Will a WD Gold 18TB give full capacity in a Synology DS918+?

nicolaidenmark · January 19, 2022

Hi guys,

Slowly running out of space on my Synology DS918+ with 2 x 10 TB HDD running SHR-1.

Whilst the 16 TB vers. is currently the largest capacity drive listed as compatible with the DS918+, I was wondering if anyone has actually dropped in an 18TB disk and can use the full capacity of said disk?

I realize that the current sweet spot as to dollars - or - in my case - DNK - pr. TB still seems to be around 10 TB. However, I figure that the money saved going with a smaller drive will easily be (more than) offset by needed a new unit with more bays faster.

I'm thinking about having my friend help me build a NAS with, like, 8-12 bays some day. What happens if I build my own without Synology's software? Can I change to another RAID config without loosing the data already on the HDDs?

Vishera · January 19, 2022

10 minutes ago, nicolaidenmark said:

I'm thinking about having my friend help me build a NAS with

You need to check if the drive is SMR or CMR.

SMR drives are not suitable for NAS use and can give you issues with RAID.

nicolaidenmark · January 19, 2022

13 minutes ago, Vishera said:

You need to check if the drive is SMR or CMR.

SMR drives are not suitable for NAS use and can give you issues with RAID.

Thank you for the heads up. WD Golds are CMR.

nicolaidenmark · January 20, 2022

Does anyone have suggestions for HW for a Plex Media Server which must be able to transcode 4K fluently at high bitrate?

Friend has recommended Supermicro parts but those are scarce and expensive in Denmark. Reliability is everything and I want a minimum of 8or 10 bays (way over kill atm but would use at least 2 discs redundancy and my collection of lossless 4K movies continue to grow.

Plex tone mapping from HDR to SDR is needed as well, so need a decent GPU as well.