... Went with EX4. Any ideas on the next button ? It has now created the volume and is running a parity consistency check. Thanks in advance
@@mydoodads No, the re is a 4TB drive already installed. Now got a 6TB and put it in slot 2. Following instructions as above. What I want is a 10TB (minus the os etc) drive. Seems to be working as jbod, now got 2 volumes, however after 4 hours it is 45% verifying drive 2. Both drives are set to Btrfs, however drive 1 is showing as SHR & Vol 2 as JBOD. Have I set Volume 1 up wrong ? Another thing I have just seen is three messages telling me my norton antivirus has expired ! I don't have Norton antivirus ! & a fourth message telling me my mac is infected ! Just run a quick malware scan which came back OK so now running a full virus check. Don't know if this is anything to do with the nas, but the messages were there over the DSM page... & never seen them before ! Thanks for the quick reply, Normski
@@normski4ash Hi Normski Let’s start with your Mac, as the anti-virus message you are receiving is probably a little worrying. From your description it sounds like, rather than a virus or malware you have some sort of web based code stored in the cache of your browser that displays a popup window that reports you have a virus. I also have come across something similar, particularly when I have had to trawl through forums to find out more information on a topic. As I don’t actually use antivirus on my Mac, I knew that any antivirus warning messages I received was false. The secret is not to click on a link to have that false antivirus message clean the virus. Instead, within Safari I simply cleared its cache. This is so that the web based code that displays the message is deleted. Macworld article on clearing MacOS Cache - www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/clear-safari-cache-3496193/ Thanks for the additional info, it really helped me to understand your setup. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can be of much help. You see the scenario you are describing is not something I have ever tried to do myself, as I have never tried to implement RAID on a two bay NAS. Instead, I have always presumed, that the drive with SHR can’t be converted to RAID, as it contains the operating System (DSM) which happens to be controlling RAID or SHR on the NAS. So I have always purchased NAS devices with 4 or more HD bays. This is so that I can create a second volume, which is separate to the volume that has DSM installed on it. That way I have the flexibility to use a number of different options. For example, if I add a drive to the second bay, I can use SHR to provide data redundancy to the data stored on the drive in the first bay. If I add additional drives to the other bays. SHR will automatically, increase the size of my volume. Alternatively, as seen in the video, if I wanted to use RAID 0. I would fit two drives to bays 2 and 3 then create a second volume that combines the two drives using RAID 0. That way because I have created two Volumes, when I add the two together the total storage within both Volumes will be equal to the capacity of all the hard drives fitted to my NAS. However, please take my explaination with a pinch of salt as I really don’t know if its correct, and I can find no corroborating information. Just for reference, both Btrfs and Ext4, are file systems used by Linux. Fat32 or APFS would be the equivalent on PC and Mac. Btrfs has more functions than Ext4, such as fault tolerance and repair, but Ext4 tends to be used more often. This is because Ext4 has been around for longer, so it’s more trusted. I hope this long response, offers some assistance with your queries.
@@mydoodads Again thanks for the rapid reply. Been searching Google and it seems it is nothing to do with the nas or virus. Somewhere in google notifications seems to have hooked me up to rednews 7. I have cleared the browsing data & altered a few things in notifications, and so far, touch wood, no more messages. Also found a Synology community, so have logged the question with them. The way I read the adverts was Raid 1 so that 1 backed up to 2 & raid 0 so they appeared as 2 drives. Why would you want raid 1 with only 1 drive in the nas ? so putting one drive in and loading the DSM shouldn't make it Raid 1. Surely the raid options should only appear when re drives (depending on the model of nas / how many bays)... Will wait see if the community get back to me, will copy and paste here for you if they come up with any ideas, may be of use to someone else somewhere down the line. Again Thnx, Normski
Useful advice for my Synology D214SE. 😊
I have a 1x 2 TB & a 1x 1 TB HDD inside, but under SHR I can only use 1 TB of usable space. So I'm going to follow your example & get that full 3 TB of usable space. 😏
Hi David
Don’t forget that RAID is used to protect your data should a drive in your NAS fail. So math is used to divide the data you have across the drives you have installed.
Purely from a cost point of view you need to be careful with SHR and RAID, particularly if you only have a 2 bay NAS.
I have found that as a general rule. When dealing with drives for a RAID, you should pair drives of the same size. This is so that you can minimise the chance of wasting hard drive space.
A tip I have found useful when I’m looking to increase my storage capacity. Is to use Synology’s RAID Calculator first - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=
You can see what I mean, if you try using the RAID calculator and add 2Tb drives to the first two bays. This will create an SHR of 2Tb that has 2Tb of protection. However, if you replace one of the 2Tb drives with a 3Tb drive. You will have the same amount of storage space and protection, but 1Tb will remain unused.
While this may not be a problem for you, I thought it best to let you know this before you purchase your replacement Hard drive.
Hi Thanks for this great series. I am a novice home user.I have a 2 bay DS218 with 2x 1.5Tb drives and have expanded that with 6Tb WDD drive connected by USB. I have tried to configure this as per your set up but the Diskstation still shows only the 1.5Tb Volume 1. It looks as though when you setup your media server on the USB drive this is Volume2 but I am unable to see how this is done. The option to create a new volume in Storage manager is greyed out. Please can you advise me how to have Volume 2 on the USB drive so this can be used as media server as per your setup.Thanks
FYI: the system 'DSM' is installed on each new disk. If disk1 fail, this NAS can still boot
These are great videos !!!!
Maybe a dumb question, but what exactly does it mean for bad sectors to be remapped?
A bad sector is where a tiny part of a hard drive appears to be defective as it no longer responds to read/write requests.
So remapping is simply when a hard drive moves data to a different part of a hard drive that is not damaged.
Excellent instruction!!! However, this one confused me. The shared folders you created were in volume 1. Now volume 2 exists for your media. If you were to populate the public folder created in volume 1, for example, with images and video where does it reside? Volume 1 or volume 2? If you create a folder for media in volume 2 will you have to go back and add permissions for the users to access? Sorry if this sounds like it's coming from a newby. I am! Thanks.
Not a problem as you have made be realise that by Synology’s use of the term Volume, it could actually be a little confusing.
So in MacOS the Macintosh HD is called a Volume, and refers to the hard drive of your computer. However on a Synology NAS, a Volume should be thought of as a pool of storage that can be either a single hard drive, or multiple hard drives grouped together to create a larger storage pool.
In my example I have a single hard drive which I have called Volume 1. This is where the operating system, my network shares and most of the packages (applications) are installed. However as I want my NAS to act as a media server, I have also created a second Volume which consists of multiple hard drives grouped together to create a larger storage pool for my media files.
There are three main reasons why I have done this. The first is that with the operating system on my NAS not being part of a RAID (multiple HD’s grouped together), my NAS should perform a little bit faster.
The second relates to RAID itself, which if you apply best practise should consist of matching hard drives. So for example ideally you would use two 4TB hard drives, to create a 4TB RAID volume as that will provide redundancy in the event of a hard drive failure. As I’ m using a 2TB and a 3TB hard drive, if I was to use RAID 1, because of the way RAID works I would only have a 2TB Volume. So I used RAID 0 to mash the two mis-sized drives together to create a 5TB Volume.
The final reason relates to the way Video, Audio and Photo Station install onto a Volume. When you install any of these applications, they will automatically create a Video, Audio and Photo folder into the same Volume that the package was installed onto. These folders will then act as a repository for the library of files that each specific application will be linked to. However, as the Video Audio and Photo folders can’t be moved once the application has been installed, we will have needed to have planned in advance our Volumes and storage spaces. So because media files will take up more storage space, we install the Video Audio and Photo Station applications onto Volume 2.
As you will see in future videos, as the Video, Photo and Audio network shares will have already been created, we will simply need to give our users access permissions to those folders in order for them to upload, download or delete files.
So returning to your queries, if you placed images and videos in your Public folder they would also reside in Volume 1. So if you were to create a folder called Media in Volume 2, because that folder will be new, in order for anyone to see its contents, you will need to set access permissions to your Media folder. However, if you plan to use Video, Audio and Photo Station you would not create a folder called Media on Volume 2, as those applications would not see the contents of the Media folder.
Sorry I made this confusing, I hope this clears things up.
Thank you so much!
I recently decided to return my DS418Play as with SHR the folder hierarchy was copying over but not the files. Has anyone else had this? I was on mac on the latest version of DSM. Not sure if it was a DSM, SHR or mac with Synology issue. Frustrating to say the least.
Hi there, great series. Could you have all 4 drives in the NAS server combined into one giant storage volume including the original/existing drive with the DSM? Or would it make more sense to use a smaller HDD dedicated to the OS in your first slot and use the remaining 3 for a separate storage RAID array? Would love to be able to max all 4 slots with storage in a RAID 0 to get the most amount I can from the server, and then backup with an entirely separate device.
A single volume of drives is the more traditional way to go. However, I personally use a small HDD or SSD in the first slot, with the other slots used for a single volume RAID.
Why I do this, is based on a mixture of un-substantiated personal logic and how old school Windows server engineers configure servers.
Basically, a Windows engineer would use a smaller HD to install the OS, then create a RAID for the other drives. The thinking being that because RAID is slower, it would adversely effect the performance of the OS.
While I suspect that the OS on a Synology NAS is installed in a different way to a Windows server. - community.synology.com/enu/forum/17/post/28126 I like the idea of having a drive dedicated to the installation of the OS, applications, and their databases being installed on a faster drive to boost the performance of my NAS.
However, as you seem to be aware of the implications to using RAID 0. There is nothing to stop you from creating a single RAID 0 volume. Just make sure that you have a good backup and have practised in a full system restore (I would recommend documenting the process).
Hope this help answer your query.
@@mydoodads most certainly did, thanks so much. Figured that'd be the case but wanted a second, more professional opinion. Cheers!
I recently installed a second 16 TB HD to use as SHR. I had followed your videos for setup of my Synology DS918+. My storage pool size on Volume 1 has not change but now "without data protection message" that appeared when I only had 1 drive has changed to "with data protection for 1-drive fault tolerance.) Does this mean that SHR is now active? Is there anything else I need to do?
It s now active
I have a 2tb and i just bought a 12tb and i went through the expending syncing process which took a bit. I put it in the same volume but the storage hasnt shown that it was expended nor do i get any options to expend using the new HDD. Any idea whats going on? I have used up all but .5tb on my 2tb so i need to figure this out
I think that SHR or RAID is using your 12tb hard drive to simply act as redundancy for your 2tb drive. If you use the Synology Raid calculator - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator - you can see what I mean.
If we add 2Tb into the first bay and 12Tb into the second. Both SHR and RAID 1 will only use 2Tb of your 12Tb drive and leave 10tb unused. This is simply the way redundancy works, and from your description what has happened.
As I think your intension was to use Raid 0, as that would allow you to combine the 2tb and 12tb hard drives into a single 14 tb volume. However RAID 0 would give you no redundancy and because you only have a 2 bay NAS it would be very difficult to retrospectively create RAID 0. So I think you only really have two options.
*** Important ****
Please note that I have not tried any of the things I’m about to suggest. So if you decide to give any of these suggestions a try. Make sure that you backup all of the data on your NAS first. You really don’t what to lose anything important.
*******************
Suggestion one - If you are using SHR you could buy a second 12 Tb hard drive and replace the 2tb hard drive. As long as your NAS is using SHR, and redundancy is in place, you should be able to swap out the 2Tb drive and create a single 12Tb Volume.
Suggestion two - This option is the one I would probably use if I were in your situation. What you are looking to do, is separate the two drives so they are two separate volumes. This will mean that you will have a 2Tb Volume where you will have DSM and applications such as Hyper backup, Web Station, VPN Server etc. Then you will have a 12Tb Volume were you would have full access to all of its storage capacity to store your documents, video, photo and music files.
In order to get this option to work correctly, you will need to uninstall Video, Audio and Photo Station (if you are using them) and then reinstall them to the 12Tb Volume. That way the Video, Photo and Music folders will be re-created on the 12Tb Volume rather than being on the 2Tb volume.
The only downside to this option is that you will have no data redundancy. However, as long as you make regular backups of your data this should not be a major issue.
Sorry I cant be of more help, and please let us know what you decide to do and how you got on.
Could you add new drives to the existing volume/pool without losing the folders/data already there?
Yes, both SHR and RAID are designed to allow you to add new drives to an existing volume without the loss of folders or data.
However, I would recommend that you make a backup of your data before you start trying to expand a volume.
Thanks.....could it be done with JBOD as well?
@@dnetech5464 Sorry thats something I have never used as JBOD does not offer redundancy like SHR and most versions of RAID.
Hello there, I am "new" or rather noob with NAS :). Have a 218 (2 slots!) , was installed one 4TB HDD for a year ago, everything went fine, but there is no more free place on it. I would like the extend the storage capacity, so I bought the same winchester. I tried to add the secound one, they are in SHR, but I do not see it as a storage. Now I am surfing the net to find a solution. Is there any solution where I do not need to erease everything from HDD 1, to be able add HDD 2 and make a RAID 0?
Unfortunately, because you are using a NAS with only 2 HD slots that are using SHR you will not be able to easily expand your total storage to 8TB. Instead your NAS will use the second 4TB drive to create redundancy to protect your data.
You can see what I mean if you take a look at the Synology RAID Calculator - www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=4%20TB
This leaves you with three options. The first would be to replace your NAS with a newer 4 bay model, and then purchase additional HD’s to create a configuration (4TB 4TB 8TB 8TB) that would give you more storage within the confines of SHR.
Alternatively, you could fit your second hard drive to your existing NAS, but rather than add your hard drive to your existing Volume, create a new volume. This would give you two 4Tb volumes, but a total storage capacity of 8TB on your NAS.
You would then move a couple of network share folders from one Volume to the other to free up space. To find out how to move network share please take a look at this Willie Howe video - ua-cam.com/video/pe6w0jGxiOU/v-deo.html
The problem with this option will be if you have a network share for something like a movie library. Due to the size of video files, movie libraries tend to rapidly grow. So moving a 3Tb network movie share to a 4Tb drive would only offer a short term fix to your problem.
The only other option I can think of is a combination of the previous options. So if you were to purchase an 8TB External USB HD and connect that to your NAS. You could use the external HD to add 8TB of storage to your NAS. Then by moving your largest network shares over to the external HD you would give yourself more storage space.
Sorry, I can’t think of any better solutions. Maybe someone else might have another alternative?
I know backing up is important. But if you have a Synology and you backup in the cloud. What's the point of having a Synology then? I can use the cloud solution only.
There are many reasons/advantages to using a NAS over cloud storage. However, I will offer what I think are the three most compelling.
Firstly a NAS is much more than just a backup device, it can host websites, act as a VPN server, be a media server, provide file,VM, or docker services, to name just a few of the things it can do.
Secondly, cloud storage is a very expensive option when you start to scale it up. For example while 2Tb of Google Drive cloud storage for £79 a year may seem like a reasonable deal. If you calculate its cost over a five year period. Using cloud storage will cost you roughly £365.
storage (on Amazon), it is initially more expensive at roughly
Finally, you have to question how private cloud storage is? If you are using a NAS, you know that no one else is farming, or giving secondary groups (ie governments or corporations) unauthorised access to your data.
@@mydoodads thanks for your reply. I actually meant: people advise to have a NAS + cloud storage as backup. It is advised to have both as data redundancy. But as you say, a NAS can offer lot more.
@@ozkanb Apologies, I understand and can see you point.
I think the amount of Data redundancy really does come down to how paranoid you are about losing data.
QQ: I only had a 2 TB HDD (let's call it HDD1) when I first had the Synology. After few weeks, I bought a 4TB HDD (let's call it HDD2).
Is it possible for me to set the HDD2 in such a way that the first 2TB will be an exact replica of HDD1? The second part of HDD2 (the last 2TB) I want to use for media - like movies n series that I do not need a backup for.
Please answer me... I do not want a 6TB without backup.
A quick note, I am planning to update the HDD1 to another 4TB soon... But am not sure if I have to transfer ALL of the Data all over again.
I tried this solution: (www.synology.com/tr-tr/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/Without_data_protection)
SHR consisting of only one drive
Add another drive to an SHR storage pool consisting of only one drive.
Insert a new drive in your Synology NAS.1
Go to Storage Manager > Storage Pool and select the single-drive SHR storage pool.
Click Action and select Add Drive from the drop-down menu..........(THIS 'ADD DRIVE' IS NOT ENABLED.)
Select the newly inserted drive to add to the storage pool.2 Click Next.
Follow the wizard to finish.
community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/141296
I have also posted about the same here. Please help!!
Just installed a new 6TB into a DS218. When I got to the part asking which raid I wanted I chose Raid 0 as this is the back up from 2 drives plugged into imac. However I clicked next, the button (Next) dimmed slightly and stuck there, 10 minutes, nothing...
Tried going backwards to make sure everything was OK, and as soon as I chose Raid 0 the next button was still greyed out. Have had to go with the JBOD option.
Also before the end I was asked if Btrfs or EX4 ! Which you seemed to jump past ! Had to google that one... Went with EX4.
Any ideas on the next button ? It has now created the volume and is running a parity consistency check.
Thanks in advance
Where you trying to use Raid 0 with an existing drive already fitted to your NAS, or just the single 6TB HD you added to your NAS?
@@mydoodads No, the re is a 4TB drive already installed. Now got a 6TB and put it in slot 2. Following instructions as above. What I want is a 10TB (minus the os etc) drive.
Seems to be working as jbod, now got 2 volumes, however after 4 hours it is 45% verifying drive 2.
Both drives are set to Btrfs, however drive 1 is showing as SHR & Vol 2 as JBOD.
Have I set Volume 1 up wrong ?
Another thing I have just seen is three messages telling me my norton antivirus has expired ! I don't have Norton antivirus ! & a fourth message telling me my mac is infected ! Just run a quick malware scan which came back OK so now running a full virus check. Don't know if this is anything to do with the nas, but the messages were there over the DSM page... & never seen them before !
Thanks for the quick reply, Normski
Still getting notifications that computer infected & Norton expired when nas powered on, power it down and they stop.
@@normski4ash Hi Normski
Let’s start with your Mac, as the anti-virus message you are receiving is probably a little worrying. From your description it sounds like, rather than a virus or malware you have some sort of web based code stored in the cache of your browser that displays a popup window that reports you have a virus.
I also have come across something similar, particularly when I have had to trawl through forums to find out more information on a topic.
As I don’t actually use antivirus on my Mac, I knew that any antivirus warning messages I received was false. The secret is not to click on a link to have that false antivirus message clean the virus. Instead, within Safari I simply cleared its cache. This is so that the web based code that displays the message is deleted.
Macworld article on clearing MacOS Cache - www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/clear-safari-cache-3496193/
Thanks for the additional info, it really helped me to understand your setup. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can be of much help. You see the scenario you are describing is not something I have ever tried to do myself, as I have never tried to implement RAID on a two bay NAS.
Instead, I have always presumed, that the drive with SHR can’t be converted to RAID, as it contains the operating System (DSM) which happens to be controlling RAID or SHR on the NAS.
So I have always purchased NAS devices with 4 or more HD bays. This is so that I can create a second volume, which is separate to the volume that has DSM installed on it. That way I have the flexibility to use a number of different options.
For example, if I add a drive to the second bay, I can use SHR to provide data redundancy to the data stored on the drive in the first bay. If I add additional drives to the other bays. SHR will automatically, increase the size of my volume.
Alternatively, as seen in the video, if I wanted to use RAID 0. I would fit two drives to bays 2 and 3 then create a second volume that combines the two drives using RAID 0.
That way because I have created two Volumes, when I add the two together the total storage within both Volumes will be equal to the capacity of all the hard drives fitted to my NAS.
However, please take my explaination with a pinch of salt as I really don’t know if its correct, and I can find no corroborating information.
Just for reference, both Btrfs and Ext4, are file systems used by Linux. Fat32 or APFS would be the equivalent on PC and Mac. Btrfs has more functions than Ext4, such as fault tolerance and repair, but Ext4 tends to be used more often. This is because Ext4 has been around for longer, so it’s more trusted.
I hope this long response, offers some assistance with your queries.
@@mydoodads Again thanks for the rapid reply. Been searching Google and it seems it is nothing to do with the nas or virus. Somewhere in google notifications seems to have hooked me up to rednews 7. I have cleared the browsing data & altered a few things in notifications, and so far, touch wood, no more messages.
Also found a Synology community, so have logged the question with them. The way I read the adverts was Raid 1 so that 1 backed up to 2 & raid 0 so they appeared as 2 drives. Why would you want raid 1 with only 1 drive in the nas ? so putting one drive in and loading the DSM shouldn't make it Raid 1. Surely the raid options should only appear when re drives (depending on the model of nas / how many bays)...
Will wait see if the community get back to me, will copy and paste here for you if they come up with any ideas, may be of use to someone else somewhere down the line.
Again Thnx, Normski
*FIRST!*
LOL. Never Ever use RAID 0 !!