I’m looking for advice on how to get started with a NAS, probably Synology since it’s beginner friendly and often well recommended. I’m thinking of a 2 bay case with 2x4TB HDDs in RAID1 setup. What do I have to look out for in a device to get the best bang for my bucks?

My use case:

I have various documents, software projects, family pictures, videos that I want to store on something more reliable than a bunch of internal/external HDDs or USB sticks. I have a full *arr stack and jellyfin but I want to move these to my “server” laptop and docker once NAS is setup, and then host the files on it. For projects I might want to self-host gitea down the line.

Some more specific questions:

  1. if I go with a 2 bay NAS case, can i also connect my old external drive to it as a separate drive, can they handle USB3 drives? Will it require reformatting since it was used on windows so far?
  2. are there any issues with connecting docker drives volumes to a NAS?
  3. noise issues - does the NAS itself make a noticeable amount of noise or is it just the drives?
  4. whats the life expectancy of a NAS? if it dies, can I just plug the drives into a new one?
  5. does syncthing work well with a NAS or is there a better way of syncing local files to the NAS for backup?

Sorry for the question dump, just wanted to cover as many possible issues as possible 😅

  • Oliver Busch
    2•9 months ago

    @Kaldo
    Syno DS224+. Good bang vs. buck. Decent speed, decent features (iGPU, Docker, VMs).
    My only gripe(s): only 2 USB ports, no built-in 2.5 GbE (possible via USB and 3rd party driver) and Synology’s limited list of “approved” HDDs.

    1. Yes. If your HDD is formatted as NTFS or exFAT, no reformat _should_ be necessary.
    2. What do you mean by docker drives?
    3. Mainly the drives.
    4. My DS216+II runs 24/7 for 7 years now without hiccup (but, obvisously, YMMV). DSM supports drive migration.
    • KaldoOP
      2•9 months ago

      gummibando@mastodon.social
      Sorry, with ‘docker drives’ I meant ‘docker volumes or bind mounts’. I dont have a lot of experience with it yet so I’m not sure if I’m going to run into problems by mapping them directly to a NAS, or if I should have local copies of data and then rsync / syncthing them into the NAS. I heard you can theoretically even run docker on the NAS but not sure if that’s a good idea in terms of its longevity or performance.

      Is the list of “approved HDDs” just a marketing/support thing or does it actually affect performance?

      Thanks for the answers! The DS2xx series looks like something I could start with. DS223 is a bit cheaper and has 3 USB ports so that could be useful, I’d guess I don’t need to focus on performance since it’s mostly just for personal data storage and not some intensive professional work.

      • @atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1•9 months ago

        I dont have a lot of experience with it yet so I’m not sure if I’m going to run into problems by mapping them directly to a NAS, or if I should have local copies of data and then rsync / syncthing them into the NAS.

        I don’t know Synology specifically but you can generally NFS mount from the NAS to a local folder and mount that as a volume in Docker. I do it all the time - works fine except sometimes for databases which prefer local filesystems (locking files over NFS is complex).

      • Oliver Busch
        0•9 months ago

        @Kaldo It’s a support thing. Maybe even consider Syno’s “own” HAT3300 HDDs. 4TB has an ok price, at least where I live.

        You can run Docker on a Syno NAS via DSMs Container Manager package perfectly fine, as I do.

        Keep in mind, the DS233 has an ARM CPU with less “grunt” vs. the 224+'s Intel CPU and can not be expanded beyond the soldered-on 2 GB RAM.
        But, while it has been a backup device/test mule for years now, I used to run Docker containers on the DS216+II even with a meager 1 GB of RAM.

        • KaldoOP
          1•9 months ago

          Could be a regional thing but Synology HDDs are around 30% more expensive than ‘normal’ WD/Seagate/Toshiba that I’m seeing at first glance. Maybe it does make it up for quality and longevity but afaik HDDs are pretty durable if they are maintained well, and I imagine them being in RAID1 should be good enough security measure?

          Considering the price of the diskstation itself it’s all quickly adding up to a price of a standalone PC so i’m trying to keep it simple since it’s for a relatively low performance environment.

    • AshyEnglish
      1•9 months ago

      My only gripe(s): only 2 USB ports

      I have a DS2422+ and even that only has 2 USB ports. But you can expand them with a USB-hub. I had 5 external drives connected over a single port without issues.

      Synology’s limited list of “approved” HDDs.

      You can use this script and put it as a scheudeled task “on boot”. It will automatically add all your harddrives to the list of verified drives, disabling all warnings and errors with it.