DS218+ Prepurchase question

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DS218+ Prepurchase question

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Hello,

I am considering purchase of the DS218+ but funds are limited during this time and I am wanting to confirm a few things. I am intending to purchase the NAS and a single 8TB drive. My questions are these....

1) I am assuming I can in fact configure and use the NAS with only a single drive installed. Am I correct?

2) Can I later add another of the 8TB drives and set it up to mirror the first drive? Can I do this without wiping the original drive? I ask this because I cant really pour the extra money in to the second drive but in a few months would like to add another and have it set up to mirror the original drive. I am wanting to confirm this is possible without having to wipe/lose data on the first drive when I add the second.

Thank you for your time and feedback
 
1) Yes... You can configure the NAS with a single drive.

2a) Yes... If a single drive is set up as a 'SHR' volume, you would be able to add a second drive. When the second drive is added, use Storage Manager to expand your single-drive SHR volume and you'll have mirroring capability similar to RAID 1. However, this approach does not provide backup within the NAS.

2b) There's another approach to consider... You might also create second single-drive volume; and use it as the target for a regularly scheduled HyperBackup (or other Synology backup) with versioning. HyperBackup's versioned backup would allow you to restore older versions of files that were unintentionally deleted or corrupted. As many on this forum have said previously, RAID does not provide that type of backup protection.

There is a noteworthy tradeoff in availability to consider, depending on your use scenario.

With "2a", your NAS will continue running if one drive fails in a mirrored array (e.g. SHR / RAID 1).

However, with "2b", if your primary volume fails, the NAS would be effectively down until you replace the primary volume and restore from HyperBackup.

Also note that, in general, a backup restore will be much faster from an internal NAS Drive vs a USB or 1G network connection.


Ron
 
Can't emphasize enough that w/out a versioned backup you are at risk to accidental deletions and corrupted files. You should definitely have a strategy (what @RoCaRay recommends, or via an attached USB drive at least to cover critical files) so that you are covered.
 

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