Backing up Synology NAS
Discussion
Mandat said:
Just to pick up on this point.
It sounds like you previously lost your data due to a lack of a backup. You have now rectified this by having a backup copy in place.
That being the case, I don't see much difference in where you have your primary storage, i.e. NAS or local PC, so why is NAS rubbish at home?
I lost it due to the poor nature of the WD NAS Raid. It should have been robust to a disk failure, and perhaps for small volumes may have been, but just never came back up again after replacing the failed disk despite appearing to be rebuilding for weeks. It sounds like you previously lost your data due to a lack of a backup. You have now rectified this by having a backup copy in place.
That being the case, I don't see much difference in where you have your primary storage, i.e. NAS or local PC, so why is NAS rubbish at home?
I did have backups - but the raid array was still dead! And that was in the days of only 1TB drives - ie a 4TB NAS.
General issue I have with raid for home use is if the card dies, or you've lost more disks than the raid array is resilient to, or something messes up mid-rebuild, you're pretty screwed. And 1 bad block on a disk buggers the array too, forces a rebuild. I know it "can be done", but it's a lot of fannying about, and I'm just talking about home use where simplicity is important.
So these days I use, and would happily recommend, stablebit drivepool.
On drivepool, the disk itself is still conventionally readable, so even if, say, I lost 7 of the 8 disks I have, I'd easily still be able to restore all available data on that 8th disk just by plugging it into any sata port on a replacement PC. I do only run duplication of all the files on there - so theoretically if I lost 2 disks simultaneously I'd probably lose some files - but more likely, with just a bad block on a couple of disks, I'm unlikely to lose anything. I could turn it up to 3x way, but seems overkill given I have offsite backups now too. It can also handle different disks in the array - IIRC I have 6x 20TB drives and 2x 8TB drives on it at the moment.
And if it detects a disk issue, it automatically migrates everything off that disk, along with periodic scans, inc full surface scan etc.
Not for a moment recommending it for business/enterprise use, but for me, here, it's great - when I did lose a disk, it was easy to sort. Have not had to resort to recovering from backblaze (that I use for remote backup these days) yet.
(And to plug in that many drives, I have some straight on to the motherboard and a few are on a 9260-8i card in IT Mode).
biggiles said:
Much as I'd want to "use" the external drives, the Synology cloud backup is SO cheap perhaps it's easier to sell the drives and just pay Synology a few euros to do it for you?
300 euros a year for 5TB backup storage.That might be "cheap", but the drives are probably worth £100 for all 3
It would also take 3 months to upload on our 150mbs broadband....
Edited by clockworks on Monday 14th April 17:52
I use backblaze. Unlimited storage for about £75 per year - I currently have about 40TB backed up with them with 1 year version history.
But yes, on my old BB provider it took a loooong time to upload. I just left it doing it's thing in the background.
But yes, on my old BB provider it took a loooong time to upload. I just left it doing it's thing in the background.
Edited by Arnold Cunningham on Tuesday 15th April 08:13
Edited by Arnold Cunningham on Tuesday 15th April 08:14
You could shuck the 3 x 4tb drives into a JBOD enclosure and backup onto that. As per what others have said, offsite backup etc etc.... But the risk with JBOD is that it doesn't have any redundancy itself so you'll have to keep an eye on the drives in it. Or, you could try selling those portable drives and then get a 12gb HDD so you've got less hardware to physically wrangle.
Backup has now finished, so I won't have to touch the drives until I add more media files to the NAS.
I've set the individual USB Copy tasks to "incremental", so any updates won't take long - just need to plug in the correct external disk drive.
They are all portable drives, so don't take up much space.
This exercise has got me thinking though:
I like the Synology NAS, because it handles CCTV and Time Machine, as well as being my media server.
I don't like the fact that it's quite noisy with three mechanical drives thrashing away inside.
Wouldn't SSDs be ideal?
Being inherently more reliable than HDDs, probably wouldn't really need RAID at all - as long as a backup was kept up to date.
SATA SSDs are probably a dead-end though, as other forms factors like nvme are faster.
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
I've set the individual USB Copy tasks to "incremental", so any updates won't take long - just need to plug in the correct external disk drive.
They are all portable drives, so don't take up much space.
This exercise has got me thinking though:
I like the Synology NAS, because it handles CCTV and Time Machine, as well as being my media server.
I don't like the fact that it's quite noisy with three mechanical drives thrashing away inside.
Wouldn't SSDs be ideal?
Being inherently more reliable than HDDs, probably wouldn't really need RAID at all - as long as a backup was kept up to date.
SATA SSDs are probably a dead-end though, as other forms factors like nvme are faster.
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
clockworks said:
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
I've been waiting for the same. Something about the size of an external 2.5" enclosure, but some low-power hardware, twin NVMe slots, and their software stack. I've thought about doing my own with a Pi, but I like the Synology ecosystem.I have been using UNRAID for years - older desktop pc in a server case and a mixture of drive sizes. Supports raid but files are written along the disk rather than accros the drives, and 1 or more drives as a parity. UNRAID can run Dockers, VMs and plugins to expand functionality.
I have now virtualised this under proxmox and moved to ZFS for its awesome snapshot features.
Offsite backups are to Backblaze
I have now virtualised this under proxmox and moved to ZFS for its awesome snapshot features.
Offsite backups are to Backblaze
clockworks said:
SATA SSDs are probably a dead-end though, as other forms factors like nvme are faster.
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
Speed isn't probably a screaming requirement with NAS. The noise factor is, depending on where your NAS sits.I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
My QNAP TS464 was a noisy bugger even with the quietest HDD's I could find (WD reds). It was the OS which was making a racket so I stuck in two NVME's into the available slots and "reinstalled" the OS without the HDD's in the NAS, installed the HDD's and put them into another storage pool. Nice and quiet now.
Synology do have a NAS (DS620slim) which uses 2.5" drives - which would lend itself to using 2.5" SSD's (not nvme's). The trouble is that you're looking at three times the price per TB for 2.5" SSD than for 3.5 HDD. Your DS40+ does have two nvme slots and you might be able to do with that what I did to my QNAP.
That is the idea.
Glad you got it sorted - I have been using USB Backup on my Synology NASs for years, originally separate folders to separate drives, now just one job to a bigger drive.
I still also have a copy in the cloud (AWS Glacier in my case) as it costs pennies, and it is easy to just leave the NAS uploading it overnight.
Glad you got it sorted - I have been using USB Backup on my Synology NASs for years, originally separate folders to separate drives, now just one job to a bigger drive.
I still also have a copy in the cloud (AWS Glacier in my case) as it costs pennies, and it is easy to just leave the NAS uploading it overnight.
clockworks said:
From what I've read, the nvme slots in my DS420+ are just used as cache, not part of the storage pool.
I suppose it might reduce HDD access a bit, so less noise?
I have found, on forum posts (reddit) that it's possible with DSM 7.2 onwards but with running a script which someone has made.... I didn't find anything definitive about running the OS on the nvme but it might be possible if you're able to have the nvme as the initial drives, similar to what I did with my QNAP.I suppose it might reduce HDD access a bit, so less noise?
clockworks said:
Backup has now finished, so I won't have to touch the drives until I add more media files to the NAS.
I've set the individual USB Copy tasks to "incremental", so any updates won't take long - just need to plug in the correct external disk drive.
They are all portable drives, so don't take up much space.
This exercise has got me thinking though:
I like the Synology NAS, because it handles CCTV and Time Machine, as well as being my media server.
I don't like the fact that it's quite noisy with three mechanical drives thrashing away inside.
Wouldn't SSDs be ideal?
Being inherently more reliable than HDDs, probably wouldn't really need RAID at all - as long as a backup was kept up to date.
SATA SSDs are probably a dead-end though, as other forms factors like nvme are faster.
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
I have a similar setup to you. Built our house in 2012 and I specced CAT6 throughout the house to all Smart TV locations, office upstairs, etc. At the time I was running a pretty basic old NAS and started putting my photos, movies and other things on it. Just browsed to it from the devices via the DNLA function on the NAS and had a fairly simplistic folder interface.I've set the individual USB Copy tasks to "incremental", so any updates won't take long - just need to plug in the correct external disk drive.
They are all portable drives, so don't take up much space.
This exercise has got me thinking though:
I like the Synology NAS, because it handles CCTV and Time Machine, as well as being my media server.
I don't like the fact that it's quite noisy with three mechanical drives thrashing away inside.
Wouldn't SSDs be ideal?
Being inherently more reliable than HDDs, probably wouldn't really need RAID at all - as long as a backup was kept up to date.
SATA SSDs are probably a dead-end though, as other forms factors like nvme are faster.
I wonder when Synology will bring out a consumer-level fully-featured NAS with nvme storage? Small, quiet, low power consumption.
Ordered a Synology DS220+ Disktation in 2022 and moved all my data onto it. Then installed Plex server on the Synology, and added the Plex app to my TVs and other devices. I've found it brilliant tbh, especially for movies and tv shows - adds thumbnails and visuals itself, subtitles, has a nice interface, and is very versatile. I like being able to stream my own movies and TV content to my phone or tablet when on a train or travelling.
I initially had 2 x HDDS in the NAS, but last year I switched these out for 2 x 4TB SSDs. They definitely run quieter, performance seems to be improved (I sometimes had the odd stutter or glitch in Plex when buffering, especially 4k content - I have a 550mb fibre line and CAT6 throughout house so figured it was the HDD disks that were struggling and not my network - that has all but disappeared now).
I think it's definitely a worthwhile change, the only caveat being that cost for decent brands of SSDs is not proportional to size and seems to increase drastically as they go up. I'm adding a lot of content constantly so would like to go to 2 x 8TBs at some point soon, but the cost of 2 x 8TB drives is not comparable to 4 x 4TBS. Just keeping an eye on the likes of Black Friday sales and so on to see if any appear with a decent discount.
I need to change mine soon. Have a WD MyCloud Mirror and is really buggy, slow and not reliable but is handy for auto backing up my phone to it. Drives don't seem to last long in it. Every month I back up what's on the NAS to two separate external drives so it exists in 3 places and one of those I leave in a family members house so it's offsite.
I don't know how relevant it is to this thread, but FWIW the best scenario has been a 2nd Synology NAS running at a different property to overcome any potential loss due to theft.
DS620 slim with 3x 4TB SSDs installed as the target device - it runs completely silently with Noctua fan in 'quiet' mode.
The initial big copy was made locally and incremental backups work fine via the internet, even across continents.
There's been no issues with reliability over several years.
DS620 slim with 3x 4TB SSDs installed as the target device - it runs completely silently with Noctua fan in 'quiet' mode.
The initial big copy was made locally and incremental backups work fine via the internet, even across continents.
There's been no issues with reliability over several years.
Is it possible to configure a Synology NAS to have two separate RAID storage pools?
Most of the usage is for Time Machine and Surveillance Station. These are the things that are generally running (with the attendant HDD access noise) while I'm in the office. Playing media files etc., I'm in a different room, so the noise doesn't matter.
If I can have 2 separate Raid 1 pools, I could use a pair of 4tb SSDs for backups and CCTV, and 2 of the existing 8TB HDDs for media files.
I could even get away with using just a single SSD for the backups and CCTV, as long as I get email alerts if something goes wrong with the drive.
That would be cheaper, and I could just keep the existing 3 drive array, and use the single SSD for backups and CCTV.
I've also seen that you can buy internal caddies that look like you can use two M2 nvme modules as a single SATA drive. That might be more future-proof than dedicated SSD SATA drive? 2x caddies and 4x 2TB M2 nvme is cheaper than 2x 4TB SATA SSD.
Most of the usage is for Time Machine and Surveillance Station. These are the things that are generally running (with the attendant HDD access noise) while I'm in the office. Playing media files etc., I'm in a different room, so the noise doesn't matter.
If I can have 2 separate Raid 1 pools, I could use a pair of 4tb SSDs for backups and CCTV, and 2 of the existing 8TB HDDs for media files.
I could even get away with using just a single SSD for the backups and CCTV, as long as I get email alerts if something goes wrong with the drive.
That would be cheaper, and I could just keep the existing 3 drive array, and use the single SSD for backups and CCTV.
I've also seen that you can buy internal caddies that look like you can use two M2 nvme modules as a single SATA drive. That might be more future-proof than dedicated SSD SATA drive? 2x caddies and 4x 2TB M2 nvme is cheaper than 2x 4TB SATA SSD.
Craikeybaby said:
Yes, you can combine different drives in different storage pools.
Thanks.I've looked closer at the adaptors, and most state that they only work with M2 sata, not M2 nvme. I'm guessing that none of them will work with M2 nvme.
Might as well just get a single 4TB sata SSD, and use that for Time Machine backups, as well as CCTV.
No real need for redundancy for either of those applications, as I already have Time Machine alternating between the NAS and a local SSD.
So, is it worth paying getting on for £300 for a NAS-rated WD Red SSD, or saving £100 and getting a normal branded one?
Although there will be quite a lot of writing going on, I think it'll only be overwriting the same areas every few months. 3 cameras, two Macs.
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