Generally speaking, nobody should add NVMe cache disks to a Synology, because they tend to fail really quickly unless you shell out for enterprise drives.
You can backup files to a USB disk via the port, should you so wish. I have two Synologies and backup from the new one to the (very) old over the network myself.
If all you’re running is Plex you will not need more RAM. That said, I got a second 4GB stick for $23 and it’s $19 now. No warning messages or anything.
Also note you will need Plex Pass for hardware transcoding, if your users use it. The atom CPU in the DS920+ isn’t good for much on its own.
Going for the DS920+. Thanks, all, for the advice!
Prime Day discount, but it shows what BS Prime Day is, because they claim it’s a $100 discount over the $549 retail at $449, but it was $499 earlier today, so their regular price is $50 off already.
Newegg has WD Red Plus 12TB drives for $179, so that’s what’s going in there!
What kind of voodoo lets SHR safely protect 24TB using 12TB of additional storage? I do not understand this. :) If one drive fails, how do the other two have all the data? Magic? Tardis technology?
I don’t know much about SHR, but in a traditional RAID setup it’s just a checksum. For every bit position the last drive stores wether there are an odd or even number of ones.
With that info you can reconstruct the missing data from any drive, at the cost of one drive of redundancy per array, no matter the size of the array/number of disks (you normally want more than one redundancy disk for larger arrays, there are setups that allow two-disk failure by using different check directions).
If, say, you have a damaged file that’s missing 10 block’s worth of data, you can fix it if you have a parity data equalling/exceeding 10 blocks. What’s so impressive about that? Well, it doesn’t matter which 10 blocks were damaged, the parity data can still repair them. If you’re missing 10 blocks at the start of a file, and I’m missing 10 at the end of a file, we can both use the exact same parity data to fix our files. Of course, you can’t use 10 parity blocks ‘twice’ to fix 20 blocks of damage, but it does mean that if you set aside 1/2 of the original file size as parity data, you can fix a file up to 50% damaged (regardless of which 50%). If you think a bit about how that applies to this scenario, you can hopefully see how it’s possible to protect against a single drive failure in a 3x12TB setup.
(I always thought this trick was mind-blowingly amazing when I first encountered it.)
That’s just parity, which is magical enough in itself. SHR builds on that by working on differently-sized disks by chopping each one up into blocks and then RAIDing across those-- and it’s done in a method that’s completely compatible with standard linux mdraid, so if your NAS ever dies you can just pop the disks into any linux computer and your volume will show up. I’ve never understood why linux doesn’t support building something similar natively.
SHR (or UnRAID) is incredibly useful for home and small business users. Say you buy a DS920+ and 4 12TB drives in SHR1, giving you 36GB of storage. Then a couple years go by and two of the drives give SMART errors, and then in 2026 the sweet spot for price/size is 18TB. You can add two of them and not waste all of the 2*6TB, getting 38TB.
I wonder about >16TB drive compatibility in the DS920+. They spec that as the top, but they also spec 8GB memory as the max and all the tech geeks are running 20GB.
I expect the DS922+ with 2.5GB Ethernet and larger drive support to ship any minute now, given that it’s due and I just bought the 920+. :)
Yep, sounds like SHR is just what Unraid has been doing forever. Big fan of this model for home use. I have run a 12 drive Unraid array since basically version 1.0. Love it, but you do need to tinker from time to time.
Biggest draw for me at the time was ability to mix and match drive sizes and types, which is a boon when you are operating on a budget. Also, in Unraid’s case the file system is not all that proprietary (resierFS/xfs) - I can remove any disk and read it on another system (encryption permitting). In case of catastrophic multi-disk failure, I still only lose the data on the failed drives. All the other drives, if they are still good can be recovered.
And of course, always remember that drive redundancy is not backup. Always still back up your critical data to another device/site/service. I still roll Crashplan for that, running as a container on the Unraid array.
lol, these participating 750GB drives are nearly 14 years old!
Okay, Synology users, all set up, 3 12TB drives that are really 10.2TB drives installed…
Now, the question is, any tips on a good resource for figuring out file sharing? There’s shared folders, there’s Synology Drive server, there’s backup software… Obviously a ton of options, but never having used anything other than Windows shared folders before, it’s a bit overwhelming.
What I’d like to do:
Store my movies and music on the Synology to share around the house and when traveling via Plex.
Have automated backups of my photos, videos, download folder, and documents.
Maybe make a backup of my C: drive, though I haven’t done that in a decade as I usually use take a drive failure as a sign that a reinstall was due anyway. :)
Oh sage Synology vets, any pointers? Not asking y’all to write me a tutorial, but any pointers on where to start short of listening to 68 minute YouTube tutorials would be awesome!
(Also, my Plex movies are on a USB drive right now. Can I connect that to the Synology USB port and copy them over directly, rather than doing it via the slower network?)
Where did you manage to get hold of 12 GB drives? :-p
Install the Plex package on the NAS? For in-house streaming, I use Synology´s DLNA support. Most TVs have built-in support for that.
I just use Windows’ built-in backup solution, pointing to a dedicated Synology shared folder.
Similarly for my Macs - dedicated shared folder (with upper limit on disk usage) and Time Machine.
It’s been a long week. Fixed! (Though I still remember my first 1GB drive!)
Cool. I wasn’t sure if I needed a special folder structure or anything.
So basically, just create shared folders for organization? I could have a Plex folder, a backups folder, and a “stuff that ain’t Plex or backups” folder?
Maybe this enthusiasm from @Editer will coax me into actually taking advantage of my Synology! It’s only a 2x 12TB drive DS720+, but that’s plenty for me. I use Backblaze on my PC which has been great fire & forget backup software. Also, OneDrive so reinstalling Windows sucks less. I’ve been hesitant to use the Synology as the main storage for any files because of course, I want to back it up to the cloud. I know there are a few options, but I’ve never felt like spending more money for TBs of cloud storage.
I do use Backblaze B2 for some work backups, and I could set up a bucket on my personal account for NAS backups. I’m hesitant to do too much family tech stuff on arcane (for novices) tech that will make it difficult for them if I get hit by a bus.
My main tip would be, if you have the technical know-how then run as much as you can through Docker. :)
It will expand your options since you won’t be limited to Synology packages. No worries with multiple versions of different dependencies polluting your system either, everything is nicely contained in its own image.
Updating is easier since you can just stop the container, update the image, then restart it, and when the DSM software updates there’s no risk of your installs breaking.
Many people do seem to run Plex natively as the one exception to that though. Make sure you use the latest Synology build from Plex themselves, not Synology. That’s what I’ve heard anyway, because personally I’m using Emby instead of Plex, and I do run it in a container. :)
I run GPU hardware assisted transcode on my Plex server since most of my stuff has been converted to HEVC and the NAS CPU was to weak to be encode or transcode.
Plex working great. My stretch goal was to use the NAS as a PlayOn recorder. Set up a VM with all 4 cores and 12GB of memory dedicated to it. Nope, every recording failed. Oh well, I can run PlayOn on my laptop, or just set it to do its stuff when I’m asleep and it won’t interfere with the stupidly sensitive MS Flight Sim.
