Synology Nas Questions

Struxxffs · Mar 13, 2024

Lord Evermore said:
The RAID/SHR configuration would presumably be done first, then the array gets formatted with the chosen filesystem, even if the GUI makes it all "one-step". It doesn't sound like there IS any way within the system to make it use btrfs's own RAID functionality, since that would mean RAID1 or SHR are not used in the first place.

I don't think the performance difference is going to be noticeable for your use to need ext4 compared to the benefits of btrfs. If you're hitting it with THAT many cameras you should be getting more drives or using SSDs, and the LAN is going to be the limiter in any case.

You are right.

After looking at a video for setting up the DS224+ when you configure the storage pool you select the raid type.

Thank you.

rodalpho said:
Synology does not use btrfs's RAID functionality at all. It builds the RAID with mdadm then formats the filesystem btrfs.

Definitely use btrfs. I could regurgitate but Synology has a great page talking about it.

How Btrfs protects your company's data | Synology Inc.

The next-generation file system Btrfs ensures a high level of data integrity while taking advantage of flexible, efficient data protection and recovery tools. Btrfs is available on selected Synology NAS models.

www.synology.com

Thank you. I will go with the Btrfs partition format then.

Jeff3F said:
I am far, far out of my depth and figure Synology’s default setup is likely OK in the setting of being properly backed up (or else we’d all hear about it)…but there are lots of technical considerations. And there may be different recommendations for specialty applications (like camera recording which is different enough that there are specialized hard drives for that activity).

@Jim Salter wrote a front page piece on btrfs (Iink), and there is also a great albeit old thread here (link).

Thank you for the links and I will plan on having a back up solution.

Struxxffs · Mar 14, 2024

Lord Evermore said:
Since your switch supports VLANs, then you can at least work with the single switch (if there are enough ports) rather than needing to get a second switch just for the cameras. (Or just use two ports on that switch and a cheaper unmanaged switch for the cameras, if you don't have enough ports.) Just set up all the camera ports in a non-default VLAN (assuming your regular network is on the default) along with one port going the NAS's secondary port (or even just use the single main port on both VLANs), so everything is separated from your regular network. And maybe join the port your PC is on to allow you to log into the cameras themselves directly.

I have a Asus RT-AX3000 (The Model that does not support merlin firmware) and is it not vlan aware.

The managed switch does support vlans.

It seems in the router you can not configure devices to have no gateway.

When setting up the cameras, is that where you would be able to not assign the gateway?

Lord Evermore · Mar 14, 2024

Area51Freak said:
I have a Asus RT-AX3000 (The Model that does not support merlin firmware) and is it not vlan aware.

The managed switch does support vlans.

It seems in the router you can not configure devices to have no gateway.

When setting up the cameras, is that where you would be able to not assign the gateway?

You would need to set the camera's LAN configuration manually. Let them connect to the network normally and get IPs normally, then log into their web interfaces individually and set a static IP address (outside of the range that your router assigns by DHCP) with no gateway. Or if the Synology Surveillance Station allows you to configure their network settings, use that since it would be easier than the individual web interfaces.

The alternative would be to use another device for DHCP assignments on the network. There is likely an app for the Synology to do that. However it's probably a lot of more complicated setup to make the cameras be given IPs without a gateway but still give a gateway to other devices, and more for you to manage. Just using static IPs is a lot easier once it's set up, for a small network. But if you were doing VLANs, it wouldn't be as difficult since the router could continue to assign DHCP for the main VLAN and the Synology would only do it for the cameras.

Struxxffs · Mar 14, 2024

Lord Evermore said:
You would need to set the camera's LAN configuration manually. Let them connect to the network normally and get IPs normally, then log into their web interfaces individually and set a static IP address (outside of the range that your router assigns by DHCP) with no gateway. Or if the Synology Surveillance Station allows you to configure their network settings, use that since it would be easier than the individual web interfaces.

The alternative would be to use another device for DHCP assignments on the network. There is likely an app for the Synology to do that. However it's probably a lot of more complicated setup to make the cameras be given IPs without a gateway but still give a gateway to other devices, and more for you to manage. Just using static IPs is a lot easier once it's set up, for a small network. But if you were doing VLANs, it wouldn't be as difficult since the router could continue to assign DHCP for the main VLAN and the Synology would only do it for the cameras.

Thank you,

I will setup them up using the webcams built in portals then as that seems easiest.

hambone · Mar 16, 2024

Hey everyone, thought I'd jump in to this Synology thread rather than making a new one because I have a very easy question (for you guys!) But of course I don't want to screw things up on my own

I'm a NAS newb with a Synology DS220+ setup as RAID 1 mirrored pair of 6TB HDD drives with "data protection" on, and identified by the system as Shared Pool 1. My system runs Plex, backups 3 home computers, and we use it as a shared drive. All in it's only using 1TB of storage.

I have a 3rd identical HDD I'd like to swap in from time to time so I can keep a copy HDD offsite.

Is it as easy as just shutting down the system, swapping out the existing Disk 2 with the blank Disk 3, and turning the power back on?

And then later down the road when I want to swap out Disk 3 for Disk 2 (to bring it up to date) I can just do the same?

Many thanks sorry for the newb Qs.

hal_incandenza · Mar 16, 2024

hambone said:
Hey everyone, thought I'd jump in to this Synology thread rather than making a new one because I have a very easy question (for you guys!) But of course I don't want to screw things up on my own

I'm a NAS newb with a Synology DS220+ setup as RAID 1 mirrored pair of 6TB HDD drives with "data protection" on, and identified by the system as Shared Pool 1. My system runs Plex, backups 3 home computers, and we use it as a shared drive. All in it's only using 1TB of storage.

I have a 3rd identical HDD I'd like to swap in from time to time so I can keep a copy HDD offsite.

Is it as easy as just shutting down the system, swapping out the existing Disk 2 with the blank Disk 3, and turning the power back on?

And then later down the road when I want to swap out Disk 3 for Disk 2 (to bring it up to date) I can just do the same?

Many thanks sorry for the newb Qs.

It would be much easier/faster to simply put the 3rd HDD in an external USB case and then connect it occasionally to back up the NAS.

What you describe would require rebuilding the RAID, just do an incremental backup

hambone · Mar 16, 2024

hal_incandenza said:
It would be much easier/faster to simply put the 3rd HDD in an external USB case and then connect it occasionally to back up the NAS.

What you describe would require rebuilding the RAID, just do an incremental backup

Ah OK. For future reference, what RAID setup would facilitate that kind of slide-in slide-out hot swap?

continuum · Mar 16, 2024

hambone said:
For future reference, what RAID setup would facilitate that kind of slide-in slide-out hot swap?

None. By definition all would require a rebuild.

If you mean being able to remove one disk from the array and able to read it on its own, then a RAID1 has the best odds of that working by design. But that's only for a removed disk, to reintegrate it into the array would still require a rebuild.

Lord Evermore · Mar 16, 2024

continuum said:
to reintegrate it into the array would still require a rebuild.

And even for 1TB, that's a long period of time (several hours to a day depending on the speed that the NAS dedicates to it) during which your data is unprotected by the mirroring process because it's being rebuilt. If the "good" drive were to fail during the process, you'd still have the drive that you removed so that data would be safe, but any changes that occurred during the rebuild period would be lost. Just backing up to a USB drive maintains the RAID1 protection at all times.

When you put the spare disk in, it doesn't "bring it up to date". It has to re-sync all the data from scratch, not just the changed data. Use the Hyper Backup software built into the NAS to perform backups to a drive that's connected by USB. The initial backup will take several hours, then it can be unplugged and you can take it offsite. When you want to backup changes, plug it in and perform an incremental backup then unplug it again. Incrementals allow you to have a chain of versions of the files in case of corruption or malware, which you also wouldn't have if you were just swapping the drive.

If you use Hyper Backup (or any backup application usually) to do normal backups, then you'll need the Hyper Backup Explorer app to read the backup files on a PC or Mac from the USB drive if you were trying to recover files that way. The USB drive would also need to be formatted with NTFS or exFAT to be readable without any extra work on a PC or Mac (exFAT is faster and works on everything, but you need to install exFAT Access on the NAS; NTFS is slower and Macs can't write to it for free, but it's much more reliable). For just being able to recover directly to a Synology NAS through its own Hyper Backup app, then ext4 for the drive is best.

Incidentally, NASes support hot-swapping of drives, so there's no need to shut down if a drive needs to be replaced.

papadage · Mar 17, 2024

Yeah, but hot-swapping of drives is intended to aid replacing failed drives, and not frequent backups. Doing that, or even shutting down to remove and replace a drive to re-sync as a backup method introduces risk. An array can fail to re-sync, or the other drive can fail during the sync operation. Use a portable drive with a high speed USB connection and back up using real backup software.

That will let you restore data from a PC selectively, and will give you access to multiple versions of changed files so you can recover an interim version if it’s what you need to get back.

I keep my older SSDs from my last PC in my current one for backups. I only back up my documents, photos, and personal videos (wedding, kids’ baptism, vacations, so 2TB is plenty.

Once my data is migrated to the new Synology array, I’ll set up a second backup to a cloud service of some kind.

redleader · Mar 17, 2024

hambone said:
I have a 3rd identical HDD I'd like to swap in from time to time so I can keep a copy HDD offsite.

Raid rebuilds tend to be when hard drives fail in my experience. Triggering one for no reason might be a little less risky than one in response to an initial failure, but you're basically asking to lose your data doing that.

Lord Evermore · Mar 17, 2024

papadage said:
I keep my older SSDs from my last PC in my current one for backups. I only back up my documents, photos, and personal videos (wedding, kids’ baptism, vacations, so 2TB is plenty.

Put one in a USB enclosure and set up a daily sync of those folders (or a proper backup app with incrementals/versioning) so that in an emergency you can just pull the drive and run.

hambone · Mar 17, 2024

Thanks everyone. I went with the external USB enclosure option and did a mirror backup of the NAS. The initial backup took barely 35 mins. Very quick and easy and perfect for keeping an off-site copy that I can quickly refresh 3-4 times a year.

papadage · Mar 18, 2024

Lord Evermore said:
Put one in a USB enclosure and set up a daily sync of those folders (or a proper backup app with incrementals/versioning) so that in an emergency you can just pull the drive and run.

That's a good idea. I'll order it now and do the first backup after migrating my data from the other NAS units. I'm also going to do cloud backup to OneDrive and/or Backblaze.

papadage · Mar 23, 2024

Migrating data is SLOW.

I have the Synology plugged into the same GB switch as the other NAS units and am migrating the last top-level folder off the larger one. It's my Sci-Fi TV series folder, with over 13TB of files. It's been copying for four days and is barely half done. I mounted the other NAS's shared folder in the Synology and am doing a NAS-to-NAS copy.

At this rate, I'll be done sometime later this week, and I'll be able to shut off the one unit and move the Synology in its place on my shaving unit, so it's not on the floor anymore.

rodalpho · Mar 23, 2024

At 1Gb speeds you should be looking at 29 hours best case scenario, probably at least 1.5x that in reality. No reason for it to take 4 days, maybe you're using rsync with compression and encryption active or something.

hal_incandenza · Mar 23, 2024

While I've been happy with my Synology, I was surprised at how long it took before I was all setup. Between initializing the drives, building the storage pool, and then copying over ~10TB, it was close to a week

continuum · Mar 23, 2024

10TB over a week on gigabit, straight copy, assuming a typical user mix of files, sounds about right....

Paladin · Mar 24, 2024

One thing to watch for is the 'quick initialize' option, if it has it. Quick means 'just get the drives ready to use', 'full' initialize means 'get them ready and then write zeros to the full drives to test for any bad sectors', usually. Basically you spend hours doing nothing particularly useful.

After that, it takes what it takes to move/copy the data based on the file size mix and the drive and network speed.

w00key · Mar 27, 2024

Paladin said:
One thing to watch for is the 'quick initialize' option, if it has it. Quick means 'just get the drives ready to use', 'full' initialize means 'get them ready and then write zeros to the full drives to test for any bad sectors', usually. Basically you spend hours doing nothing particularly useful.

I prefer full init, check SMART after and if it reallocated any sectors instantly return it for a different drive, shops here are okay with no reason returns in the first days. It takes a while, most drives only write 200MB/s or .7 TB/h, but not crazy long.

Paladin · Mar 27, 2024

Yeah, that's a legit approach but I generally find that the 'bathtub' curve of drive failures generally means you'll find the issues in the first few days or weeks anyway if it is going to fail before its time. Not always, but often. I've rarely had a drive that didn't either show its problems almost immediately or last a long time without issue.

w00key · Mar 27, 2024

Paladin said:
Yeah, that's a legit approach but I generally find that the 'bathtub' curve of drive failures generally means you'll find the issues in the first few days or weeks anyway if it is going to fail before its time. Not always, but often. I've rarely had a drive that didn't either show its problems almost immediately or last a long time without issue.

With a full overwrite you force the front of the bathtub forward. What could be an issue few months down the road when you hit the bad sector now shows up in the first 24 hours.

Also if one of the drives is dramatically slower it's also an indication something is wrong - not bad enough for QA fail, but not something you want to store your data. I had that happen once too.

Paladin · Mar 27, 2024

Yup, me too. I actually had a whole batch of Lite-on SSDs that would only do about 8MB/s sequential throughput. Read or write. Absolute garbage. Sadly they were way past the return period by the time we figured out why people around the office kept complaining that their PC was slower after upgrades.

Should have had more senior techs involved in those issues from the start. Fortunately the drives were so cheap we just replaced them all again and recycled them. Only about 18 of them or so. Not a serious problem, just very annoying.

papadage · Apr 9, 2024

I finished my transfer from one of the NASs and am almost done with the other one. In between, I upgraded the RAM to 32 GB, gave it a fixed IP that takes over the retired NAS address, and placed it on the shelf. Now, I need to tear apart my old PC to reclaim the 2 TB NVMe for read cache and decide the next step.

One choice is to buy the faster NIC and switch and set up a storage network. But I think my better bet would be to get a new mini-PC with a newer CPU to transition Plex to a system that can transcode much better on the fly. That would have immediate quality-of-life improvements. I really don't play with iSCSI anymore since I stopped working directly with tech, so we'll see about 10Gb networking.

But in terms of not needing purchases, time to set up remote cloud backup of my critical files and think of how to back up the next tier, including my music and family videos.

hal_incandenza · Apr 11, 2024

papadage said:
I finished my transfer from one of the NASs and am almost done with the other one. In between, I upgraded the RAM to 32 GB, gave it a fixed IP that takes over the retired NAS address, and placed it on the shelf. Now, I need to tear apart my old PC to reclaim the 2 TB NVMe for read cache and decide the next step.

One choice is to buy the faster NIC and switch and set up a storage network. But I think my better bet would be to get a new mini-PC with a newer CPU to transition Plex to a system that can transcode much better on the fly. That would have immediate quality-of-life improvements. I really don't play with iSCSI anymore since I stopped working directly with tech, so we'll see about 10Gb networking.

But in terms of not needing purchases, time to set up remote cloud backup of my critical files and think of how to back up the next tier, including my music and family videos.

Do you need to transcode 4k? If not you can get by just fine with an older Intel CPU with Quicksync. I use a 9th gen i3 in a Dell Optiplex Micro and it never gets stressed

papadage · Apr 11, 2024

I have barely any 4K video. I stick mostly to 1080p, even when ripping 4K DVDs, to conserve storage and bandwidth. My current Plex server has a Q6600, a really old processor. I will upgrade to a 12th or 13th-gen i3 or i5 (the latter if I also run a few VMs on it). Many of them have two SODIMM slots and can be expanded to 64GB, so I may jump on an 11th Gen i5 as long as it'll take 64GB RAM eventually. The bonus is that many come with a 2.5GB port too.

Struxxffs · Apr 11, 2024

When you are pairing a NAS with a computer for transcoding how are you viewing your files on other equipment (tv, pc, tablets)

hal_incandenza · Apr 11, 2024

Area51Freak said:
When you are pairing a NAS with a computer for transcoding how are you viewing your files on other equipment (tv, pc, tablets)

I have a Shield attached to both TVs, so at home it's all direct play, family that needs transcoding all use various devices (Roku, FireTV, etc). When we travel I'll either use my laptop plugged into the TV, or for longer trips I'll just bring the Shield (the smaller tube version) with us.

hal_incandenza · Apr 11, 2024

papadage said:
I have barely any 4K video. I stick mostly to 1080p, even when ripping 4K DVDs, to conserve storage and bandwidth. My current Plex server has a Q6600, a really old processor. I will upgrade to a 12th or 13th-gen i3 or i5 (the latter if I also run a few VMs on it). Many of them have two SODIMM slots and can be expanded to 64GB, so I may jump on an 11th Gen i5 as long as it'll take 64GB RAM eventually. The bonus is that many come with a 2.5GB port too.

Wow, I had my old Plex server on a machine with a Q9550, but I retired that a long time ago.

You can find refurb Optiplex with a couple generations old Core i3/i5 for a few hundred bucks that will be perfectly adequate and light years faster than that old Core 2 Quad

asbath · Apr 11, 2024

papadage said:
I have barely any 4K video. I stick mostly to 1080p, even when ripping 4K DVDs, to conserve storage and bandwidth. My current Plex server has a Q6600, a really old processor. I will upgrade to a 12th or 13th-gen i3 or i5 (the latter if I also run a few VMs on it). Many of them have two SODIMM slots and can be expanded to 64GB, so I may jump on an 11th Gen i5 as long as it'll take 64GB RAM eventually. The bonus is that many come with a 2.5GB port too.

At least in terms of transcoding for Plex, you don't need anything powerful anymore these days. I have an Intel Celeron N5095 in my NAS, and it can transcode 2x 4K HDR > 4K non_HDR streams simultaneously with QuickSync. If I'm transcoding 4K > 1080p, then it can easily handle 4 streams at once. The hardware transcoding is super efficient.

If you need the horsepower to run VMs, then an i3 or greater is better. But if you don't need all that power, then it opens up your options quite a bit.

rodalpho · Apr 12, 2024

7th-gen Intel and later can handle 10-bit H265 encoding, which is all you really need. After that you get 12-bit H265 with 11th-gen Intel and AV1 with 14th-gen mobile (only mobile). So long story short, if you're building a box on the cheap for Plex ensure it uses intel 7th-gen or newer.

Struxxffs · Apr 12, 2024

hal_incandenza said:
I have a Shield attached to both TVs, so at home it's all direct play, family that needs transcoding all use various devices (Roku, FireTV, etc). When we travel I'll either use my laptop plugged into the TV, or for longer trips I'll just bring the Shield (the smaller tube version) with us.

Will the NVIDIA shield make streaming easy for devices that have different operating systems?

Footage transcoding will be done on a headless mini computer.

hal_incandenza · Apr 12, 2024

Area51Freak said:
Will the NVIDIA shield make streaming easy for devices that have different operating systems?
Footage transcoding will be done on a headless mini computer.

The Shield will direct play pretty much everything, so internally you wouldn't need any transcoding. And for external, or the rare case where the Shield won't play something, any 7th gen or later Intel will handle it just fine in hardware

Struxxffs · Apr 12, 2024

hal_incandenza said:
The Shield will direct play pretty much everything, so internally you wouldn't need any transcoding. And for external, or the rare case where the Shield won't play something, any 7th gen or later Intel will handle it just fine in hardware

I was not clear about my attentions, I'm sorry about that.

The pc will run software as a headless transcoding software where the footage will be stored on a separate server.

Any devices (phones,tablets,tv) on the local network will be connecting to the transcoding server to play the footage.

Assume its probably software specific (plex,jellyfin,emby), would you have to install seprate apps on your devices to do this or could the shield be a used for this situtation?

hal_incandenza · Apr 12, 2024

Area51Freak said:
I was not clear about my attentions, I'm sorry about that.

The pc will run software as a headless transcoding software where the footage will be stored on a separate server.

Any devices (phones,tablets,tv) on the local network will be connecting to the transcoding server to play the footage.

Assume its probably software specific (plex,jellyfin,emby), would you have to install seprate apps on your devices to do this or could the shield be a used for this situtation?

If the PC runs Plex, the video being stored on a separate box won't matter, you'd just mount it as local storage. And then for playback, each device would need the Plex app (or something like Kodi for Emby/Jellyfin). Phone/tablet would use the mobile app, TV you could have any streaming device: Roku, FireTV, AppleTV, Chromecast, Shield, etc

A Shield would only come into play here as a streaming box connected to a TV

Struxxffs · Apr 12, 2024

hal_incandenza said:
If the PC runs Plex, the video being stored on a separate box won't matter, you'd just mount it as local storage. And then for playback, each device would need the Plex app (or something like Kodi for Emby/Jellyfin). Phone/tablet would use the mobile app, TV you could have any streaming device: Roku, FireTV, AppleTV, Chromecast, Shield, etc

A Shield would only come into play here as a streaming box connected to a TV

thank you

y2k_se · Apr 16, 2024

Keep in mind that Plex will force HDR to SDR if it has to transcode, and there are limitations to hardware-accelerated tonemapping, especially as it relates to the operating system you're using. https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/

Struxxffs · Apr 17, 2024

y2k_se said:
Keep in mind that Plex will force HDR to SDR if it has to transcode, and there are limitations to hardware-accelerated tonemapping, especially as it relates to the operating system you're using. https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/

Thank you for letting me know.

I would like to keep HDR over SDR, if it's possible, what solution would you recommend for playing back HDR?

Paladin · Apr 17, 2024

I would try using something like Kodi, VLC, or MX Player to play the shared files without transcoding. If the device can't play the file without transcoding, it probably can't support HDR effectively anyway... so you're back to using Plex to play with transcoding and going to SDR is probably fine.

y2k_se · Apr 18, 2024

Area51Freak said:
Thank you for letting me know.

I would like to keep HDR over SDR, if it's possible, what solution would you recommend for playing back HDR?

You have to avoid transcoding to keep HDR, which means whatever device you play must support direct playback of the file and your network must support the bandwidth needs. For example, trying to place a remuxed 4K HDR file from a BluRay disc is going to require a lot more bandwidth than a 4K HDR file from a streaming service.

If you have a mix of devices that can and can't play 4K HDR, then you can either maintain multiple copies of the same content or have the 4K HDR content transcoded using hardware acceleration. On Windows, this usually means having a NVIDIA GPU. On Linux, you can get by with a recent Intel iGPU.

Synology Nas Questions

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Scholae Palatinae

Ars Centurion

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Ars Praefectus

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Scholae Palatinae

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Scholae Palatinae

Ars Praefectus

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Praefectus

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Praefectus

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Centurion

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Praefectus

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Centurion

Ars Praetorian

Ars Centurion

Ars Legatus Legionis

Ars Praetorian