Synology Died After 10 years, What Next?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Guys, my Synology DS1812+ died yesterday. It’s what I used as a backup. I still have a QNAP for storage, but it’s time to rethink my storage situation. 
 

I’d love to know what you guys are using, what you recommend, or what you’ve seen that looks interesting. 
 

I’m considering TrueNAS, but am also very open to ideas. 
 

https://www.truenas.com/systems-overview/

[Priaptor]

2 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys, my Synology DS1812+ died yesterday. It’s what I used as a backup. I still have a QNAP for storage, but it’s time to rethink my storage situation. 
 

I’d love to know what you guys are using, what you recommend, or what you’ve seen that looks interesting. 
 

I’m considering TrueNAS, but am also very open to ideas. 
 

https://www.truenas.com/systems-overview/

Chris, it depends upon your wants and needs.

 

IF your storage device needs be in the listening room, you may want to look at something like the QNAP TS-i410x (TS-i410X | Wide temperature & fanless 10GbE industrial NAS for harsh environments. Long-term availability. | QNAP (US)) which I am currently using, has two 10GbE ports built in and is totally silent and very small.  A more expensive solution is the QNAP TS-h1290FX, an all flash solution, super fast and very quiet and can be used for a multitude of services way beyond just storage (TS-h1290FX | Powerful 12-bay U.2 NVMe/ SATA all-flash NAS, featuring ZFS-based storage and 25GbE connectivity, ideal for office environments, collaborative 4K/8K video editing, and file sharing (Supports QuTS hero or QTS system) | QNAP (US))

 

The problem with the TS-i410X is that depsite it's incredible speed, light weight, small size and silent operation, it is not powerful enough to run ROON as a more powerful NAS is.  

 

I gave up on Synology myself.  I am not familiar with TrueNas but now have QNAPs in my Montana and Florida homes. I have had failures with my Synology (had 3 synology NAS in the past) in the past and my last Synology, unfortuantely, in order to get the speed advertised with a 10GbE port was very loud and the actually specs hidden in the fine print and only realized after install of the card which automatically sets fan speed to high. Even though my NAS wasn't occupying a space in my listening room its noise was just too loud for everything other than an industrial closet. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Priaptor said:

Chris, it depends upon your wants and needs.

 

IF your storage device needs be in the listening room, you may want to look at something like the QNAP TS-i410x (TS-i410X | Wide temperature & fanless 10GbE industrial NAS for harsh environments. Long-term availability. | QNAP (US)) which I am currently using, has two 10GbE ports built in and is totally silent and very small.  A more expensive solution is the QNAP TS-h1290FX, an all flash solution, super fast and very quiet and can be used for a multitude of services way beyond just storage (TS-h1290FX | Powerful 12-bay U.2 NVMe/ SATA all-flash NAS, featuring ZFS-based storage and 25GbE connectivity, ideal for office environments, collaborative 4K/8K video editing, and file sharing (Supports QuTS hero or QTS system) | QNAP (US))

 

The problem with the TS-i410X is that depsite it's incredible speed, light weight, small size and silent operation, it is not powerful enough to run ROON as a more powerful NAS is.  

 

I gave up on Synology myself.  I am not familiar with TrueNas but now have QNAPs in my Montana and Florida homes. I have had failures with my Synology (had 3 synology NAS in the past) in the past and my last Synology, unfortuantely, in order to get the speed advertised with a 10GbE port was very loud and the actually specs hidden in the fine print and only realized after install of the card which automatically sets fan speed to high. Even though my NAS wasn't occupying a space in my listening room its noise was just too loud for everything other than an industrial closet. 

 

Hi @Priaptor, great to hear from you. Thanks for the reccomendations. I'm a big fan of QNAP and have been treated well by QNAP support over the years. That's important to me, as I'm sure it is to you. Everything works great, until it doesn't :~)

 

I should've been a bit more specific. I can place this NAS anywhere in the house. I have fiber running from the top to the bottom of the place, and would like to take advantage of 10Gbe. I've been playing some huge files lately, where each one is 3-8GB, and transferring albums that are 60GB. Transferring albums that large can take time, but it isn't the end of the world even though I'm impatient. Playing huge files needs to happen immediately.  

 

I've been kicking around the idea of storing all the huge files locally, but I really don't like multiple copies unless they are backups. Plus, NVMe terabytes in Mac laptops are expensive and not upgradable. 

 

I'm currently using a little over 16TB, and will need much more space as I add 12 channel DXD albums and other multichannel albums. That puts the very cool TS-i410X out of the running as it only has four drives slots. The TS-h1290FX looks amazing. I'm goign to start researching that one now. Thanks again!

 

Out of curiosity, are you synchronizing your QNAPs in the two location?

[The Computer Audiophile]

@bobfa any thoughts on this? I know you and I discussed storage a little the other day, but I didn't know at the time my Synology was about to die :~)

[DuckToller]

@The Computer Audiophile

How big is your interest to safe money on the backup installation (in comparison to QNAP) providing similar performance or better without the hardware specific limitations?
I am running UNRAID since a couple of years and I am happy with what I got so far ( we may have different  needs ?)
- the software sits on usb stick and runs entirely from RAM.
- You can configure your hardware to your prefrence, i.e the type of network cards or a NVME cache

- you've got dockers for the software you want to run in addition.
- You could Run XFS, ZFS or Btrfs as filesytem
- In fact, if your hardware dies, just migrate your disks and the stick to new hardware and you are all set.
- I haven't lost a single disk in yet in 8 years, thus upgraded 8 or10, including the parity disks.

 

Once setup,  it is a piece of cake, depending on the demands you you have. As pure backup perhaps a breeze ;-)

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

@The Computer Audiophile

How big is your interest to safe money on the backup installation (in comparison to QNAP) providing similar performance or better without the hardware specific limitations?
I am running UNRAID since a couple of years and I am happy with what I got so far ( we may have different  needs ?)
- the software sits on usb stick and runs entirely from RAM.
- You can configure your hardware to your prefrence, i.e the type of network cards or a NVME cache

- you've got dockers for the software you want to run in addition.
- You could Run XFS, ZFS or Btrfs as filesytem
- In fact, if your hardware dies, just migrate your disks and the stick to new hardware and you are all set.
- I haven't lost a single disk in yet in 8 years, thus upgraded 8 or10, including the parity disks.

 

Once setup,  it is a piece of cake, depending on the demands you you have. As pure backup perhaps a breeze ;-)

Hi Tom, I'm thinking about replacing the existing QNAP and turning that into the backup. 

 

I'd prefer not to go crazy on this NAS, but I'm keeping an open mind on both the high and low ends. 

 

I will check out UNRAID. I haven't look at the project in many years. 

[bobfa]

Chris,

 

I am sort of re-working my strategy here.  I am migrating to a single music playback computer (other than testing). That computer is a M1 Mac mini with an OWC external storage device.  The music is on the OWC drives and is being synced to the NAS for backup.

 

I am adapting my systems to backup the data from all the computers in the house to iDrive remotely.  I am also looking at iDrive for internal backups like we used to do with crash plan.  I am not sure what software I will use yet.  

 

 

The local main backup is a Synology DS 1019+ with five 8TB drives and one cache SSD.  I am going back to 2.5in portable backup drives for the Safe Deposit Box.

 

I have somewhere around 15TB of backup for all of us in the family.

 

We are also syncing data between two NAS devices, mine in Illinois and another one in Washington.  (mostly backup of their data)

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

@bobfa What do you think of the OWC SoftRAID?

[bobfa]

Chris,

 

I know a couple of folks that have used SoftRAID , but I have not tried it myself.  I have an OWC Thunderbay 8 that I intended to use for that.  I have just kept the status quo with a NAS.  My strategy is in flux, as I mentioned before.  I want a 3-2-1 backup strategy working for me all the time with an additional static offsite backup such as an online cold storage system or the Safe Deposit Box.

 

Reliable automation is my tripping point.

 

I think I have finally solved the offsite backup with iDrive running on six machines.  Getting the NAS to be the local backup and a possible bridge to another outside service still sees to me to be simpler. 

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

Chris, I switched to TrueNas from the iosafe device running Synology DSM basically for ZFS. I have a MiniXL device. If there is one thing I don't like it's that running Minimserver on it is a pain in the ass. I am thinking about switching it to TureNAS Scale which runs on an architecture more amenable to running Minimserver. I however don't have the knowledge to get Minimserver running on that if there would be problems.

 

I finally made a post about it there if you want to follow it Chris.

 

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/minimserver-on-truenas-scale.106993/

[jcbenten]

5 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

"... The TS-h1290FX looks amazing. I'm goign to start researching that one now. Thanks again!"

...

I get QNAP marketing as I have an older 453Pro so I went looking for this as I did not remember it...Amazon...go figure

[Jud]

Thoughts:

 

- TrueNAS Scale is a great idea.  It's Ubuntu (edit: sorry, Debian)+TrueNAS, which gives you access to two active communities with any questions. I think that would be preferable to something like OWC SoftRAID, which is not as widely adopted nor does it have the reputation and pedigree for ironclad operation that TrueNAS/ZFS does.

 

- TrueNAS Scale also gives you the option of rolling your own storage solution rather than being locked in to a vendor's. With as much storage and possible expansion as you may be needing, I have a feeling that will be an important consideration.

[cjf]

I've been using a TrueNas Mini for like 7 years now and have been very happy with its performance and reliability. I did have to replace a Motherboard on it about 5 yrs ago due to a known hardware issue on their part but they replaced it for Free. It was a straightforward swap but I am an IT guy so take that FWIW. Given its current age I do have that thought on occasion when it will go gills up for good but my backup strategy is sound in case it does, so I'm not too concerned. 

 

My unit is pretty small in terms of its storage capacity (4TB ...4x1TB drives) but its got 32gb of RAM and shows very little CPU load no matter what I do. I've been running the same Western Digital "Red" drives since day one. They work very well.

 

All in all, no complaints from me on this unit and I would recommend it to anyone given my own experience.

[Priaptor]

20 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

Hi @Priaptor, great to hear from you. Thanks for the reccomendations. I'm a big fan of QNAP and have been treated well by QNAP support over the years. That's important to me, as I'm sure it is to you. Everything works great, until it doesn't :~)

 

I should've been a bit more specific. I can place this NAS anywhere in the house. I have fiber running from the top to the bottom of the place, and would like to take advantage of 10Gbe. I've been playing some huge files lately, where each one is 3-8GB, and transferring albums that are 60GB. Transferring albums that large can take time, but it isn't the end of the world even though I'm impatient. Playing huge files needs to happen immediately.  

 

I've been kicking around the idea of storing all the huge files locally, but I really don't like multiple copies unless they are backups. Plus, NVMe terabytes in Mac laptops are expensive and not upgradable. 

 

I'm currently using a little over 16TB, and will need much more space as I add 12 channel DXD albums and other multichannel albums. That puts the very cool TS-i410X out of the running as it only has four drives slots. The TS-h1290FX looks amazing. I'm goign to start researching that one now. Thanks again!

 

Out of curiosity, are you synchronizing your QNAPs in the two location?

I do syncrhonize between two locations without a hitch.

 

If you have a rack you may want to look at QNAP flash based NAS, very similar to the TS-H1290FX.  

[davide256]

FWIW the newer generation WD Red Pro do perform appreciably faster than the standard WD Red. Size and speed became a problem for me when I was dabbling with

PGGB 768/24 WAV files that tipped the scales at ~6GB an album. But the main choke point was always the GigE limit of the streamer /NAS which meant wait time for a full

album buffer. Have lacked incentive to upgrade to a NAS with 2.5/10GigE as the streamer would still be a choke point, wondering if what you use has bigger

than a GigE port?

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, davide256 said:

FWIW the newer generation WD Red Pro do perform appreciably faster than the standard WD Red. Size and speed became a problem for me when I was dabbling with

PGGB 768/24 WAV files that tipped the scales at ~6GB an album. But the main choke point was always the GigE limit of the streamer /NAS which meant wait time for a full

album buffer. Have lacked incentive to upgrade to a NAS with 2.5/10GigE as the streamer would still be a choke point, wondering if what you use has bigger

than a GigE port?

I can do 10GBe on my QNAP and CAPS Twenty computer. Thinking about testing 10GBe on my Mac, but Merging technologies hasn't certified it to work with Ravenna. 

[cjf]

If using 10GigE from end to end, it would be an interesting experiment to enable Jumbo Frames to see if it makes any worth while differences, for better or worse, in terms of large file load times and or perceived SQ.

 

This of course would be dependent on all hardware involved from NAS to DAC supporting or knowing what "Jumbo Frames" are and how to handle them when they arrive...Heh.

 

 

[AudioDoctor]

12 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I can do 10GBe on my QNAP and CAPS Twenty computer. Thinking about testing 10GBe on my Mac, but Merging technologies hasn't certified it to work with Ravenna. 

 

Are you using a 10G card that came with the motherboard in your CAPS, or are you using some other NIC?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Just now, AudioDoctor said:

 

Are you using a 10G card that came with the motherboard in your CPAS, or are you using some other NIC?

The one that came with it. 

[ericuco]

@The Computer Audiophile thanks for starting this discussion. I have a much simpler NAS setup and even much less knowledge on this subject but thought it might be helpful to share what I been using for several years now in managing my music library.

 

My NAS is a single bay Synology with a 2TB drive and an attached USB drive that I use to backup the NAS drive. I actually have two USB drives where one is connected to the NAS for backup purposes and the other resides in a deposit box at the bank for offsite storage. I swap out the USB drives every few months.

 

The initial reason for this approach allowed me to download music or rip CD's using my personal/work Win-based laptop and then easily copy the files to the NAS where they could be accessed by my music server (Linux running HQP and/or Roon). As such, I have 3 copies of my music (laptop, NAS, USB drive).

 

Since I have discovered Qobuz, I find that I don't buy much music these days because I can just stream using Qobuz where I can't tell any difference in SQ or at least any appreciable difference. For years, I would never consider buying a movie when I can generally find it on Netflix, etc. so this is pretty much the same now with music.

 

With my NAS and HDD approaching 10 years, I have been thinking about replacing both the NAS and HDD so this thread has been good to listen to others and what they are doing or considering. The move to an attached USB HDD would be a cheap way to go, but I still very occasionally buy music and want to be able to easy copy the files from Win computer to Linux computer so as of now still looking to go with the NAS route. In any case, thanks for sanity check.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, ericuco said:

The move to an attached USB HDD would be a cheap way to go, but I still very occasionally buy music and want to be able to easy copy the files from Win computer to Linux computer

 

I sync between Windows and Mac so I don't offhand know what the best sync software to keep Linux and Windows files synchronized is, but I'm sure there must be choices.  Might well be a lot cheaper than a new NAS.

[ericuco]

2 hours ago, Jud said:

 

I sync between Windows and Mac so I don't offhand know what the best sync software to keep Linux and Windows files synchronized is, but I'm sure there must be choices.  Might well be a lot cheaper than a new NAS.

 
Thanks @Jud, this got me exploring other options. 
 

As mentioned, I rarely buy new music, in favor of streaming, so I don’t need to sync Windows to Linux. Instead, I can just use FTP via FileZilla which I have already tested.  So current plan is just use an external USB drive for music files.  As a backup, I can attach a second USB drive to the Linux computer and use “cp” command to do periodic backups between drives. I realize this is all a bit manual but is only needed periodically.

[jabbr]

On 1/16/2023 at 7:09 PM, Jud said:

Thoughts:

 

- TrueNAS Scale is a great idea.  It's Ubuntu (edit: sorry, Debian)+TrueNAS, which gives you access to two active communities with any questions. I think that would be preferable to something like OWC SoftRAID, which is not as widely adopted nor does it have the reputation and pedigree for ironclad operation that TrueNAS/ZFS does.

 

- TrueNAS Scale also gives you the option of rolling your own storage solution rather than being locked in to a vendor's. With as much storage and possible expansion as you may be needing, I have a feeling that will be an important consideration.

 

I once had a hardware RAID which died and used a proprietary filesystem. I was locked into buying another board to access my data. What if the vendor goes out of business or doesn't make the board anymore, or changes the onboard format? Ever since then I want nothing to do with vendor specific RAID.

 

With TrueNAS (and other NAS that use OpenZFS) your hardware could die and you can literally plop the drives into other hardware that runs OpenZFS. You can also upgrade storage space by removing one drive of a mirror or RAID and then installing another, letting it heal/resilver, and then replacing the other drive and voila!

 

QNAP business class uses ZFS also so the vendor choice is moot regarding this issue. 

 

Synology typically uses BTRFS which is a ZFS 'competitor' on Linux, so its a reasonable option though I haven't used it. Linux likely will be around a long time ;)

[jabbr]

On 1/19/2023 at 6:11 PM, ericuco said:

 

My NAS is a single bay Synology with a 2TB drive and an attached USB drive that I use to backup the NAS drive. I actually have two USB drives where one is connected to the NAS for backup purposes and the other resides in a deposit box at the bank for offsite storage. I swap out the USB drives every few months.

Synology will have rsync installed, and that's an easy way to update an external USB drive.

 

I don't know how frequently Synology checks the filesystem for errors (bitrot) but be sure to check before syncing a USB drive because you might propagate errors that way, alternatively keep your drive as a mirror and when you check, you can also --repair the mirror (hence the name resilver). Because checksums are saved, then it can tell which copy of the mirror is the good copy.