Synology DiskStation DS1019+ 5-Bay NAS Enclosure EXPIRED

First, let's clear up an important common misconception. RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. RAID is for redundancy - getting uptime as close to 100% as possible. If your business will bleed money if your file server goes down, then you want that file server to be on RAID. A disk can fail, and the file server will keep chugging along. You can buy a replacement drive after the failure (although it's best to buy one beforehand and keep it in storage), remove the failed drive, insert the replacement drive, and allow the RAID array to rebuild and restore redundancy. So RAID protects you against a drive failure (up to 1 drive for RAID 5, 2 drives for RAID 6). It does not protect you against device failures, or data corruption.

If you run RAID, you still need to be making backups (although there is a possible exception for snapshots). The reason is because if you accidentally delete a file from the NAS, its redundant copy will also immediately be deleted. If you accidentally overwrite a file on the NAS, its redundant copy will also be overwritten. If a computer with write privileges to the NAS gets hit by ransomware, it will also encrypt the files on the NAS. A backup will let you recover data in these cases. RAID will not.

Snapshots save the state of the files at the time the snapshot is made. It costs you a little more space, but only if the file changes over time (and obviously deleting a file does not free up the space if the file is still needed for a snapshot). So a snapshot will allow you to "roll back" changes made to a file and theoretically recover from the above forms of data corruption. But it may not protect you against a device failure, like if the unit burns up in a fire. Ideally you should be making a backup of the NAS' contents to an external drive (or multi-drive enclosure) once a week or once a month, and saving that backup off-site (like in a drawer at work/home, whichever is not the NAS location). The higher-end Synology and QNAP devices support snapshots.

The other reason to use a NAS is because you need a networked file server, and don't want it tied to one person's computer being always on. There used to be a power consumption argument for this, back when the typical PC burned 100+ Watts at idle. But modern processors are so power efficient that their power consumption is down to about 30-40 Watts at idle, which isn't much more than a NAS like this. So if you're not opposed to the idea of having one person's computer act as the file server (meaning it temporarily goes down if they reboot), it may be cheaper just to stick a bunch of drives in their computer and use that as your file server.

For something like a photography business, if you're flying solo then all you may need is some type of so-called RAID enclosure (you don't need to run them as RAID - the just combine multiple drives into one virtual drive). Plug it in and turn it on after you finish with a shoot, and dump a copy of all the photos you took onto it. Turn it off and unplug it. Do the processing work on the photos on your computer. When you're finished, plug in the enclosure again and dump a copy of your finished work to the enclosure, and unplug it again. Once a week (or every time you finish a job), connect your backup device along with the enclosure and make a backup.

There's really no need for all the files to be always available 24/7 as with a NAS. The NAS is only necessary when you've got multiple computers which need to access the same files. Or if the files need to be available 24/7 (as with a media server) and you don't want to leave your PC on 24/7 with the enclosure attached.

So with that out of the way:

1. It's best/easiest to start with 5x drives. But you can start with as few as 1. If you want redundancy (can survive a drive failure) you need a minimum of 2 drives. If you want redundancy + expandability, you need at least 3 (Synology's SHR can do it with 2, but will require you to jump from 2 to 4 and isn't as space-efficient). And I believe going from 4 to 5 drives can only be done if you're using SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID - more on that later).

2. If you're using RAID, the drives need to be the same size, ideally the same speed/model. If you're using SHR, they can be different sizes and the NAS will figure out the best way to maximize space usage. With regular RAID, if you mixed 1TB + 1TB + 2TB + 2TB drives, you'd only be able to use 1TB on each drive. With SHR, the extra space on the 2TB drives can be used as additional redundant storage.

I recommend not getting WD drives. WD removed a feature that used to be available on all drives called TLER (on WD drives). Then they put TLER only on their Red drives, called them NAS drives, and set their price higher. TLER extends the time until a drive decides that a read/write error means the drive is failing. Without this feature, a drive in a NAS may declare itself failed due to a random read/write error causing a delay of a few seconds, and drop from the array. That makes the NAS declare all the data on the drive to be bad, forcing you to replace it. You can remove and reinstall the same drive, but you still have to go through the rebuild process (copying data from the "good" drives back to the "new" drive). Depending on the size of your array, a rebuild can take on the order of days.

None of the other HDD manufacturers do this. All the Seagate and Toshiba drives have a TLER-like function which the NAS will enable if you use the drive in it. It's only WD drives where you have to buy the (more expensive) Red version for use in a NAS. (There's also a head parking issue on the WD Green and some Blue drives, which can make the NAS think a drive has failed when it's really just slow to start up.) But if you're a die-hard WD fan, then you want their Red drives for a NAS.

3. I believe the largest drive this NAS supports is 14 TB. So max capacity of 70 TB (though it'll be at least 20% less if you're using redundancy).

4. Synology is the MacOS of NASes. QNAP is more like Windows/Linux. If you're not technically inclined and just want something simple to use (although that might limit your configuration options), you should get a Synology, instead of a QNAP or FreeNAS (I haven't tried Unraid).

5. Yes. NASes are basically small computers (Linux boxes). Without a drive it can't do anything. There's a basic OS built into the ROM whose only function is to download and install the full Synology OS when it detects you've installed the first (empty) drive.


Look into FreeNAS or Unraid if you're thinking of building something yourself. That said, doing a file server properly requires ECC RAM (it detects and corrects random bit flips due to cosmic ray strikes). And ECC RAM will only work with server-approved CPUs and motherboards. Once you factor that in, you may find it's not that much more expensive to buy a Synology or QNAP box (although not all of those use ECC RAM like they did in the past). The HP Proliant Microservers are a good hardware base for a DIY NAS on server hardware.

There's also something to be said for simplicity. I've been running FreeNAS for the last 5 years. One of the updates was not kind, and it was basically easier for me to backup all my data, wipe the NAS, reinstall the newer FreeNAS as if I were creating a new NAS, and restore the backup. A company making money selling NASes would be committing economic suicide if they released an update like that. I'm getting older and now enjoy doing other things with my time than tinkering around with computers and file servers. So i'm considering switching my file server to this Synology box (my main hangup had been I didn't want to give up ZFS, but it seems the newer Synology boxes support btrfs, which has many similar features). I learned all the stuff I wrote above about Synology from several Synology NASes I set up for small businesses (because I didn't want them to bother me again every time there was a little hiccup with the NAS - its setup and configuration is simple enough for a non-expert business owner to do by themselves).


The 918+ comes with 4GB (1 stick in 2 slots). The 1019+ comes with 8GB (2 sticks in 2 slots).


SHR will let you use the additional space on drives with mismatched sizes. RAID requires the same space on every drive. So a 4-drive RAID array will be equal to having 4 of the smallest drive in your array. SHR could theoretically let you use up to all the space on the mismatched-size drives.

https://www.synology.com/en-uk/kn...d_RAID_SHR


Windows SMB (file sharing) has become the de-facto networked file sharing protocol (the other contender was Unix NFS). Linux Samba replicates most of the functionality of SMB, and is how Linux, OS X, NASes, your router with a HDD plugged in, etc. share files over the network. This includes Synology and QNAP boxes.

If your backup software allows you to make backups to networked storage, then you can backup directly to the NAS. That is, it's a limitation of your backup software, not the NAS. Generally network backup is a feature which is disabled on free backup software (I think EaseUS Todo Backup was the only free one which could do it, but I haven't researched backup software for about 3 years so my info may be out of date). Most of the pay backup software I've seen supports it.

Even if your software doesn't support backups to networked drives, there is a way to kludge it in Windows. It's beyond the scope of this deal so I won't provide a step-by-step guide. But it involves using the mklink command to create a directory junction, to make Windows programs think the networked drive is a local drive. Be careful with this though, as it can act screwy when you disconnect from the network.
https://stackoverflow.com/questio...ork-drives


I assume you're using the VPN built into the NAS? Forwarding the VPN port from your router to the NAS?

I'd say don't do that. Replace your home router with a router with a built-in VPN server (most of the mid- and high-end routers have this capability). Then connect to your home router's VPN when you're out traveling. When you do that, the devices on your home network have no way to tell that you're connecting from the Internet at large, rather than physically connected to your home network. And you should be able to (on the computer that's connected to your router's VPN) run everything as if you were on your home network. Although it'll be slower because it's going through the bottleneck of your ISP.

Buyer Beware: Both QNAP and Synology advertise '4k transcoding', but it's NOT nearly as simple as that. The processors used in most models carrying that 'feature' in the description requires hardware-based transcoding to accomplish the claim. So, for example, using a Plex server you would need to use the paid version (via Plex Pass) to enable the hardware transcoding - assuming the model you have supports that feature using Plex.

They both support hardware transcoding using their own proprietary media server/player software -- if you're willing to live with each respective ecosystem. But this will not transcode via software, as the CPU can't handle that. For that, you would need to move up the lines to models based on more capable i5/i7 procs, where available. I would also add that hardware transcoding, while much faster and with minimal CPU demand, comes at the cost visual quality (relative to software-based).

So, if you buy these thinking you can just simply plug-n-play for 4k streaming, just know it's not as simple or as capable as the '4k transcoding' label might suggest... which is why they drop this little disclaimer into their 'Can this transcode 4k' Q&A:

"4K transcoding is not supported on third-party software applications" taken from:

https://www.synology.com/en-us/kn..._my_device

..and reinforced by my own personal experiences.

$15 with $200 purchase
$25 with $300 purchase
$60 with $500 purchase

https://www.amazon.com/b/ref=as_l...uage=en_US