Replacing HDDs - impact on version of DSM?

[MartinFa]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, which is a bit complicated!

I have a DS220+ which I recently "downgraded" from DSM 6.2 to 7.1. This meant losing Photo Station, which was replaced with the appallingly bad Synology Photos. I also have an old DS213J still running DSM 6.2 and Photo Station - though the photos on there are about 1 year out of date now and I did a lot of new work on Photo Station on the 220+ before going to DSM 7.1. The DS213J performance is pretty unacceptable, so I don't really want to go back to using that machine.

Question:
If I were to buy (say) a DS218+ and fit the drives from my old DS213J, would the new machine run the DSM 6.2 from my old HDDs or DSM 7.1 from the new machine (assuming it had been changed to 7.1)? I could then copy the photo from my DS220+ to the "new" machine, run Photo Station & have good performance. Yes???

Thanks.

 

[Telos]

1. Updating the 213j to DSM7 is not recommended
2. Migrating drives from a j series to a plus series is doable, but not recommended

 

[MartinFa]

1. Updating the 213j to DSM7 is not recommended
2. Migrating drives from a j series to a plus series is doable, but not recommended

Thanks for the reply, but maybe my question wasn't that clear...

I was wondering about taking the disks out of my DS213J running DSM6.2 and putting them into a second-hand DS218+ or DS718+. I'm hoping this might leave me with DSM 6.2 (and, more importantly, Photo Station rather than Synology Photos) on a more powerful machine than the old DS213J.

I'm just uncertain whether a DS218+ / DS718+ that may have been migrated to run DSM 7 will now run DSM6. I read somewhere that once a machine has migrated from DSM6 to DSM7, then a flag is set in the boot loader which prevents DSM6 running again. I don't know whether that's the case. Nor do I know if the boot loader is on HDD or in the NAS firmware.

 

[Deleted member 5784]

Rather than buying a whole new machine just to try and run DSM6, it is possible to attempt to downgrade a DSM7 machine back to DSM 6. Note this is completely unsupported by Synology: DSM 7 to DSM 6 downgrade (unofficial and unsupported)
The guide i've linked is written by @Rusty from this forum; he'd probably have up-to-date info on whether the downgrade will work in your case.

Synology are going to stop supporting / patching DSM 6 sometime in the near future, so this downgrade would only be a temprary solution. As all this is caused by your issues with Syology Photos, maybe it'd be better trying to resolve those directly. It may be worth posting a new Q detailing these issues so those who use Synology Photos can chime in (I dont use it myself).

 

[MartinFa]

Rather than buying a whole new machine just to try and run DSM6, it is possible to attempt to downgrade a DSM7 machine back to DSM 6. Note this is completely unsupported by Synology: DSM 7 to DSM 6 downgrade (unofficial and unsupported)
The guide i've linked is written by @Rusty from this forum; he'd probably have up-to-date info on whether the downgrade will work in your case.

Synology are going to stop supporting / patching DSM 6 sometime in the near future, so this downgrade would only be a temprary solution. As all this is caused by your issues with Syology Photos, maybe it'd be better trying to resolve those directly. It may be worth posting a new Q detailing these issues so those who use Synology Photos can chime in (I dont use it myself).

Thanks for that link: I had seen that somewhere previously and it seems a little risky, but I'll bear it in mind. I'm not really comfortable with Linux-type OSs and struggle to understand some of the steps needed to use this method.

Issues with Synology Photos are too numerous to mention here: the crux of the issue is that Synology have removed swathes of functionality in migrating from Photo Station to Synology Photos. That was all functionality that I made extensive use of and now find I've lost thousands of hours of work due to the migration. The metadata I added previously is all still there in each .jpg file, but Synology Photos makes no use of it.

I, and many other users, have raised countless feature requests and defect reports for Synology Photos but there is a strong feeling that these will never be addressed.

 

[Telos]

I read somewhere that once a machine has migrated from DSM6 to DSM7, then a flag is set in the boot loader which prevents DSM6 running again.

Somewhat correct. You will be forever nagged to update. Get a used system which has never seen DSM7.

 

[MartinFa]

Somewhat correct. You will be forever nagged to update. Get a used system which has never seen DSM7.

Yes - I just had confirmation from Synology support that I can put my old drives into a another machine that's never been migrated to DSM7 as long as they are compatible with the the hardware. Now I just need to find just such a used machine!
Thanks.

 

[fredbert]

I've not done it but wondering about running Virtual DSM 6 in Virtual Machine Manager on the DS220+, and then restoring a Hyper Backup to it. Maybe able to restore packages?

I still have a VDSM 6 VM on my DS1520+, not that I spun it up for a while.

 

[MartinFa]

I've not done it but wondering about running Virtual DSM 6 in Virtual Machine Manager on the DS220+, and then restoring a Hyper Backup to it. Maybe able to restore packages?

I still have a VDSM 6 VM on my DS1520+, not that I spun it up for a while.

Interesting idea - thanks for the suggestion. I don't think I want to go down the VM route though. I think that would mean I'd need to get hold of a DSM6.2 OS from somewhere to install. And a whole bunch of new stuff for an old git to learn!

 

[fredbert]

I don't think I want to go down the VM route though. I think that would mean I'd need to get hold of a DSM6.2 OS from somewhere to install.

Install VMM from Package Center and get the VDSM 6 installer from Synology…

Download Center - download | Synology Inc.

Centralize data storage and backup, streamline file collaboration, optimize video management, and secure network deployment to facilitate data management.

www.synology.com

It’s also a good way to test a new version of DSM too. It’s a fairly straightforward process, and I’m not someone that’s used to doing VM stuff and I was able to step through it.

 

[MartinFa]

Install VMM from Package Center and get the VDSM 6 installer from Synology…

Download Center - download | Synology Inc.

Centralize data storage and backup, streamline file collaboration, optimize video management, and secure network deployment to facilitate data management.

www.synology.com

It’s also a good way to test a new version of DSM too. It’s a fairly straightforward process, and I’m not someone that’s used to doing VM stuff and I was able to step through it.

I was thinking more about the difficulties of accessing the VM - especially from outside my own home network. Not sure my router (nor myself!) would be able to cope with setting that up for accessing specific apps on the VM (e.g. Photo Station). But many thanks for the thought.

 

[fredbert]

I was thinking more about the difficulties of accessing the VM - especially from outside my own home network. Not sure my router (nor myself!) would be able to cope with setting that up for accessing specific apps on the VM (e.g. Photo Station). But many thanks for the thought.

Sure, it was just an idea. From the point of accessing VDSM it's no real difference to having a second NAS on your LAN, it will have it's own LAN IP. You could even use the host NAS's reverse proxy feature (Control Panel - Login Portal - Advanced) to direct access to the VDSM LAN IP.

Here's Synology's DSM 7.1 live demo, it's running VDSM. It takes a little while to start as it is a fresh environment for each request.

DSM Online Demo

DiskStation Manager (DSM) is the unified operating system that powers every Synology NAS and makes managing and protecting your data intuitive. It enables businesses and individuals to focus on what matters the most, instead of IT management tasks.

demo.synology.com

Obviously I'm suggesting using VDSM 6.2.4 If you do try it and don't like it then you can just delete it.

As for continuing to use DSM 6, Synology will eventually cease to update it and that will mean it will stop getting security patches. I would then limit any access from the Internet, maybe use the DSM 7 NAS as an upload server, then automate some kind of local transfer into Photo Station. Or use secured VPN connections for remote access to DSM 6, thereby by limiting which client devices can initiate connections to it.

 

[MartinFa]

Sure, it was just an idea. From the point of accessing VDSM it's no real difference to having a second NAS on your LAN, it will have it's own LAN IP. You could even use the host NAS's reverse proxy feature (Control Panel - Login Portal - Advanced) to direct access to the VDSM LAN IP.

Here's Synology's DSM 7.1 live demo, it's running VDSM. It takes a little while to start as it is a fresh environment for each request.

DSM Online Demo

DiskStation Manager (DSM) is the unified operating system that powers every Synology NAS and makes managing and protecting your data intuitive. It enables businesses and individuals to focus on what matters the most, instead of IT management tasks.

demo.synology.com

Obviously I'm suggesting using VDSM 6.2.4 If you do try it and don't like it then you can just delete it.

As for continuing to use DSM 6, Synology will eventually cease to update it and that will mean it will stop getting security patches. I would then limit any access from the Internet, maybe use the DSM 7 NAS as an upload server, then automate some kind of local transfer into Photo Station. Or use secured VPN connections for remote access to DSM 6, thereby by limiting which client devices can initiate connections to it.

Many thanks for your help. All good stuff that's worth considering.

 

[MartinFa]

Sure, it was just an idea. From the point of accessing VDSM it's no real difference to having a second NAS on your LAN, it will have it's own LAN IP. You could even use the host NAS's reverse proxy feature (Control Panel - Login Portal - Advanced) to direct access to the VDSM LAN IP.

Here's Synology's DSM 7.1 live demo, it's running VDSM. It takes a little while to start as it is a fresh environment for each request.

DSM Online Demo

DiskStation Manager (DSM) is the unified operating system that powers every Synology NAS and makes managing and protecting your data intuitive. It enables businesses and individuals to focus on what matters the most, instead of IT management tasks.

demo.synology.com

Obviously I'm suggesting using VDSM 6.2.4 If you do try it and don't like it then you can just delete it.

As for continuing to use DSM 6, Synology will eventually cease to update it and that will mean it will stop getting security patches. I would then limit any access from the Internet, maybe use the DSM 7 NAS as an upload server, then automate some kind of local transfer into Photo Station. Or use secured VPN connections for remote access to DSM 6, thereby by limiting which client devices can initiate connections to it.

Well, I need to thank you... I did as you recommended and now have a DSM 6.2 VM instance on my DS220+ running Photo Station. I'm just restoring my photos from the last HyperBackup to my old DS213J that ran prior to migrating to DSM7.

It was all much easier than I expected. Very grateful to you for your suggestion. Now I just need to figure out how to configure my router to run Photo Station on two DSMs (one being virtual) and Synology Photos on DSM 7!