NAS - qnap vs synology?

[RamGuy]

I can't say much about Synology but I have been using a Qnap TS-459 Pro with 4x Western Digital RE4 2TB hard drives in RAID5 and it didn't preform as well as I had hoped.

I have both Windows and Mac machines and both struggled with high delay on the network storage (it's not related to wireless connection as it did occur on my desktops running CAT7 cabling.) and as we've got a Netgear SRX5308 Enterprise / Firewall router I highly doubt it had anything to do with the router struggling with the data. Sometimes it could take several minutes just to get connected to the NAS in the first place which I find rather odd with such good preforming server grade hard drives and such an expensive and supposedly good preforming NAS device.

I also struggled a lot with different features like TimeMachine Backup which supposedly would natively support my MacBook Pro's TimeMachine features which it didn't. My notebooks simply refused to backup to the TS-459 and this problem occur with several different firmwares.


After a while though the entire thing went loopy, I could change the configuration but the NAS would simply refuse to save them, suddenly it couldn't update the firmware nor reset back to factory default settings so now I've done a RMA on it and as lucky that I' am I live in Norway so now I'm in a situation whereas I can select whatever NAS-device available form the store I bought it for the same price no matter if it's Qnap, Synology, Cisco or whatever brand I wish that the store has to offer.

But this makes we want to reconsider going Qnap ones more, the reason why I had so much trouble with my TS-459 Pro might have been because it was faulty from day one but I can't help the feeling that not all these rather expensive NAS devices actually preform as good as they should for the price.


Now I'm considering whether I should pick up another NAS device, and which or if I should simply put my hard drives into my desktop computer and turning it into a file server and buy myself a Mac Mini and use that as iTunes server and TimeMachine backup. Is there any NAS device that actually can run HFS+ filesystem or something like ZFS? I just have the feeling that might work better than EXT3 and EXT4 filesystems that Qnap and Synology sticks to.

 

[Goldenbear]

...My main concern would be with running out of room. Some of the manufacturers are looking to allowing 3TB drives with firmware updates, but if you have a RAID 1 setup you'd currently be limited to ~4TB (with a 4 bay setup using 4x2TB drives). Does anybody have any comments on ease of expansion if one were to run out of room in a few years?

So let's say you do a Raid 1 + 0 in a 4 bay NAS, giving you 4TB of storage. The drives will set you back under $300 right now.

In a few years, I suspect you will be able to buy four 4TB drives for $300, giving you 8TB of storage. I wouldn't worry about running out of room.

...But this makes we want to reconsider going Qnap ones more, the reason why I had so much trouble with my TS-459 Pro might have been because it was faulty from day one but I can't help the feeling that not all these rather expensive NAS devices actually preform as good as they should for the price.


Now I'm considering whether I should pick up another NAS device, and which or if I should simply put my hard drives into my desktop computer and turning it into a file server and buy myself a Mac Mini and use that as iTunes server and TimeMachine backup. Is there any NAS device that actually can run HFS+ filesystem or something like ZFS? I just have the feeling that might work better than EXT3 and EXT4 filesystems that Qnap and Synology sticks to.

I suspect you simply got a bad unit, as I've read many happy stories about the TS-459 Pro. All the NAS units I've seen so far seem to be running Linux, which is why they use the EXT3/4 file system. Someone else may have a better idea, but I would guess that you'd have to host the Raid on a Mac if you want to use HFS+. The only problem with that is that I haven't seen a decent (let alone full-featured) Raid software that runs under OS X.

I don't know of any consumer-oriented NAS that supports ZFS, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

[r0k]

I've owned 2 Buffalo and 1 Iomega NAS drives. I also have a Time Capsule. If I had bought a "quality" unit in the first place I would have wound up saving a lot of time and trouble.

My Buffalo units won't power back on after even the most brief power failure, which occurs pretty frequently around here. The same is true for Iomega but the unit also has a bad fan that makes almost as much noise as a Jumbo Jet. My 500 GB first gen Time Capsule power supply died while Apple replaced it for free, I lost all the data. I tried Seagate briefly but one of my requirements is it has to support ftp so my network scanner can put files on the NAS. The Seagate ftp feature requires a $19 monthly subscription. I took the thing back and vowed to never consider Seagate NAS again. I've grown tired of all these "gimp" NAS and decided to shop for something better.

I went to Microcenter to take a look at a $700 diskless 5 bay Drobo and while I was there I decided to make one more effort to determine if a "lower end" drive could meet my needs. I called Buffalo tech support to ask if the unit would power back on after a power failure. I spent 15 minutes on hold before giving up. I have a LaCie firewire external drive on my Macbook and I'm delighted with it. When I noticed LaCie NAS at Microcenter, I called LaCie to ask the same question. They said no, but they asked me to hold on a minute while the tested the unit they had in front of them. It came back on after a power interruption. Total time on the phone with LaCie was 11 minutes and I got my answer. That was good enough for me. In LaCie I had found a company that offered a quality product and first rate support at a mid price point between the lowball entries from Seagate, WD, Buffalo and the high end entries from Synology, Drobo and QNAP.

I've seen a couple of claims in this thread that Apple doesn't sell NAS. This is mistaken. They sell 2. An Airport Extreme Base Station can share multiple USB drives when used with a powered hub. A Time Machine is Apple's main entry in the NAS space and they have been recently upgraded to 2GB and 3GB models.

 

[marc.garcia]

Hi there,


I've been a QNAP user for several years, and the fact that I recently started moving on to the Mac ecosystem last year, together with some noticeable disappointments have made me raise again my interest in storage solutions and not precisely Qnap based.

I hope nobody minds the extension of my post that I foresee at this point (many things come to mind as I go):

First of all: I hope Synology does not incorporate a deadly feature like the so called System Restore http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=19012 . Many users, me myself included, have suffered from it. Don't want to discuss whether or not qnap is fully responsible for this, or half qnap the rest of the users, etc but the fact is that after many complains, a deadly "feature" like system restore is still placed in a hierarchical level 0 position in the admin interface speaks for itself, doesn't it? this time I learnt why a RAID system is not a backup in itself (I should call myself iDiot )

ok, that said, what is it that I'm looking for after my qnap experience? my wish list is to be found next, but before I get started I would like to also raise two important points:

a) why now buying a fully fledged mac mini with a thunderbolt RAID storage instead of a linux based NAS when you are a convinced Mac user?
b) Apple has recently made a huge move towards cloud hosting all. iCloud, iTunes Match, etc. Dropbox is quite big in town as well… plus, our media has also moved on to the HD world, meaning that storing it on-site represents a huge demand. See more here: http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

finally, what I think is not well implemented in my existing qnap (a ts-239 pro for the record):

- I expect my home storage to be always-on: don't want to bother turning it on when I need it. boting up my qnap takes ages. Of course I could possibly mitigate this by enabling WOL and turn it on before I need it, but this would put off the rest of the members of my family. Specially my wife who simply can't stand wasting time on technology. She is a real end-user!!! Is your system always on? if so, read on…

- Real stand-by mode: my qnap won't properly stay in stand-by mode. With a few proprietary 3rd party qnap apps enabled (the so called qpkg's), my NAS will exit stand-by mode around 15 times per day. This means my disks are spinning up and down unnecessarily. This has of course an effect on the lifespan of the disks. Qnap support has been working remotely on my NAS for over 2 months now and they are still working on it...

- Powerful download station: among the apps that are constantly bugging my NAS, linux web based implementation of jdownloader (pyload) is one of them. It took me a while to set it up before somebody put together a pyload qpkg… It works all right, but if you expect it to easily allow you to do things like Click'n'Load, you are dead wrong. I've managed to get this working, but I've needed lots of reading. In general, running Apps on your NAS can be quite complicated unless somebody does not packed them into a native PKG; I expect synology to have something like qnap's qpkgs.

- Full HFP+ support. Are you 100% sure that EXT4 won't generate any conflict with HFP+ in the long run? not that I know anything about this at all, but I don't want to imagine I ending up with a corrupted iPhoto Library…

- Mac ecosystem friendly player: Airplay support would be a must for me. Qnap implementation of iTunes is poor. I can't even stream music to my AppleTV… I expect my server to easily stream media content to my Apple TV. Streaming it to an iPad (which I don't know yet) so i can bounce it off to the TV by mirroring its screen sounds extremely inefficient and, unless wireless networks don't considerably leap forward, a no go for Full HD content.

- Power consumption: Take a look at this article if you have the time http://www.design4s.com/?p=254 I may point the author to this thread. I've discovered his website investigating on power consumption while typing this response… looks interesting I must say. Ok, my point; qnap indicates 20W of power consumption of my NAS when idle. Apple seems to reach 10W on the server. Both approaches, linux based NAS or Apple Mac Mini seem to do just fine. The fact that the Mac Mini may wake up faster can make it win some points.

On another note, in the wireless century, how do you guys deal with your >50GB (100GB maybe?) iPhoto Library sitting on your NAS and intending to access it from your MacBook from the living room when 802.11n can't even reach 8MBps nowadays (see http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/64-5-ghz-dn)? What will happen if two users access the same library concurrently? Same goes for Aperture and the rest, and of course for TimeMachine backup. Apple's own TimeCapsule won't do any better that your Synology NAS + a powerful 802.11n router though since it also has to suffer the same shortcomings as the rest of the existing wireless routers?

Have you considered setting up a real mac mini and access it over remote desktop? I've been looking into this for a while… I could keep all my data on the mini and access it over remote desktop. This way, I would avoid the wireless chocking on large files. The biggest drawback that I see is probably TimeMachine backups. I have no idea whether or not the mini can act as a time machine server nor do I know how well it would auto-mount external (?thunderbolt) RAID drives when leaving the stand-by state…. this latter sounds like quite a challenge.

Last but not least, though I think that some other "feature requests" will soon come to mind, investing on apple is like buying shares in the stock market. When you sell them you can get quite a sum of money back.

I look forward to your responses. Apologies for the extension of my response.

Regards,

M

 

[strydr]

Synology 1511+ user

No exp. with the qnap units, but I bought a DS1511+ and loaded 5 1TB drives in it. Using Synology's Hybrid Raid, I get 3.87TB of storage. The unit is very quiet, even when moving lots of files to it. I get wired speeds (using the ports on a Airport base station) of 50-80MB/s, and around 8MB/s wireless. It also is running Plex media server, and serving to all the devices in my house (not at the same time). The web interface is very usable, and the ios apps are nice too.

All in all, I am more than satisfied with my purchase. My roommate likes it soo much, he just bought a DS1511+ too.

 

[r0k]

I posted in June '11 saying I had good luck with a LaCie NAS. I did until this past December when a firmware update, which should have been a non-event, landed me with a freshly factory reset NAS! I contacted LaCie for support only to find they are closed on weekends. I later found out all my files were safe in a hidden backup folder under an admin account but that didn't help me on Saturday morning when I had to make a decision to ensure the safety of my data which was suddenly down to a mere one copy!

That was enough to cure me of being penny wise and pound foolish. I ordered a Synology DS212J and a WD "green" drive to go inside that same morning. My reasoning that was even if the LaCie NS2 turned out to be fine, I never again wanted to be in a situation where I might have to send my data away with a broken NAS for repairs. I had already lost everything when my first gen Apple TC died. On LaCie's web site, they were offering "recovery" service for $400 and up. No thanks. I want my data on my own SATA HDD, never to leave my house. The cost of the 212J is roughly triple that of the LaCie NS2. I got the NS2 for $129 and the DS212J costs $199 plus another $150 or so for at least one 2TB drive. My 212J has two bays so I can add a second drive when I get a chance. It uses 16 watts running and 6 watts standby. That's like a night light.

The Intel based Synology + series drives are a lot faster than the ARM based J series and because they are Intel based I could run Plex if I wanted to. But the cost is a lot higher at around $600 for the 411+ plus the cost of drives to go inside, and the power consumption is higher as well.

So now I've moved up to bottom tier of the high end NAS solutions. Let me tell you the web interface of the Synology DS series is a thing of beauty. The DLNA server on the NS2 was actually slightly better but I love everything else about the Synology DSM software. I also love the fact that DSM includes apache, PHP and mysql and you even get SFTP and SSH/shell access! This would allow you to put up a "real" web server on any Synology NAS running DSM 3.2 or newer. Nice!

For now, I'm only running DLNA but for running Airplay, I plan to leave iTunes running on my old G4 mini and have it go to the DS212J for all of its music and videos. If the network on the mini turns out to be too slow to server airplay, I'll break down and run it from one of our newer Intel minis.

If you desire a less expensive drive, with some minor reservations I can vouch for LaCie. If you can afford a mid to high end drive, I can vouch for Synology without reservation.

 

[Goldenbear]

...ok, that said, what is it that I'm looking for after my qnap experience? my wish list is to be found next, but before I get started I would like to also raise two important points:

a) why now buying a fully fledged mac mini with a thunderbolt RAID storage instead of a linux based NAS when you are a convinced Mac user?...

...Have you considered setting up a real mac mini and access it over remote desktop? I've been looking into this for a while… I could keep all my data on the mini and access it over remote desktop. This way, I would avoid the wireless chocking on large files. The biggest drawback that I see is probably TimeMachine backups. I have no idea whether or not the mini can act as a time machine server nor do I know how well it would auto-mount external (?thunderbolt) RAID drives when leaving the stand-by state…. this latter sounds like quite a challenge.

I think you just answered your own question. Unless you want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the Mac do these things, just spend the money on a Synology or similar NAS. It'll even be less expensive to boot.

b) Apple has recently made a huge move towards cloud hosting all. iCloud, iTunes Match, etc. Dropbox is quite big in town as well… plus, our media has also moved on to the HD world, meaning that storing it on-site represents a huge demand. See more here: http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/...

So what do you do when the cloud hosting site has a problem? Google, whose product offerings depend on the cloud, and who has money to burn to ensure uptime, STILL has problems. I recall reading about sever Gmail outages and people losing all/most of their emails.

Point is, I am not about to put critical data ONLY on the cloud. Actually, I won't put ANY critical data on the cloud, unless it's encrypted with a key that only I have. Even then, I make sure I have multiple backups.

...finally, what I think is not well implemented in my existing qnap (a ts-239 pro for the record):

- I expect my home storage to be always-on: don't want to bother turning it on when I need it. boting up my qnap takes ages. Of course I could possibly mitigate this by enabling WOL and turn it on before I need it, but this would put off the rest of the members of my family. Specially my wife who simply can't stand wasting time on technology. She is a real end-user!!! Is your system always on? if so, read on…

- Real stand-by mode: my qnap won't properly stay in stand-by mode. With a few proprietary 3rd party qnap apps enabled (the so called qpkg's), my NAS will exit stand-by mode around 15 times per day. This means my disks are spinning up and down unnecessarily. This has of course an effect on the lifespan of the disks. Qnap support has been working remotely on my NAS for over 2 months now and they are still working on it...

I leave my Synology NAS on 24/7 and have not had any problems. It automatically goes into sleep/stand-by mode but wakes up quickly.

... - Full HFP+ support. Are you 100% sure that EXT4 won't generate any conflict with HFP+ in the long run? not that I know anything about this at all, but I don't want to imagine I ending up with a corrupted iPhoto Library…

Someone else may know more about this, but from what I've been told, it's a non-issue. Synology's AFP support is very good. I leave disk images on the NAS and open/edit the image contents without any problems.

...On another note, in the wireless century, how do you guys deal with your >50GB (100GB maybe?) iPhoto Library sitting on your NAS and intending to access it from your MacBook from the living room when 802.11n can't even reach 8MBps nowadays (see http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/64-5-ghz-dn)? What will happen if two users access the same library concurrently? Same goes for Aperture and the rest, and of course for TimeMachine backup. Apple's own TimeCapsule won't do any better that your Synology NAS + a powerful 802.11n router though since it also has to suffer the same shortcomings as the rest of the existing wireless routers?

Not sure where you're seeing an 8 Mpbs limit for 802.11n, and your assumption of an 8 Mbps limit is incorrect. I did some timing tests between my 2nd gen Time Capsule, Synology DS111, and MacBook Air (2011 model). The DS111 is plugged into the TC via ethernet, and the MBA is connected via 5 Ghz 802.11n.

Using a 1,024,032,768 byte disk image, and averaging 3 copies each way, I got the following speeds:

TC to MBA: 10.8 MBps
MBA to TC: 8.0 MBps
DS111 to MBA: 15.4 MBps
MBA to DS111: 13.5 MBps

- The drive in the DS111 is a 2TB 7200rpm Hitachi mechanism.
- The TC is stock (whatever drive Apple ships with it).

I suspect the transfers from the MBA are faster because of the SSD.

I also saw much faster transfer rates between my Mac Mini and DS111 over ethernet but don't have the numbers handy. I do recall seeing peak speeds close to what smallnetbuilder lists for the DS211. Transfer rates to/from the TC over ethernet were still very low (probably due to the under-powered processor Apple uses).

 

[marc.garcia]

I think you just answered your own question. Unless you want to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the Mac do these things, just spend the money on a Synology or similar NAS. It'll even be less expensive to boot.

Well, I already did. As I said, I've owned a qnap ts-239 pro for several years. My current NAS is driven by a powerful firmware, not free of bugs of course.…. no doubt NAS boxes do cool things (as a matter of fact I really like its USB auto-backup feature which allows me to back-up my entire NAS shares just by plugging in a USB drive - pretty much like how TimeMachine works in Mac OSX) but at the same time they are complicated.... in the end they do have linux underneath and linux are all but user friendly (I've used Kubuntu distros intensively). I guess that since I've decided to move to Apple products, I'm spoiled now with how easy to use they are...

Someone else may know more about this, but from what I've been told, it's a non-issue. Synology's AFP support is very good. I leave disk images on the NAS and open/edit the image contents without any problems.

AFP support is not HFP+ filesystem... Do you have your iPhoto Library on your NAS? I'm not afraid of storing regular files on EXT4 filesystems, but I do know that Apple's ultra-propietary approach to be found in their own filesystem and file structures (iPhoto Library is an example), is not friends with other FileSystems. You can store regular files, but I do know that storing this sort of file structures in non native Apple Filesystems can cause problems. I would be very cautious to store my large iPhoto Library on non fully certified Apple third party filesystems...

Not sure where you're seeing an 8 Mpbs limit for 802.11n, and your assumption of an 8 Mbps limit is incorrect.

It surprises me to see such an statement when I've provided the link to the information I'm basing on. Gotto quote myself even though it is already in the text you quoted anyway...

intending to access it from your MacBook from the living room when 802.11n can't even reach 8MBps nowadays (see http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwa.../64-5-ghz-dn)?

I've been working for 3 years in a wifi project. The chart I've provided indicates that the fastest SOHO wifi access point delivers 57,5 Mbps (7,1875 MBps) in the 5Ghz band while your AE delivers 36.3 Mbps (4,53MBps). If your devices can do 40Mhz the new Cisco 4200v2 manages to go up to 68,4 Mbps (8,5MBps) in 2.4Ghz... If you are extremely lucky and get your devices on 5Ghz and make the most out of their MIMO antennas, thus aggregate more than 1 stream, you can go up to 70,6 Mbps (8,82MBps).

For this reason I simplified it and assumed that you can hardly go over 8MBps.

TC to MBA: 10.8 MBps
MBA to TC: 8.0 MBps
DS111 to MBA: 15.4 MBps
MBA to DS111: 13.5 MBps


Frankly, I don't see how you get those speeds. I maybe dead wrong, but I think that SOHO wireless routers are not there yet... If you talk about enterprises wireless routers/access points, some vendors indicate they've found the Holy Grail of wireless networks by aggregating multiple layers.. who knows if that is true and if it is, if we will ever see it at home.

Are you sure you got those numbers? Think of wireless technology like the old hubs that were used years ago... my opinion is that you can't hardly go over 8MBps nowadays, and as soon as two or more people are on the same wireless lan network, those 8MBps automatically drop down to half or less...

I also saw much faster transfer rates between my Mac Mini and DS111 over ethernet but don't have the numbers handy.

I understand that you are on a switched FE or even a GE network, right?

Bottom line, regardless of it being 8 or 15 MBps (I doubt the latter), storing a huge iPhoto Library on a NAS and intending to access it over wifi is pretty much like jumping off a cliff if you intend to manage your library.. that's why I'm suggesting to access my Storage Hub (be it Mac Mini or whatever) over remote desktop.

 

[Goldenbear]

Well, I already did. As I said, I've owned a qnap ts-239 pro for several years. My current NAS is driven by a powerful firmware, not free of bugs of course.…. no doubt NAS boxes do cool things (as a matter of fact I really like its USB auto-backup feature which allows me to back-up my entire NAS shares just by plugging in a USB drive - pretty much like how TimeMachine works in Mac OSX) but at the same time they are complicated.... in the end they do have linux underneath and linux are all but user friendly (I've used Kubuntu distros intensively). I guess that since I've decided to move to Apple products, I'm spoiled now with how easy to use they are...

So... what's you point then? I gave you a reason why an NAS is a better option for most folks. All you're doing is complaining that the GUI isn't as nice as OSX.

Personally, I think the Synology GUI is a close clone of OSX, with many similar elements. It works well for what it is and is the nicest NAS GUI I've seen to date.

...AFP support is not HFP+ filesystem... Do you have your iPhoto Library on your NAS? I'm not afraid of storing regular files on EXT4 filesystems, but I do know that Apple's ultra-propietary approach to be found in their own filesystem and file structures (iPhoto Library is an example), is not friends with other FileSystems. You can store regular files, but I do know that storing this sort of file structures in non native Apple Filesystems can cause problems. I would be very cautious to store my large iPhoto Library on non fully certified Apple third party filesystems...

I have not yet moved my iPhoto library to the NAS but plan to do so in the future. Again, I have not heard of people having problems with it.

If you're that paranoid about it, get a Time Capsule and deal with the craptacularly slow hard drive throughput (even over ethernet).

...It surprises me to see such an statement when I've provided the link to the information I'm basing on. Gotto quote myself even though it is already in the text you quoted anyway...

Are you serious??? Where in that linked page does it state that there's an 8 MBps limit on 802.11n??? It simply gives throughput numbers for specific devices. There's a distinction there that you don't seem to understand.

...Frankly, I don't see how you get those speeds. I maybe dead wrong, but I think that SOHO wireless routers are not there yet... If you talk about enterprises wireless routers/access points, some vendors indicate they've found the Holy Grail of wireless networks by aggregating multiple layers.. who knows if that is true and if it is, if we will ever see it at home.

Are you sure you got those numbers? Think of wireless technology like the old hubs that were used years ago... my opinion is that you can't hardly go over 8MBps nowadays, and as soon as two or more people are on the same wireless lan network, those 8MBps automatically drop down to half or less...

I understand that you are on a switched FE or even a GE network, right?

Yes you are.

You do the math:
1,024,032,768 bytes => 976.6 MB (or 976.6 MiB if you want to get all technical)

65 sec, 62 sec, 63 sec => Avg of 63.3 sec

976.6/63.3 = wait for it............ 15.4 MBps

A lot has changed in the past couple of years, as is the case for this industry. Believe it or not, things actually get faster over time. Really.

But if you continue insist that I'm wrong, how about some testing that someone else did?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4577/...nd-time-capsule-4th-gen-review-faster-wifi-/6

Btw, I did make one mistake that I'll go back and correct. I have a 2nd gen TC, not a 3rd gen.

..Bottom line, regardless of it being 8 or 15 MBps (I doubt the latter), storing a huge iPhoto Library on a NAS and intending to access it over wifi is pretty much like jumping off a cliff if you intend to manage your library.. that's why I'm suggesting to access my Storage Hub (be it Mac Mini or whatever) over remote desktop.

There are NAS models that get over 100MBps on gigabit ethernet, such as these. That's plenty fast for accessing iPhoto. Sure, it's not native HFP+, but as I've repeatedly said, I haven't heard of anyone having problems with it. If you hear otherwise, please tell us.

If you are still hung up on it, then go ahead and spend an arm and a leg for a Thunderbolt RAID. It sounds like you're pretty set on this anyway, so I don't even know why you bothered to ask for opinions.

Personally, if an NAS is out of the question, I'd just set up an older Mac as a server, with a FW RAID, if needed. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than going Thunderbolt.

 

[Goldenbear]

Synology DS111 - Highly Recommended!

Getting back on topic, I ended up going with Synology, but not a RAID 1 as originally planned.

Ideally, I wanted the following features:
1) Minimum 2 bays for RAID-1 (I wanted zero down time if a drive dies)
2) Hot swappable drives (more for convenience)
3) eSATA port for backup (backing up 2TB over USB 2 would simply take too long)
4) Hardware encryption (I want all my backups encrypted, and transfer rates are too slow without hardware encryption)
5) Fast (close to 100MBps) transfer rates over ethernet

Unfortunately, the cheapest Synology unit that meets all that is the DS212+, which goes for $400, and the Qnap equivalent was even more.

The DS212 pretty much met all the requirements, except that it has a slightly slower max throughput, but I decided it was fine.

However, I found that the spec sheet I originally found was an older one. Synology, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to drop the eSATA port for an additional USB port!

I thought long and hard about my wish list and decided RAID-1 wasn't that big a deal either. It's not adequate as a true backup, and as long as I've got multiple backups of the NAS, my down time from a drive failure would be less than a day. The reality is, the NAS is for my home, serving as a place to store installation images, music, photos, videos, and backups. Data integrity and backups are the critical requirement. Even if the NAS was down for a few days, as long as I had recent backups, I would be fine. And honestly, I didn't really NEED 100MBps transfer rates, as most of my use would be over wi-fi.

So, I went with the DS111 for $200, which retains the eSATA port that the more expensive DS211 lacks. I also bought this drive docking station for backing up the NAS (it was on sale for around $8 after rebate).

The only thing left was a backup strategy. Unlike what many seem to think, RAID-1 is NOT a true backup. It doesn't protect you from things like: virus infection, bit rot, hardware failure that corrupts both drives, accidentally deleting or erasing something/everything, etc. You really need a true backup, with multiple backups and off-site backup being ideal.

My backup strategy is as follows:

- Docking station attached to DS111 via eSATA
- 2TB drive is left in docking station as a primary backup drive
- The DS111 is set to back up any modified or new files every 8 hours (I also have it remove files I've deleted - I have TimeMachine for the critical stuff)
- Once a week (I should do it more frequently, but I'm lazy), I swap the drive with another one
- Every 1-4 weeks (that laziness thing again), I take the latest backup to my parents for an off-site backup (they leave it in a fire-resistant file cabinet)
- I have a total of 3 drives for backups (All Hitachi 2TB, a couple are the 5200rpm ones that were on sale for $60 a while back)

I tested the system by placing a new drive in the NAS and recovering from a backup. Worked like a charm, taking less than 6 hours (maybe closer to 4?) over eSATA. It probably would have been faster if the backup hadn't been encrypted.

I still have over 500GB free on the NAS, and there are probably a good 200-500GB of non-critical files I can dump somewhere else, if needed. So, I figure this will be fine for 2-3 years, at which point I can upgrade to larger drives, if necessary.

If Verizon ever decides to deploy FIOS in my area, I'll look into cloud storage for critical files, as an added safety layer.

When all's said and done, I really, really, really like my Synology DS111! The GUI is unmatched as far as any NAS I've seen to date. It works great as a Time Machine target for all my Macs. File transfer rates over ethernet are awesome! It's quiet, wakes up quickly when it's needed, and everything JUST WORKS! Did I mention I like this A LOT?

 

[vitzr]

I'm using a 5 bay Synology DS1511+, it's a great solution for my implementation of NAS within my network.

 

[marc.garcia]

Are you serious??? Where in that linked page does it state that there's an 8 MBps limit on 802.11n??? It simply gives throughput numbers for specific devices. There's a distinction there that you don't seem to understand.

you are out of line with that attitude and I think I won't be of any benefit to discuss this any further with you

If you are still hung up on it, then go ahead and spend an arm and a leg for a Thunderbolt RAID. It sounds like you're pretty set on this anyway, so I don't even know why you bothered to ask for opinions.

Personally, if an NAS is out of the question, I'd just set up an older Mac as a server, with a FW RAID, if needed. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than going Thunderbolt.

Thanks for your advice. FW RAID will do just fine. You are right.

 

[con]

QNAP vs Synology

I've been looking into NAS systems very recently, mainly for a solution to share files wirelessly among multiple household computers/devices, eliminating the need for constant transfer of files via external HDD, or having to constantly keep tabs on which files on which computers/devices need updating (especially if most files would be modified from directly within the NAS infrastructure). Obviously, some larger files may need to be stored locally while they're being modified, at least temporarily, due to the nature of NAS being unfeasible for working with such files with regards to speed, especially wirelessly.

It definitely seems like QNAP and Synology are two of the main 'players' in this game. Regardless of whether or not they actually make the best NAS devices, I have come across a few models that initially seemed to be in line with what I'm currently after.

QNAP TS-110 or Synology DS-110J
QNAP TS-210 or Synology DS-212J

I think that a 1-bay NAS system would suffice if an external HDD can be plugged into the NAS device via USB for an extra backup, but I would still consider a 2-bay NAS system if it's not much more expensive. I may eliminate the Synology DS-212J from consideration, due to a supposed thumbnail creation issue that seems to be a fairly common problem with that model.

Each of the Synology devices listed seems to consume less power than the comparable QNAP device, and apparently the Synology devices are also commonly considered as having a more intuitive interface. More importantly, some commentators here seem to suggest that from their experience, Synology NAS works better with Macs. I currently use the latest versions of Mac OS 10.4.x and 10.5.x, in addition to Windows Vista and 7. Usability with all of these OSs, particularly Mac OS 10.5.x and Windows 7, would be important, so any further advice or testimonials regarding this would be appreciated.

A central iTunes bank that can be played without issues wirelessly would also be nifty, although not necessary.

If anyone is considering, has considered or is using any of the devices mentioned, your advice would be especially appreciated. Thanks.

My backup strategy is as follows:

- Docking station attached to DS111 via eSATA
- 2TB drive is left in docking station as a primary backup drive
- The DS111 is set to back up any modified or new files every 8 hours (I also have it remove files I've deleted - I have TimeMachine for the critical stuff)
- Once a week (I should do it more frequently, but I'm lazy), I swap the drive with another one
- Every 1-4 weeks (that laziness thing again), I take the latest backup to my parents for an off-site backup (they leave it in a fire-resistant file cabinet)
- I have a total of 3 drives for backups (All Hitachi 2TB, a couple are the 5200rpm ones that were on sale for $60 a while back)

No offense but you sound extremely paranoid, with the last three points being especially atypical for a home user. What the hell are you storing, data for the FBI or something? Granted, you seem to have a good idea on how these things work, and I appreciate some of the insightful advice you have posted.

 

[Goldenbear]

...It definitely seems like QNAP and Synology are two of the main 'players' in this game. Regardless of whether or not they actually make the best NAS devices, I have come across a few models that initially seemed to be in line with what I'm currently after.

QNAP TS-110 or Synology DS-110J
QNAP TS-210 or Synology DS-212J

I think that a 1-bay NAS system would suffice if an external HDD can be plugged into the NAS device via USB for an extra backup, but I would still consider a 2-bay NAS system if it's not much more expensive. I may eliminate the Synology DS-212J from consideration, due to a supposed thumbnail creation issue that seems to be a fairly common problem with that model.

I just don't see a need for Raid-1 unless you truly want/need zero downtime. Even then, you need to be careful and make sure the drives aren't from the same manufacturing lot. If one goes due to a defect, chances are good that other drives in the batch will have the same problem.

I recommend saving money by going with a single drive model (you also have to factor in the cost of an additional drive for Raid-1). Maybe even put that money towards a faster version or one with eSATA. Recovering over USB will take you more than twice as long as over eSATA.

...No offense but you sound extremely paranoid, with the last three points being especially atypical for a home user. What the hell are you storing, data for the FBI or something? Granted, you seem to have a good idea on how these things work, and I appreciate some of the insightful advice you have posted.

Yeah, it does seem that way, unless you've ever lost irreplaceable data.

I have a lot of pictures and video of relatives and friend who have passed away. I want to make sure I don't lose any more of it than I already have. I also have my Time Machine backups, which include online passwords (1Password rocks!), financial data going back 10+ years, and other things that would be a real hassle to recreate. While a fire or theft is not a likely thing to happen, you just never know. That's why I have an off-site backup.

Think of it this way. If someone broke into your place and stole your computers and backup drives (or there was a fire), do you really want to explain to the spouse that the reason your wedding pictures/videos are lost is because you were too lazy/cheap/whatever to leave a copy with a friend?

My backup strategy does require 3 backup drives (1 in the drive dock, 1 ready to swap out, and 1 off-site). Now that I think about it, I actually have 4 backup drives, because I was originally using Raid-1 on the POS Galaxy NAS.

 

[xeller]

My backup strategy is as follows:

- Docking station attached to DS111 via eSATA
- 2TB drive is left in docking station as a primary backup drive
- The DS111 is set to back up any modified or new files every 8 hours (I also have it remove files I've deleted - I have TimeMachine for the critical stuff)
- Once a week (I should do it more frequently, but I'm lazy), I swap the drive with another one
- Every 1-4 weeks (that laziness thing again), I take the latest backup to my parents for an off-site backup (they leave it in a fire-resistant file cabinet)
- I have a total of 3 drives for backups (All Hitachi 2TB, a couple are the 5200rpm ones that were on sale for $60 a while back)

Thank you Goldenbear! This is what I am looking to do. I went back in forth trying to decide which Synology I wanted (DS 212J or DS110J). I didn't consider the DS111, but I think this is going to be my next Amazon purchase. I have two 2gB Samsung drives, one will go in the DS for my itunes media and the other as primary backup. I will probably swing for another 2tb as an offsite backup. I also have docking station with usb 2.0 and esata ports.

The only thing missing is a quiet, compact, non-tower UPS. I'm looking to get a Cyberpower CP685AVR UPS - 685VA/390W for the Synology, my 2wire mode and AEBS.

 

[con]

NAS isn't much fun so far....

Alright, I just got the Synology DS110J, and it's not striking me as the most user-friendly thing atm. My external hard drive got corrupted earlier today for no apparent reason and I'm trying to back up the okay files on it onto the NAS HDD, but the NAS system seems to be making a bad computer day worse.

For one, apparently the HDD in the NAS was formatted, without choice, to ext4 during installation. Due to a discrepancy in allowed file name characters between ext4 and HFS+ systems - certain characters allowed in HFS+ are not allowed in ext4 - a large number of files cannot be copied over due to the unallowed characters.

Questions:
(1) Is there actually a way to custom-partition the NAS HDD, or is it necessary to go with ext4, which would necessitate incompatibility with a large number of files that are otherwise okay in HFS+?
(2) If yes to question 1, how? And before I jump on the gun with HFS+, why would ext4 be recommended over HFS+? Based on the brief research I did, I haven't read about any significant benefits, but please enlighten.
(3) Is the data that is stored to the NAS HDD connection-dependent? For example, would that data be accessible if the HDD was accessed outside of the NAS or via another connection method (e.g. a different router or whatever)?
(4) I'm planning to transfer around 1TB of data from a Mac to the NAS HDD but the default set-up seems to take a while. The Mac is connected via ethernet to a router where a connection to the NAS also exists. Is there a way to speed this up?

 

[ramaruf]

Advantages of Using Synology NSA

There are so many advantages of using Synology NSA device. The main advantage is that it has delivered many of the expectations of people from a NAS device. Now the advanced People who have used this product in the past have commended about its superb performance and reliability, which, according to the product’s developer, can be attributed to its highly advanced features and speed.
You can insure the security and reliability of your data with Synology NSA .Its ensure remote backup solution for every kind of business & individuals.
Synology is ideal for those users who would want to enjoy the benefits of reducing the energy used. For novices at their homes, and even for businesses with sophisticated requirements, the Synology NSA can indeed prove to be the perfect choice.

 

[marc.garcia]

Time to boot from standby

Hello,

I wonder if any of the owners of Synology NASes can comment on their time to boot from standby... I find my current QNAP NAS painfully slow to boot up. I sometimes end up leaving the box on when I should turn it off.

Thanks

 

[marc.garcia]

Hello,

I wonder if any of the owners of Synology NASes can comment on their time to boot from standby... I find my current QNAP NAS painfully slow to boot up. I sometimes end up leaving the box on when I should turn it off.

Thanks

I wouldn't mind to hear from QNAP owners what the boot time for them is... my TS-239 Pro takes a whole lot of time

 

[marc.garcia]

Questions:
(1) Is there actually a way to custom-partition the NAS HDD, or is it necessary to go with ext4, which would necessitate incompatibility with a large number of files that are otherwise okay in HFS+?
(2) If yes to question 1, how? And before I jump on the gun with HFS+, why would ext4 be recommended over HFS+? Based on the brief research I did, I haven't read about any significant benefits, but please enlighten.

I don't think that is possible unless you end up purchasing a Mac computer running Mac OSX. Have you found an alternative in the mean time?

(3) Is the data that is stored to the NAS HDD connection-dependent? For example, would that data be accessible if the HDD was accessed outside of the NAS or via another connection method (e.g. a different router or whatever)?

Now that I give a second thought to this before answering, I wonder if a NAS running native HFS+ partitions could ever share data to windows and linux computers... With QNAP and Synology you can easily share data over AFP, SAMBA, etc.

This article seems very interesting regarding intending to hold Apple proprietary file structure on Ext4 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2773587?start=0&tstart=0 This, as I anticipated previously, is specially relevant for certain contents. If you store a iPhoto Library on a ext4, you may end up corrupting your own data and who knows what can happen...

 

[maflynn]

I wouldn't mind to hear from QNAP owners what the boot time for them is... my TS-239 Pro takes a whole lot of time

I have a TS-219 and its a bit slow in booting. I never timed it and I generally keep it up so its no big deal (for me)

 

[liontamer67]

i'm looking too

Does the synology work w/ lion?

 

[boomhaueruk]

Blissfully unaware that the Synology DS212j didn't support HFS+ for external drives you connect to it , I bought one week before last.

I had 1.8Tb of files on an external usb connected drive. In the end I;

1 - bought Paragon NTFS For OSX
2 - borrowed another 2tb external
3 - formatted it in NTFS (on 10.6.8)
4 - carbon copy cloned the files across to the external NTFS drive (1.5 days)
5 - setup the ds212j with a share
6 - attached the ntfs external drive
7 - copied 1.8tb of files over using file manager (1.5 days)
8 - found that now, about 800gb of the 1.8tb of files on the DS212j couldn't be accessed by OSX due to -8084 errors. You can't copy them or move them.

All this after they'd given me a patch to deal with random reboots whilst copying the data onto the DS212j during point 7.

At this stage, I can't say I'm impressed with the DS212j at all. Just wish I'd found a nas with HFS+ plus support instead.

My only move now is to delete everything off the DS212j and try recopying the files from the mac over the network to try and work round the ntfs part, in case that is causing an issue.
Which'll take about 7 days, if my initial tests are anything to go by and that's if it fixes the issue.

This is all massively time consuming of course.

 

[theSeb]

I have a Synology DS1511+. It currently holds 4 TB and I have not had the issues above. Sounds like you've had a horrible time for whatever reason.

----------

Does the synology work w/ lion?

Yes, it works perfectly fine.

 

[LaunchpadBS]

Synology DS212, no complaints.

Booting up is slow yes...but you are booting what is essentially a micro PC with OS. Besides I thought the point of a NAS was to always have access, that's why you let the NAS put your drives to bed.

Speed...well with a direct connection(via crossover cable) I get 30MB/s write which is about right seeing as my ethernet is at 1000mbps and the crossover cable was OLD. Over wifi however it's more like 8MB/s, I'm one of 5 users on the router.

It's more than enough and if you need better then the new gigabit wifi routers should solve the speed issue.