Dr_Frankenstein

This is an update on my previous two posts 412+ 1815+ Hardware Synology 1815+ and Synology DX413 Expansion Unit HDD 1: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 HDD 2: 4TB Seagate ST4000DX000 HDD 3: 4TB Western Digital WD40EZRZ HDD 4: 4TB Seagate ST4000DX000 HDD 5: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 HDD 6: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 HDD 7: 4TB Western Digital WD40EZRX HDD 8: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 HDD 9: 256GB Drevo X1 Pro HDD 10: 3TB Western Digital WD30PURX HDD 11: 3TB Western Digital WD30PURX HDD 12: 3TB Toshiba DT01ABA300 HDD 13: 2TB Seagate ST2000VX000 Software and Configuration: Running Synology DSM front end GUI, the 8 x 4TB drives in the main unit are running SHR2 (equivalent to RAID6 so that's 32TB (29.12TB RAW/21.81TB after redundancy) the other 4 drives are running SHR (RAID5) 11TB (10.01TB RAW/7.26TB after redundancy) finally the SSD contains all my Docker containers and any native Synology apps the SSD works really well for this usage and is much quicker than using it as an SSD read cache which I found had a negative performance impact on the unit. Usage: I upgraded from my 412+ around a year ago picking up an 1815+ for around £600 on eBay, about 6 months ago it was warranty replaced due to suffering from the Intel C2000 bug. It runs 24/7 and has been upgraded with 16GB of Crucial RAM, I use it as my main storage server, I make very good use of Docker as all my most useful applications for obtaining Linux ISO's are Dockerised (see my website for guides) It also runs a Minecraft server which is open for anyone to use. I rarely pick up brand new retail drives (as I am cheap) all the drives currently in use have been either shucked from second hand external drives picked up from eBay or other sites. If you bargain hunt this keeps costs much lower but obviously has inherent risks with not knowing the drives history. Backup: My 412+ is has been effectively retired and now is used for backing up important data, I also keep archives of my photos offsite at work. The 412+ has 6TB of space as I tend to use smaller retired drives in it. I also have a HP Microserver which I just have to play around with, that has a real mish mash of ancient drives from 250GB to 320GB. Photo's:

It has been a while since I last updated my post, my 412+ has been on backup duties for a while, not sure if I should update the old post with its current setup? Hardware Synology DS1815+ PSU: Power Brick 250w MOBO: Custom Synology Board CPU: Intel Atom C2538 2.4 GHz RAM: 6GB Kingston DDR3 HDD 1: Seagate Barracuda 4TB (ST4000DM000) HDD 2: Seagate Barracuda 4TB (ST4000DM000) HDD 3: Seagate Barracuda XT 4TB (ST4000DX00) HDD 4: Seagate Barracuda XT 4TB (ST4000DX00) HDD 5: Toshiba 3TB (DT01ABA300) HDD 6: WD Blue 4TB (WD40EZRZ) HDD 7: WD Red 4TB (WD40EFRX) HDD 8: Drevo 256GB SSD (X1 Pro) Software, Configuration & Usage My thirst for data outgrew my now older 412+ Synology, I love their products so stuck with them and upgraded to a 1815+ around 18 months ago, I currently have a hodge podge of drives, this is due to looking out for drives on eBay as you can pick up some real bargains. I quite often shuck externals, the two 4TB Seagate's are from Expansions the WD red I picked up by shucking a WD Studio external. So all in I have just over 27TB of raw storage in this box. I currently have the 256gb SSD dedicated to download duties and stores all the Docker containers to keep things snappy, the remaining drives are setup in SHR2 aka RAID 6. I store mainly linux ISO's, family photos etc on the box and it happily runs a Minecraft server for my son and his friends, I have everything setup in Docker containers for usenet automation and alike, I write guides over on my website. I never seem to be able to stratch my storage itch so across my other drives in the 412 and a Microserver I have another 15TB! Almost forgot I have a Cyberpower UPS for backup power in case anyone accidently unplugs the box or trips off the mains power as the last thing I wont is drives lost to power issues.

Its time to upgrade my Intel NUC as it just can't handle all the 4k content from my phone

Great story MrBucket01, I have had a similar experience from the same drives, I have had one just die out of no where, the seconds started getting bad sectors in September and now the warranty replacement has the same behaviour! So I have just replaced the final one with another 4TB seagate (we will see how this pans out) but I am confident it should be better quality. I have updated my original post as I now have a 14TB array

The node 304 is a great case and looks very smart. I have the black version and happily holds together my overclocked parts.

Even if you are backing up to a decent medium if this is long term storage I would also use Multipar to create Parity files for the backups, this means even if you had a small amount of degradation due to Bitrot, you would still be able to restore the files in their original form.

Well I don't know what on earth my Synology box was doing, as I have just done a full surface test on the drive I had to pull and it has a single bad sector! not 25k as my NAS was reporting!

I have updated my post as I have just installed the 4TB Seagate which is replacing the 3TB which started throwing up tons of damaged blocks. I will update the screenshots once the drive has finished being added to the volume in a few hours.....

I have an old Compaq 311c netbook (Atom N270, 1GB RAM) and I almost sold it for peanuts on ebay as it chugs using windows, I just installed Openelec (XMBC) and my son now watches all his TV shows and Movies on it, it boots in under 20 seconds and is very quick. A small cheap SSD can make a difference even on an Atom based laptop and extra memory will always help. I would not spend to much and grab some cheap second hand parts on eBay

Well it looks like I timed my purchase of the WD Purple drives just right, my second 3TB Seagate started failing yesterday initially I got an email from my Synology that 1120 bad sectors were found, overnight this has gone up to 25272!, most of these have been remapped and 488 are awaiting allocation meaning there is nothing left to re-assign. I have just got a decent deal on a USB 4TB Seagate from Amazon for £89.99 so it will be replacing the failing drive after breaking it out of the USB enclosure.

Before using the PI for a NAS solution you should make sure you are going to be OK with very low read and write speeds of around 7MB/Sec as the PI is extremely underpowered for this kind of work. If you are spending around £100 you could pick up a Synology 214SE which is £120, it can hold both 2.5 and 3.5inch drives does RAID 1 and has read and write speeds around 72MB/sec when configured as RAID1 In the future if you decided you wanted to add more drives the Synology will allow you to share any drives connected via USB so you could potentially add a RAID enclosure into the mix at a later date.

Virgin Media in the UK, this is their cheapest service, I got a decent deal and pay £15pm for Internet, Phone and TV, I just wish the upload speeds where better as its taken a month to upload my photo backups.

If you can pick up the Purples for a good price then they are a good choice. As they are designed for surveillance you get quite consistent write speeds across the drive. If you can pick them up for a good price then its worth it. I paid £65 a piece for my 3TB ones in my NAS. You can see the performance results on Tweaktown

The thing I love most is the fact it can play doom! And the IPS panel is a big plus

I love the fact it has such a slim bezel, it makes my note 2 look positively fat.

Updated 11/09/2014 - Replaced a 3TB Seagate with a 4TB due to bad sectors Updated 13/02/2015 - Replace another 3TB Seagate with a 4TB due to bad sectors Hardware Synology DS412+ PSU: 100W Power Brick MOBO: Custom Synology Board CPU: Intel Atom D2700 2.13Ghz Dual Core RAM: 2GB Kingston DDR3 HDD 1: Seagate Barracuda 4TB (ST4000DM000) HDD 2: Seagate Barracuda 4TB (ST4000DM000) HDD 3: WD Purple 3TB (WD30PURX) HDD 4: WD Purple 3TB (WD30PURX) Software, Configuration & Usage I have been using Synology Products since 2009, starting with a very slow 209j then a 211j, a 212+, and finally picking up this 412+ for about £300 on eBay. I am now using Synology Hybrid RAID (RAID5) so out of the 14TB of drives I get around 10TB actual usable space, The majority of the time the NAS is used to stream media to my Intel Celeron NUC or to my OnePlus One using the DS Audio app when on my way to work during the week. I have a 3 way backup scheme. 3TB USB Drive for onsite weekly backups of everything but TV+Movies 2TB of Baidu Cloudstorage where I keep monthly encrypted backups of photos and unencrypted music 500GB USB Offsite Backup where I do monthly backups of the most important files this is kept in a locked draw in a secure building with 24/7 security The 412+ is a great device and the ATOM gives it the grunt to happily saturate my Gigabit network, it has had two hardware modifications, the first was the additional 1GB of RAM which is not officially supported, and I recently turned the two 90mm fans around meaning they suck air in from the rear of the chassis, this has meant less dust is getting into the NAS as before it was a dust magnet. Photos

Hey Humble Bee, having a quick look at Ebuyer a 1TB SSHD starts at around £58 so the largest SSD around that price is 120GB Will the SSHD be used as a boot drive as well as storing games, or will you be keeping your existing drive and using the new one solely for games?

While I can't really give a recommendation on a file duplication app, if you need to organise all your photos into folders organised into dates Photomove does the job perfectly using the meta data in the photos.