Synology-Newbie questions

[Darwin4Ever]

Hi,

I think about purchasing a Synology NAS but have some questions first :

1) where is the OS stored in the device ? Is it in sort of flash memory, or is it located on the HDD ?
2) I know of a brand where only 3,5 TB is left from a 4TB HDD (mainly because of the OS located on the HDD - after setup there are a total of 4 partitions). How is this organized on the Synology brand ?
3) does the NAS(DSM)-Administrator have access (via SMB and web-interface) to everything on the HDD, i.e. including ALL user-directories and other created directories/folders ?
4) I have been looking at hardware specifications-sheets, none of them specify power consumption (idle / load). Where can I find that for the Synology NASes ?
5) Is SingleDisk (afterwards convertible to RAID1/5 by adding disks) supported ? Is that the same as "Basic" ?
6) can I assume answers given for above questions, are valid for all Synology models ?

Thank you

 

[Telos]

1. OS and swap partitions are mirrored across all drives.
2. A 4 TB drive contains only 3.64 TiB of capacity. That's probably where your comment comes from.
3. Of course. Admin is king. How else could they administrate the NAS.
5. You can do many things adding a 2nd drive to a single drive... SHR, JBOD, RAID0, RAID1
6. Yup!

Your subject line is misleading. Syncovery is a software product.

 

[Darwin4Ever]

Thanks for the reply !

1) so I understand there are also multiple partitions once the disk(s) are initialized
2) I know the 4 vs 3.64 TiB, my comment was mainly because of the OS on HDD and multiple (4) partitions , so I understand it's the same with Synology ? My old to be replaced Thecus-NAS has only 2 partitions, one very small and the data-partition, the OS being in flash-memory.
4) No idea where I can find the power consumptions, it's not in the spec-sheets ?
3) I tested another brand-nas, where the the NAS-administrator only had access to everything in the webinterface, NOT when connected via SMB, a NOGO for me, reason why I asked
5) So I can start with a RAID with one disk and add a second disk later to end up with a RAID1 ? I need a transition path because one disk contains the recovered data to go ono the Synology.

Of course, not Syncovery ! While typing the message I got a Syncovery popup

Thanks

 

[Telos]

So I can start with a RAID with one disk and add a second disk later to end up with a RAID1

Depending on your end game, I would create a single SHR (btrfs formatted) pool/volume. After copying in your data, you could later add a second drive to the SHR pool (must be same size or larger), and end up with a “mirrored” array, equivalent to RAID1.

 

[Darwin4Ever]

Does this mean it's not possible to create a one-disk ext4 RAID and add the second disk later to end up with the mirrored RAID1 ?

 

[Acetone]

The power consumption should be in the specs, which model are you looking at

From the DS720+ spec sheet

 

[Telos]

Does this mean it's not possible to create a one-disk ext4 RAID and add the second disk later to end up with the mirrored RAID1 ?

If you must have RAID1, create a "Basic" volume initially, then convert to RAID1 by adding a second drive. I recommend SHR.

Use ext4 if you like, but you will miss out on btrfs features/packages.

 

[fredbert]

Does this mean it's not possible to create a one-disk ext4 RAID and add the second disk later to end up with the mirrored RAID1 ?

Change the RAID Type of a Storage Pool | DSM - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

It is possible to set out with a single drive RAID in SHR-1 or Basic and then later migrate to multiple drives. With SHR-1 you can just add drives and it will automatically go from being without redundancy to with: a SHR-1 with two drives is like RAID 1.

Choose a RAID Type | DSM - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

The file system is down to you, either ext4 or Btrfs. This file system you choose is only on the volumes of the storage pool RAID, not the DSM partition that's on all drives.

Which file system should I use to create a volume? - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

Some information on where DSM is installed.

Which drive is the DSM operating system installed on? - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

Here are the knowledgebase articles on Storage Manager, the part of DSM that deals with the drives.

Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

 

[malkie0831]

From my DS415+ the partition table shows three partitions per drive, two are very small and identify as Raid 1, 2490240 blocks (approx 1.25 GB) and 2097152 blocks (approx 1GB). These are in addition to the data partitions. As Telos said, they are mirrored across all drives in the device. 2.25 GB from each 4TB drive is 0.034%, hardly significant.

Don’t get trapped into a 2 bay system that can only give you Raid 1 or no drive redundancy, much better IMHO to invest in a 4 bay (or more) to allow more flexibility in the future.