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Live Long and Prosper

67.245.6.88
Posted on April 11, 2021 at 05:53:42
Bob_C
Audiophile

Posts: 2667
Location: NY
Joined: July 31, 2000



Since we talk a lot about storage here I wanted to talk a little bit about a good storage story. I've been running a Synology DS1511+ for about 9 1/2 years. I looked at my raid health statistics yesterday and noticed that my drives (2 parity drives for additional redundancy) have been in this set running for 83,229 hours, Approximately 9 1/2 years. The drives are 3 TB Hitachi HGST which I have always found to be very reliable, as this set shows. Two of the drive have only 76,336 hrs as I did have an early 2 drive failure less than a years after the original installation of the NAS. I was still able to do a manual back up to USB of all the data add 2 new drives and create a new raid. This is the set that is currently running 24/7 and still going strong. This unit is used for Mixed storage mostly music, and some video, serving a home network.

What are your good storage stories?

 

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RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 11, 2021 at 14:28:22
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46280
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
 I've been running the 4 disk bay Synology DS918+ NAS for 3 years with no issues at all. I also have the even smaller 2-bay DS718+ strictly for music, not that that was necessary as I've run the DS918+ for mixed use before I got the 2-bay NAS.

These all have 4TB WD "Red" NAS disks installed and I deliberately made sure to buy NAS models with Intel CPU's because they will run Roon Core. The newer product line that use AMD will as well.

I also have an 8TB external USB disk on the 4-bay NAS for backup. The NAS backs itself up nightly to the external 8TB USB disk. I don't recall how I formatted that disk! The goal is to be able to disconnect the external disk from the NAS and have access to all of its data by attaching it to a Windows PC, Mac, or Linux host. If the NAS controller (motherboard) or PSU die, I still want immediate access to my data w/o having to repair the NAS. How is your external disk formatted?




 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 11, 2021 at 17:22:20
pictureguy
Audiophile

Posts: 22597
Location: SoCal
Joined: October 19, 2008
 RAID 5?


Too much is never enough

 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 11, 2021 at 22:20:35
Bob_C
Audiophile

Posts: 2667
Location: NY
Joined: July 31, 2000
 "How is your external disk formatted?"

I use NTFS which is compatible. The reds are good drives also. I have other Synology units, and also prefer the Intel's, but run a separate NUC running Roon Rock.

 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 12, 2021 at 08:25:43
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46280
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
RAID 5 on the 4-bay NAS

RAID 1 on the 2-bay NAS

Each NAS backs itself up nightly to an external USB disk.


 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 12, 2021 at 08:43:13
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46280
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
 "I use NTFS which is compatible."

Interesting. How did you format NTFS because as best I can tell, Synology DSM does not offer NTFS formatting. Did you format your external disk on a Windows PC? I could TRY that but I would have to see if it can be done from Windows 10 in a virtual machine on my Mac. I know that Mac will read NTFS but cannot write NTFS (unless a 3rd party piece of software is installed).

I didn't know that Synology DSM could backup to NTFS. Maybe it can, but just can't format the disk NTFS.... possibly licensing fee issues with MS ??

I checked my external disk this morning and I have it formatted EXT4 which is fully compatible on Linux systems, but not natively on Mac w/o a third-party piece of software. Not sure why I chose EXT4 over FAT32 or EXFAT. It might have to do with supported characters in the files to be backed up as FAT32 or EXFAT might choke on some of my files.

I have another smaller capacity external USB disk stored away so I might play with different formatting on it for use with the Synology NAS rather than experimenting and blowing away the formatting on the existing 8TB external backup disk.

Synology DSM: Control Panel > External Devices:




 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 12, 2021 at 10:31:51
pictureguy
Audiophile

Posts: 22597
Location: SoCal
Joined: October 19, 2008
 So, anything SHORT of Nuclear War and you're good to go! An expensive but near-bulletproof solution.
Too much is never enough

 

I also use the EXT4 file format .................., posted on April 12, 2021 at 10:48:34
Cut-Throat
Audiophile

Posts: 18285
Location: Minneapolis - St.Paul Area
Joined: September 2, 2000
Contributor
  Since: May 16, 2021



But use the Hybrid SHR RAID system of Synology.



 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 12, 2021 at 12:47:19
Bob_C
Audiophile

Posts: 2667
Location: NY
Joined: July 31, 2000
 "How did you format NTFS"

Yes I format the USB drives in a Win PC.

"Synology NAS recognizes the following formats: Btrfs, ext3, ext4, FAT32, exFAT, HFS, HFS Plus, and NTFS. Any unrecognized external drive will have to be formatted first before being used on the system."

 

RE: Live Long and Prosper, posted on April 12, 2021 at 18:43:11
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46280
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
 Good to know, thanks. I now realize why I chose EXT4 3 years ago when I setup my backup disk. It works!

I tried exFAT and FAT32 earlier today and about 30 minutes into the backup it chokes and halts. I'm not sure why as I didn't investigate further but it might be certain unsupported characters in FAT32 and EXFAT.

As soon as I went back to the EXT4 format on the external disk, the backup ran flawlessly to completion. But... since Mac can't read EXT4 I'll have to run a Linux VM on my Mac to recover anything off the backup disk. The other option is an add-on driver for the Mac.

EXT4 works for me





 

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