Upgrade from DS215j to DS225+

[joncollin81]

Hi SynoForum Community:

I posted last year about upgrading to the DS224+ and I'm finally ready to bite the bullet and upgrade (to the DS225+ instead), but... ideally I need to upgrade my storage too (2 x WD Red 2TB), which is now 11 years old, albeit still healthy.

My main use cases are photo storage and remote access via Synology Photos, and media storage and remote access via Plex. It would be great to have the ability to transcode for remote video playback. Quicker thumbnail generation for photos would be handy too.

The inflated cost of HDDs is putting me off buying new ones! Would it be worth buying the new NAS now and just swapping my old drives over? Appreciate that I might have to wait 1-2 years before storage prices return to some sense of normality (unless this is the new normal!)

Thanks for any advice / guidance on this!

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[White Bear]

For preserving your data, backups matter more than drive age. However, 11-year-old disks should be viewed as living on borrowed time rather than as long-term dependable assets. Monitor SMART health data and proactively replace the drives when you can. But do be prepared for the old drives to fail by maintaining current viable backups. Enjoy the DS225+ upgrade!

 

[Telos]

Drive cost certainly is a consideration, and it's doubtful much will improve over the next 2 years unless a new (unproven) OEM appears.

In your case, migrating the drives would carry over your current volume cap of 16 TB, and preclude you from taking advantage of advanced features/packages requiring BTRFS formatted systems. Of course, you could wipe the existing partitions, move the drives and create a BTRFS SHR pool/volume, restoring content from your daily backup.

For now, I would consider Server Parts Deals for refurbished drives.

 

[DSfuchs]

Please also consider that your hard drives are not on Synology's compatibility list, so a workaround tool is required.

And especially also with your very old hard drives:
Starting with DSM 7.2, Synology systematically suppresses critical hard drive errors and analyses!

Without an additional hard drive of at least 3 TB, migrating to the new 8 GB system partition will not be possible without an unload/reload procedure.

We also just established in another thread that, coming from the 32-bit platform, no LVM scheme was likely created. This prevents "growing" onto larger drives when using SHR. Let's hope you have a "basic" configuration.

 

[Coop777]

Please also consider that your hard drives are not on Synology's compatibility list, so a workaround tool is required.

This in itself doesn't mean a whole lot - Synology have been slow to update the compatibility lists for years - even more delayed with the attempt to lock down the newest plus models. The INcompatibility list should be used as a guide of what drives will not work.

What is meaningful is the age of his current drives. 11 years is an impressive amount of time, but new storage is needed.

 

[joncollin81]

Thank you to everyone for your replies. I should add that there have been long periods where NAS was powered off / not actively being used, and it's only been used for a sustained period for last few years. Nonetheless, it sounds like new NAS AND new hard drives is the safest way to go!

 

[DSfuchs]

Gladly @joncollin81

@Coop777 The emphasis was on "...a workaround tool is required."

 

[Telos]

it's only been used for a sustained period for last few years

Storage Manager can tell you the power-on time for each drive.

 

[joncollin81]

Ah that's helpful! In that case both drives have seen around 46K hours of on-time, equivalent to around 5 years by my calcs!