Help!!

I assume you already found the answer by now but when you set up a new Synology drive, when it talks about "losing everything on the drive", it means the drive you just installed in the Synology and are about to set up. To me it seems lame for them to warn you about this when you are setting up the drive FOR THE FIRST TIME but they warn you that you are about to delete... absolutely nothing. Nothing that is unless you decide to take a drive out of something else and put it in the Synology. Then all the warnings would be justified.

The install process involves connecting to the drive from your Mac (or other computer) and installing the DSM (Disk Station Manager) software over the network. The first step is to wipe the drive you just put in the DS. The second step is to install the OS (DSM). The third step is to set up shared folders, etc. Once you have done these 3 things, you can start copying files to the DS from your computer either manually or using Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, Crashplan or other automated backup software. I use Time Machine but I never rely on it as my only copy. I also use Crashplan and there have been more than one occasion where if it wasn't for CP, my data would have been gone for good!