Hi guys
Hope everyone is well and all your loved ones are safe and well.
I have been lurking for a while and this is prob the best Synology forum ive come across. Ive been learning a lot.
I am looking to make some changes to my current nas setup so needed some advice.
Having looked up some dates, I can’t believe ive had this nas for so long as it runs like new. Never had any issues and never let me down. I have a ds1813+ which I purchased new when it was released in 2013. It has 4x4tb WD Red nas hard drives which were purchased new with the nas and fitted at the same time. The drives have the date 25 August 2013 on them.
It was set up using raid 10. Over the years as I have learnt more I always felt maybe raid 10 was not the best choice for me and our needs but I left it as it was. The nas is mainly used for media and backing up of pictures + some documents. Everything important is backed up online and on another hard drive. The nas is used daily but what I would class as quite minimal to be honest.
I have a 14tb external hard drive I have recently purchased to help with the changes I need to make and to use as a new backup drive for the nas so I can backup everything going forward as opposed to only the important stuff.
Advice I need:
1) Being raid 10, I cut my storage in half to about 7tb. This was probably my biggest mistake as raid 10 is not expandable and I did not need this level of protection. When I first set it up, I never thought we would fill up 7tb and I felt better having high redundancy. Its just not needed for our uses and going forward if I backup everything on an external drive, I don’t need to worry as much.
So, what raid set up would you guys advise? I am wanting maximum space, maximum speed and some redundancy would be ok but not essential as downtime would not cause any real issues as such. Oh and being able to expand storage in future as 4 bays are empty.
I could go raid 0 for speed and space and as I will always have a full backup of everything I would be safe incase of a drive failure. But I would be concerned if one drive failed that I would need to restore data onto all drives and this would stress the other drives unnecessarily due to their age. Correct or wrong? That being said, I cant easily expand the storage by adding another drive without wiping and restoring, so same issue.
In this case I think maybe SHR/raid 5 is the best choice for me? It will give me the best balance between speed, storage, some redundancy and the ability to expand storage whenever I need in the future.
Can you advise if raid 5 or SHR is the way to go? As both are more or less the same with SHR having a few extra perks.
2) Would you consider the drives to be quite old now or at higher risk of failure at this age, especially if I change the raid? I have no experience with nas drives. As above, they have never been stressed and have been used fairly minimally during the time I have had them. The nas is on 24/7 but is asleep/hibernating most of time.
I have a few other queries but once I know the best way to adjust the current setup I can ask.
Thank you all!
(Apologies for long post)
Hope everyone is well and all your loved ones are safe and well.
I have been lurking for a while and this is prob the best Synology forum ive come across. Ive been learning a lot.
I am looking to make some changes to my current nas setup so needed some advice.
Having looked up some dates, I can’t believe ive had this nas for so long as it runs like new. Never had any issues and never let me down. I have a ds1813+ which I purchased new when it was released in 2013. It has 4x4tb WD Red nas hard drives which were purchased new with the nas and fitted at the same time. The drives have the date 25 August 2013 on them.
It was set up using raid 10. Over the years as I have learnt more I always felt maybe raid 10 was not the best choice for me and our needs but I left it as it was. The nas is mainly used for media and backing up of pictures + some documents. Everything important is backed up online and on another hard drive. The nas is used daily but what I would class as quite minimal to be honest.
I have a 14tb external hard drive I have recently purchased to help with the changes I need to make and to use as a new backup drive for the nas so I can backup everything going forward as opposed to only the important stuff.
Advice I need:
1) Being raid 10, I cut my storage in half to about 7tb. This was probably my biggest mistake as raid 10 is not expandable and I did not need this level of protection. When I first set it up, I never thought we would fill up 7tb and I felt better having high redundancy. Its just not needed for our uses and going forward if I backup everything on an external drive, I don’t need to worry as much.
So, what raid set up would you guys advise? I am wanting maximum space, maximum speed and some redundancy would be ok but not essential as downtime would not cause any real issues as such. Oh and being able to expand storage in future as 4 bays are empty.
I could go raid 0 for speed and space and as I will always have a full backup of everything I would be safe incase of a drive failure. But I would be concerned if one drive failed that I would need to restore data onto all drives and this would stress the other drives unnecessarily due to their age. Correct or wrong? That being said, I cant easily expand the storage by adding another drive without wiping and restoring, so same issue.
In this case I think maybe SHR/raid 5 is the best choice for me? It will give me the best balance between speed, storage, some redundancy and the ability to expand storage whenever I need in the future.
Can you advise if raid 5 or SHR is the way to go? As both are more or less the same with SHR having a few extra perks.
2) Would you consider the drives to be quite old now or at higher risk of failure at this age, especially if I change the raid? I have no experience with nas drives. As above, they have never been stressed and have been used fairly minimally during the time I have had them. The nas is on 24/7 but is asleep/hibernating most of time.
I have a few other queries but once I know the best way to adjust the current setup I can ask.
Thank you all!
(Apologies for long post)