So you’re ready to slap those hard drives in your Synology and get going?
There are basically 2 steps:
- Install the hard drives into the NAS – Approximately 20 minutes
- Format the hard drives in the NAS – Approximately 2 hours per terabyte
Yeah, step 2 is a joy kill, but at least you can check out the UI while the drives format.
Synology’s official documentation:
The Read This First printed piece in the box tells you to look at the documentation on the CD, but only the Quick Install Guide is there, and not the valuable User’s Guide. I’ve included the PDFs on this blog for your reference as well. Synology DS411j Quick Installation Guide and Synology DiskStation User’s Guide. They are worth reviewing, but below is my straight forward take on how to get your hard drives installed and configured. Synology also has a wiki for getting started that goes over the basics. It can be found here.
Step 1 – Installing Hard Drives
Open your Synology NAS by using the 4 thumbscrews in back. Once opened pull out the hard drive trays. They should slide out easily. While not the sexy all aluminum MacPro drive trays, they work just fine.
Back of Synology DS411j with empty drive trays
Here is a view of the NAS with no drive trays in it. You can see the Marvell ARM CPU in the center. You can also see all 4 SAT connectors on the back waiting for your new HDDs.
Inside view with drive trays removed. Marvell ARM CPU and 128mb on board RAM
Use the supplied screws to secure the hard drives to their trays. You use the longer screws to secure the side rail to the drive.
Place your hard drives (HDDs) into the 4 trays as shown.
Slide the drive trays back into the NAS. Make sure you feel a solid fit. Backdoor should close easily. At this point you can add the optional cord clip as well as using the secure lock hole if you have a standard laptop locking cable.
Go ahead and connect the rest of the cables to the NAS:
- Power Cord cable to AC outlet
- Ethernet Cable to router (I strongly recommend tossing the CAT 5e cable and buying a CAT 6 cable that reaches your router. I do NOT recommend using a WiFi USB adapter with your NAS).
Step 2: Formatting the Hard Drives Installing DSM
Okay I made step 2 sound easier than it actually is. You really need to go through the setup process for your Synology, but trust me the documentation and the sheer number of features will have you lost in the woods in no time.
Use the steps below to get the Operating System Disk Station Manager (also commonly refered to as: DSM) installed on the Synology and then immediately go to formatting the drives. These steps were done using DSM 3.1. If there are any corrections needed for DSM 4 please comment.
Once that process is initiated you can then play in the UI woods while the drives are formatted over the next 24 hours. Actually it took 22 hours in my case, and I know this because I played in the UI woods for most of the day until I was bored, frustrated and lost and then once I figured out how to format the drives I had to wait FOREVER before I could actually copy data to the NAS from my Mac.
Let’s get started…
Press and hold the circle power button on the front of the Synology unit for a second or more. Wait for it to boot up and stay a solid blue color.
Back on your Mac. Make sure your Mac and your Synology NAS are both connected to the same router. Put the Synology CD into your Mac (Mac Airbook users will have to download Synology Assistant from Synology’s website).
On the Synology Install CD you’ll see a folder called MacOS X. Inside there you’ll see the Disc Image SYNOLOGY-Assistant.dmg, Double click it and it will mount the disc image with the application “Synology Assistant” Drag this application to your applications folder and to your dock for easy access.
Double click Synology Assistant to run the application that will setup and find your Synology NAS.
You will be prompted to install the Operating System on your Synology. This OS is called DSM or Disk Station Manager. It is a Linux operating system. Synology Assistant will ask for the .pat DSM install file. You can find this on your Synology CD or download the latest Disk Station Manager here.
If you have problems installing the latest DSM firmware on your Synology please check to see if your router’s firewall may be preventing your from installing (thanks to Jason for reporting this issue with his Linksys router).
Installs DSM, but doesn't format the drives (skips step 2.2)
Synology Assistant will walk you through the process. Once done you’ll be able to start the actual Step 2 of formatting and checking the hard drives.
Step 2 REDUX: Formatting the Hard Drives
If you are like me, you’re amazed at how quickly the initial setup has gone and how you can jump right into your NAS without formatted drives.
To finish this last step, log into you Synology NAS. You can do this by double clicking on Synology Assistant application (download or install from CD) which will detect the NAS, and then when you choose connect it will do what a Safari or any other web browser URL would do and that is load your Synology’s IP address: In my case it was http://10.0.1.18 (your IP address is assigned by your router if you are using DHCP. Go ahead and bookmark your Synology’s address in your web browser to save time next time).
Login with your username and password (if you did the Quick Install your login is: Admin, password is blank).
Synology Login Screen via Web Browser
You will then be ushered into the wonderful almost Mac like User Interface of you Synology NAS. The Blue Drop Down Arrow in the upper left corner is the KEY to accessing the features on your NAS. You can drag and drop items within the window as if you were in your own OS, but remember this is a web browser view of it, so certain actions can take you off this view like any other web page would.
Welcome to your Synology NAS
The items on your “desktop” in the web browser window are just shortcuts of items found under the light blue drop down arrow that lets you access all your options. Go there now and select Storage Manager. Any of these icons can be dragged out onto the blue “desktop” if you want easier access to them. Launching Storage Manager will let us format our new hard drives so that we can start the process of copying data over.
Using DSM 3.1’s Storage Manager to format the drives:
You can access Storage Manager thru the Main Menu Blue drop down arrow in the upper left or thru Quick Start’s “Set up a volume and create a shared folder” option. The default choice when you hit create in the volume tab, is to go with one “quick” single volume across all 4 hard drives because it gives you the best performance. I would caution you from doing this simply because if you later want to add another volume later without adding additional HDD (Hard Disk Drive) capacity you’ll have to delete the volume (and it’s data) and start all over again.
The biggest reasons on why you may want more than 1 volume are if you are going to use Apple’s Time Machine for backups or if you want a Public and a Private area on your NAS. Apple Time Machine by default uses all available disk space so keeping it on a separate volume makes sense. Also keeping personal files separate from a public volume where you allow public access (file transfer, FTP drop box, photo uploads, hosted web pages, etc.) is an important security step.
The optimal RAID and HDD format choice for most folks is to go with: Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) with 1 spare and EXT4 disk formatting (see additional info below for more info). SHR has the advantage of being able to use different size HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) and allows you to swap out drives with larger capacity later (as opposed to traditional RAID).
Single Volume Quick Setup - 22 hour disk check
Step by Step on Custom Volume Setup:
If the “create” or “edit” buttons for volume is grayed out then you’ve probably already allocated all the available space. If you are trying to create more than 1 volume you may have to delete all the volumes and try again. I would practice without the disk check until you figure out the process, and then do it all over again this time doing a complete disk check (about 22 hours on a 12TB setup).
- Goto Main Menu (upper left corner arrow) > Storage Manager > Volume > Select Create Button.
No Volume Set Yet
- Choose “Custom” and select “Next.”
- Choose “Multiple Volumes on RAID” to allow for more than 1 volume on your NAS.
- The only choice you should get on the first go around is “Create a new Disk Group”
- For best data protection and to allow you to grow beyond any one drive’s capacity it is best to always have all Disks selected. Only if you are doing a specific RAID setup on a subset of the drives would you select individual drives.
- The standard warning, but you should note just how easy it is to wipe existing drive configurations. This is the only prompt you’ll get, you won’t get prompted with are you sure, or a request for password (you’re logged in as Admin so Synology assumes you know what you are doing). Click Yes (and in the future make sure you keep backups of your important data beyond the reaches of your NAS).
- Choose “Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR).” It gives you all the flexibility without any of the rigidity of normal RAIDs. If you need to learn more about RAIDS click here. RAID 1-10 offer some data protection. JBOD (stands for Just a Bunch Of Disks and is not a RAID, it offers storage across multiple drives of various sizes) and RAID 0 offers fast data performance of interleaving data between drives (super performance at the cost of if 1 drive goes bad then both interleaved drive’s data is lost).
- After choosing Synology Hybrid Raid you are prompted with a choice for 1 or 2 disk backup. This basically means that out of your 4 hard drives, redundant data from the other drives exist on 1 or 2 drives. Choosing 1 disk means you have 75% access to your storage with 25% reserved for backup in case any one drive fails. Choosing 2 disk means you have 50% storage capacity with 50% reserved for backup in case you experience 2 drives failing before you get a chance to replace and rebuild the drives. In general it is highly unlikely that 2 drives will fail at once, so going with 1 disk fault tolerance is fairly safe as long as you replace and rebuild a failed hard drive as quickly as possible.
- Perform disk check is very important. It allows Synology to test every single bit on your hard drive and helps ensure that if you have any drive problems they are likely to be found with a disk check. Be warned though that disk checks take a long time! Plan on 2 hours of disk checking for every 1 TB of drive space. 12TBs would translate to 24 hours of disk checking. I always thought this option should come at the end, and not before other important choices, so if you want to play around with a couple of scenarios then skip this step until you are ready to implement your scenario (you can delete the volumes and start again).
- Learn from my mistake, and make sure you type a lover GB than the default that is given. Otherwise if you go with the default it is the same as hitting MAX, which means use all available disk space for a single volume! Decide how many volumes you want and what size for each one. Synology DSM never asks you up front how many volumes you want, it only offers the ability to “create” a volume if there is unspoken disk space. If all the space is already allocated you can’t create a new volume without deleting one to free up space. In my case notice that my 12TB of unformatted space is shown as 8.17 TB after accounting for formatting and 1 disk backup data protection. In my case I created a volume with 5 TB (entered as 5000) with 3.3TB left over for me to go thru this process a second time to create a 3.3 TB second volume for use with Apple Time Machine backups. It is important to note that what ever size you set aside that it is always set aside and can’t be reduced later. The “edit” button can be used after volume creation, but only to increase the size of a volume using unused space (it can never decrease the volume’s size unlike Apple Disk Utility’s ability to resize or add partitions on a Mac drive).
- You’ll be prompted to confirm your settings. In my case you can see my mistake of keeping the 8370 GB (8.37TB) of allocated space. Once you verify your settings hit Apply and wait. If you are just testing the water and saying no to the “perform disk check” it should be done fairly quickly (a few minutes at most). Once you are ready to really commit make sure you turned “perform disk check” back at step 9 and then click “apply” here and be prepared to let your NAS do it’s thing for the next 24 hours (1/2 day for you 2 drive Synology NAS users).
- Once you are done, go thru the steps again to setup your second volume. Once all your volumes are setup be sure to read about how to do S.M.A.R.T. tests on the drives as discussed below.
Once you hit the create button be prepared to wait a VERY long time. I give a rough estimate of 2TB per hour. My 12TB of unformatted storage took 22 hours to complete.
For more information on using Storage Manager go to Chapter 4 of the Synology DiskStation User’s Guide.
FYI – As fas as I know I don’t see any way to rename the names of a volume (Volume 1) or disk group (Disk Group 1). It’s annoying, but livable.
You also don’t need to keep your web browser open while doing the disk check. You Synology NAS will continue to setup and check your disk without the web browser. If you set up notifications you’ll get an email or SMS message letting you know when the drives are setup.
While the drive is being setup it is a good time to explore DSM and look at all that it has to offer. Once the drives are setup you can look at specific posts on how to setup Time Machine for backup, setup your iTunes NAS server, a Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) to use your NAS as an Apple File server, and many more fun things to do.
Additional behind the scenes info on SHR and EXT4 for those interested:
Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) is a multi-configurable RAID setup where Synology looks at the number of drives you have and then presents the options you have. If you have only 1 HDD then you will not get any data protection options. Synology’s Hybrid RAID is an umbrella for choosing RAID 1, 5, 6 or 10. The biggest advantage SHR has over classic RAID is that it allows dynamic resizing when adding/replacing storage. This allows you to add additional hard drives and reconfigure without having to start over. For tips on choosing drives read my previous post: “Choosing the hard drives.”
For those of you new to using RAID here is the basics: RAID 1 is mirroring of hard drives where you have 2 or more hard drives, and 1 is the mirror backup of the other. You achieve 50% of your disk capacity (i.e. two 3TB drives would give you 3TB of your 6TB of storage space and 3TB for backup mirroring). RAID 5 is where you have data backup protection when all the hard drives are working, and if only 1 hard drive goes bad the other drives can rebuild a new drive to return to backup protection. You can achieve 75% of your disk capacity (i.e. four 3TB drives would give you 9TB of your 12TB of storage space) If more than 1 drive goes bad at a time there will be data loss. RAID 6 is where you can lose up to 2 hard drives at once and still operate. In a 4 bay NAS like Synology DS411j you would only achieve 50% capacity (same as RAID 1), but in NAS units with more than 4 drive bays your capacity percentage would go up. This option is commonly used on 5 drive or higher setups.
Synology uses Linux disk formatting EXT4 on the hard drives. This allows for large capacity hard drives, like 3TB models, to be fully recognized and formatted. On Macs we are used to HFS+ formatting our HDDs. PC users usually format NTFS or FAT32, but legacy issues impact using larger drives like the 3TB models as a single volume. In Synology’s case you don’t need to worry about it creating a single volume across all 4 of your HDDs. DSM allows other devices like PlayStation, X-BOX, PCs, Macs, etc. to access data on the Synology by hosting whatever file interface they need to get data off the EXT4 formatted hard drives.
Using S.M.A.R.T. Test to verify all went well:
Okay if you are still reading this long blog then you are probably someone who likes to look before they leap. To ensure that the format went well you can go back into Storage Manager and run the S.M.A.R.T. tests on each individual drive. SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology that is implemented by Synology for use on our NAS. It is very helpful in predicting drive failure. Using HDDs that are on Synology’s approved list means that SMART items like temperature, turning on the fan, accurate reporting of drive failure, doing background drive testing, are all supported. Once you’ve run both the quick test and the full SMART test you will have a baseline if the drive later fails. As soon as an issue is reported it is important you swap out the hard drive with an identical spare if possible (hence the reason for buying an identical spare in the first place).
S.M.A.R.T. Extended test of 1 of the 3 - 3TB drives
If the SMART tests all pass then congrats! You are now ready to start using your NAS!!!
macsynology 
synchroguy
May 16, 2011
Nice discussion for setting up a Synology NAS … particularly the warning of setting up a single volume (with no room to grow). I want to add a second volume on a DS207 … it looks like I will have to start over again!
Thanks for the good info … difficult to find this stuff out on the Synology website.
macsynology
May 16, 2011
Thanks for the comments.
It would be nice if Synology would add some EXT4 partition management that allowed you to shrink a volume if there was free space to do so (ala EASEUS Partion Manager or Acronis on the PC).
If you end up adding a larger hard drive and rebuild the disk (assuming SHR RAID with 1 disk protection), you would be able to assign the additional storage space as a new volume.
Stuart Norris
May 24, 2011
Thanks for the tutorial. With both the User guide and Quick start guide missing from the Synology cd this was a great way of getting up and running for a newbie.
macsynology
May 24, 2011
I’m glad the walk thru helped you get up and running! Anything that can reduce the pain points of getting started is a good thing to help grow the community of NAS users.
Torben
June 4, 2011
Great guide. Helped me with some important points. Thanks
Brad Shuler
June 23, 2011
I see on June 8, Synology released an update to the O/S: DSM 3.1-1742.
The release notes mention support for AirPlay, AirPrint, and something called “Pad-specific UI design” with DS File.
Have you tried this yet?
Brad Shuler
June 24, 2011
Started a Custom 1GB Volume with all the settings you recommended. The DiskStation DSM software never asked me what format option I wanted. I presume EXT4 (and this is the only option). I don’t see the format type listed anywhere. I had hoped I could setup all my volumes at once. Not so. Looks like the NAS is locked up until the verify of my first volume completes. I am thinking 1TB to replace my Time Capsule (it is near the infamous two year Time Capsule death limit), then a few GB for private data and the rest for my public server.
I assume once I install all my music and video files I can “view” them using either the iTunes interface, or the Synology software, or stand DNLA. (So I don’t need separate repositories for iTunes and another for DNLA).
Brad Shuler
June 25, 2011
After 10-11 hours for the disk check, now I see “File System: ext4” displayed. I began with a single disk group covering all four 3TB drives. The disk check took about 10-11 hours on the DS411+II. Not too shabby!
Jason Spievak
July 13, 2011
Once again, thank you! Following your other post, I had purchased essentially the identical setup. It arrived yesterday, and I then followed these instructions to the letter in getting it set up. Other than a small hiccup where I needed to temporarily disable the firewall on my Linksys router in order to install the firmware on the DS411j, it was seamless. Thank you very much. I don’t know exactly why you put so much time and effort into documenting this process for strangers, but I’m sure appreciative that you do. You saved me many hours and likely much heartache. Thanks!
macsynology
April 16, 2012
You’re welcome. I see so much promise in Synology’s hardware hindered by a lack of good documentation and communication so I felt obliged to see if I could aid my fellow user in avoiding the many pitfalls. Your comment on FireWall issues is a great one that I added to the steps, and just sharing it will help the next user struggling with the same issue. Proof that paying it forward and working together on common issues is what moves man forward from the disaster we would be otherwise!
NBV83
August 9, 2011
Nice tutorial. I was wondering the same thing with the one volume creation. The manual was not very clear on that (just like the help file in DSM, jeez). Anyway, I will be back for more info as soon os the drive are done being created (2x2TB in RAID-1)
Miguel
September 10, 2011
i would like t buy a DS211j and connect it to my TC. How could i forward the ports in TC?
The TC is connected to a cable/modem in bridge modus.
thank you for your help
macsynology
April 16, 2012
TC as in Apple Time Capsule? Just plugging in your DS211jinto your TC via a CAT6 cable works fine. I haven’t done any router optimization for our NAS. Probably worth looking into and doing a posting. If you have any details on what ports you are forwarding to the NAS and any before/after benchmarks I’d be very interested. Right now there are only a handful of devices on my network so I’m not sure I would see a big difference, but I could see it being helpful for locking down a fixed IP address and making remote access easier. If it made Time Machine backups faster I would be sold!
Drew
October 5, 2011
Hey, just a quick note to say that your blog is a great resource. I’m not a very techy guy and I have a Synology on my desk right now. I’m more than a little unsure of how to get this thing up and running and your blog has been a real help. Thanks a bunch. I’d be really interested in any other thoughts you might have. Maybe some short “tips and tricks” or “common mistakes” or “don’t forget to do this” sort of article.
Thanks again!
Drew
Cary
October 9, 2011
Maybe the best tutorial I have ever seen for any product. Since I am going to be managing 3 macs wirelessly through a 10/100/1000 switcher attached to a time capsule, would you recommend doing the format and/or first backup via ethernet directly connected to each computer? Will the result in much faster times? I will take your advice and get a Cat6 cable.
Thanks for your help
macsynology
April 16, 2012
Wow, thanks for the high praise! I just released a long delayed post on Time Capsule limitations and why a NAS might be a better choice. Your switcher upgrade is great for hardwired connected devices, but doesn’t affect WiFi speeds until the data has to be moved from the router to your NAS (WiFi will be slower than your switcher and Cat 6 cabling). Most folks that have to use a direct ethernet connect are troubleshooting connection issues like FireWall settings. Time Machine can be picky about reconnecting to a backup that was made via a different connection (in my case just moving a direct connected HFS+ formatted USB drive from my Mac to our Airport router lead to Time Machine dumping the whole thing and making a new backup. The whole experience is what lead me to switch to doing Time Machine backups to my Synology DS411j instead. WiFi Time machine backups are working fine for our laptops as long as they are done on the home network and not offsite. If you are still trying to set them up I would follow the steps in my last post which goes through all the steps.
Kaleb Coleman (@kalebcoleman)
October 17, 2011
Thank you for taking the time to put together this site, it is so useful as I’m ordering items for a similar setup.
As far as Time Machine, how does it work with setting multiple macs to use a particular volume? Does it mount automatically for all of them to backup wirelessly? Should I instead create separate volumes for each mac’s time machine to use when setting up SHR?
macsynology
April 16, 2012
The Time Machine post is now live. In our family we all use one shared volume for our 3 mac backups and it works great, but at businesses I’ve heard others use separate shared folders (which gives each person a fixed amount of space) or setting up accounts with data limits (I haven’t looked into how that would be setup).
skye
October 31, 2011
Great blog!!!! Every search I try leads me your way….. So I thought I would ask you my question and cross my fingers.
The set-up for my DS411 within my own home network was easy enough, but now I’m having troubles understanding how to connect to the DS through the internet or my iphone when away from home. My knowledge of networks is very (VERY) small—-One could say enough to get me in trouble. I’m trying to figure out how to get my Airport Extreme to allow me to see the DS…..
Any help would be fantastic
macsynology
April 16, 2012
If you haven’t already downloaded Synology’s iPhone apps do so. They work great, and with DSM 4 on your NAS you can now get notifications about problems immediately (instead of checking email). They also let you see your shared Web DAV volumes so you can access your files remotely when you aren’t at home.
Jeff Brauer
November 20, 2011
Hi – your blog is so amazingly helpful for a newbie to NAS. Thank you.
I got to the part where I wanted to create my volumes, but only drives 1 and 3 are showing up out of the 4 drive array. In the HDD Management section I only see these two drives. The status light is flashing orange. does this mean two drives are DOA?
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!
Jeff
macsynology
April 15, 2012
Thanks for the comment. You’ll have to update us on what the resolution was. For everyone else make sure your drives are on the approved list and if possible of all the same type (I know folks mismatch all the time, but they also report most of the issues).
Paul
December 22, 2011
Nice article. I’m looking for a few examples of volume setup. For example, when you went back and changed yours from being all one volume, what did you change to (and why)? E.g., one volume for private, one for public, one for your Time Machine backups. I’m totally new to the NAS thing… (can you tell?)
macsynology
April 16, 2012
If your NAS is setup to maximize it’s full potential you’ll use SHR RAID formatting across all your drives. This allows the most flexibility in upgrading drives and not losing data.
As for multiple volume setup, the magic is that they ddon’t have to correspond to any specific drive. Think of them as virtual volumes. Synology doesn’t let you name the volumes, but your Mac/PC/Linux doesn’t care because it just sees the shared folder name. I use volumes to restrict access. It is easier than managing folder by folder access and keeps people out of volumes containing stuff that is supposed to be automated for computer tasks (Time Machine backups, iTunes server, etc). Having a public volume where you can create your own free drop box for friends and family to share photos and projects has been very helpful, and it allows you to not worry about them changing/deleting your other important stuff.
johnwmorgan
February 14, 2012
Hi
Thanks for this post, really good. One question, do you need to wire this NAS direct to the router or can I plug it straight into my iMac? My router is a fair distance way from where I can safely locate this NAS.
Regards
John M
macsynology
April 14, 2012
Hi John, Synology supports both direct ethernet connect and use of a Synology approved USB WiFi adapter to solve connectivity issues. Mac Pros have dual ethernet connectors so I could see a setup where a Synology Disk Station is slaved to one Mac, but I don’t have any first hand experience with this. I have seen others post that they’ve used direct ethernet connect to troubleshoot if they ae having router problems (usually involving FireWall issues). If you use the Apple Time Capsule or Airport Extreme you can buy Apple’s mini Airport Express and make it a WiFi Bridge with a direct ethernet cable link to your NAS. We use this at home to connect any device that has an ethernet port, but no built in WiFi (Dish Network receiver, etc).
Chris
February 17, 2012
Thank you very much! I am a new user to Synology NAS. I use the auto function and press Yes to all message. I don’t understand the difference of the choice and eventually set up a system without data protection. I need to set up the NAS again and this is a painful experience.
Chris
Vince
March 5, 2012
Hi, thanks for the very informative write-up!
I have a question that I’m having difficulty finding answer to it.
The question is, do I need to reformat all the drives if I’m adding new hard drives to the SHR system?
I just bought a DS411 and 2 2TB hard drives. I plan to expand in the future as and when I see the need. Do I need to reformat everything or can I add new hard drives to it without needing to reformat everything?
Thanks again. I’m new to this so would appreciate if you can help answer this question
Cheers.
macsynology
April 13, 2012
Hi Vince,
If you have a choice always fill all the drive slots in your NAS and then set them up as one disk group. This gives you the best data protection and performance. It is better to go with four 1 TB drives than two 2 TB drives. Replacing drives with larger drives later when using SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid formatting) with 1 or 2 disk data protection is as easy as pulling one drive and replacing it with a new drive. Synology will detect it, tell you that the NAS is degraded and offer to repair the volume and redistribute the data across all the drives in the disk group. Amazingly easy considering what the NAS is doing in the background, but this is the reason why we buy a NAS – the ability to replace/upgrade hard drives with no data loss.
Adding new drives to empty slots in your Synology NAS doesn’t require that your other drives be reformatted if you are going to use the new drives as a new volume. This is useful if your current setup is used for one purpose (iTunes music server) and your new drives are going to be used to create a new disk group volume for another purpose (Time Machine backups). That said if you have the storage space to copy the data off and reformat all the drives I would recommend doing it. Setting up all your volumes as a new SHR 1 disk redundancy disk group and then create the volumes you need will get the best results in the long run (like when a drive fails and you have no data protection setup).
Synology’s tech note on this is here.
Brent
March 18, 2012
Thanks for the great information – one thing you might want to cover in your excellent setup tutorial is the need to assign a static IP address for the DiskStation. Otherwise one can find that suddenly everything stops working because the router has reassigned IP addresses to all the clients on the network (including the DiskStation). If you are using an Airport Extreme base station, it is as simple as picking an IP address, and creating a “DHCP Reservation” under the “Network” section by clicking the plus sign and adding the Diskstation. Then in the Diskstation Control Panel–>Network app, go to the “Network Interface” tab and select “use manual configuration” and put in the same IP address that has been reserved on the AEBS.
Carsten Ortmann
March 19, 2012
I think I must have set something up wrong. I have copied part of my music-folder and the iTunes Library, but I’m not able to launch iTunes using that library. I shows up in the Finder-folder as a Unix-executable file. Have I formatted sometyhing wrong? And if so, how do I change it? (I have a Synology DS212j with one 2TB drive in it – iTunes folder is approximately 1TB; stored on an external HD)
macsynology
April 22, 2012
Are you using iTunes Server? My guess is that you need to turn on Mac File Services (afp) – you can get the steps from the Time Machine post. I have a draft version of the iTunes server post I’m working on, but I’m trying to finish a security post first to go over a lot of the security issues folks have. Stay tuned! but feel free to post any solutions you’ve found that work well!
geofftucker
March 23, 2012
Thank you thank you thank you for this. I’m looking at buying a smaller Synology unit but for the same purposes as you, and I was really worried about how technical the set up might be. It looks easier than I thought from your blog post.
Elliot Steele
April 15, 2012
I’ve bought a Synology Diskstation DS1812+ with 8 2GB drives. This will function purely as a backup disk & I wanted to set it up as 2 8GB volumes in RAID 0.
8 days later & it is still creating the first volume.
Does anyone know if this is normal or do I have a problem? Could it be that I have used RAID 0?
Thanks!
macsynology
April 15, 2012
Wow. 8 days is a lot longer than I would have guessed. My guess is that the time is being spent on doing a disk check sector by sector across your 16GB. In DSM4 Synology turns off disk check by default to help speed up the process. Since you are doing RAID 0 you probably aren’t worried about data protection so you might try again. Do a test of creating a 1 disk volume with no disk check to make sure everything is going correct. If the drives are of different types you could be running into formatting problems.
Abhi
April 20, 2012
Absolutely fantastic article! Thanks a lot for taking the effort to put up such a wonderful piece. It is very thoughtful of you and in the spirit of sharing! Thanks again.
I got my NAS delivered yesterday, and it spent the night creating a (single) default volume (2 x 3 TB discs) the first time i installed DSM. After reading (and re-reading your article), i decided to have the option of having multiple volumes. So i removed the volume that was created and set up a new one on a disk group, but i did not see the option of performing the disk check at all! As i type, it has finished creating the volume (in minutes). I assume though, that since it spent the last night checking the disc, it should be fine even if it did not do it again this time.
Ready to explore now. Thanks again!
Richard Cassidy
April 24, 2012
Thank you – this is really useful.
It may be worth adding that, if you have a single-disk NAS, you do not get any options about volume capacity. The Storage Manager set-up process creates a single basic volume, without offering the choice of dividing your disk into two or more volumes (so far as I can see). I belatedly realize that I should have gone for a 2 or 4- disk machine …
Eric
May 5, 2012
Thanks for all of your great blog entries. I do have a concern I was hoping you could comment on. If I set up a Synology NAS I will likely set up a volume for Time Machine as you suggest and another volume for general use. I will likely have my windows boxes back up to a folder on my general use volume. I have some rather large files I need to backup from both my win boxes and my macs -some around 6gb in size. Will I run into any problems transferring files this big on either OS? I still don’t quite understand the limitations of each OS transferring between their native file formats and EXT4. Thanks!
macsynology
July 4, 2012
If you keep normal naming conventions or mount the Synology volume as a Windows or Mac compatible volume you should be fine. Large file sizes shouldn’t be an issus for Synology, Windows 7 and Mac OS X. If you are using any old WIndows version on Fat-32 drives you would already be aware of the 2 GB file size limits.
Olivier Borgognon
May 16, 2012
hi, i’m just setting up my DS212+ with 2x3Tb disks in it. and i was wondering why not create users with limited quota for each specific work (webServer, free dropbox, itunes, TimeMachine), instead of creating 4 different volumes. Does that make sense ?
I’ve followed your advice now to do SHR with 3 volumes for my needs, but am wondering about the user thing, as i mainly split the volumes to avoid using all space with TM, allowing me to keep space for other uses non Backup related, and a user + limited quota would have done the trick.
Thanks for your input, i’m still learning and in RTFM mode 🙂
macsynology
June 27, 2012
Your idea would work as long as you can keep track of which account is which (maybe name them user: DropBox50GB, iTunes1TB, etc to textually remember what the account is for and how much space it has allocated to it.
I only use 2 volumes – 1 for my Time Machine backups and 1 for everything else (mainly movies). I do this to keep Time Machine from taking over which it will do given enough time!
As with all things use what works best for you. Making sense of the possibilities is the fun and frustrating part of Synology!
LOL on RTFM! I wish there was one, but with the rate of change blogs and user forums seem to be it! http://search.dilbert.com/comic/User%20Manual
markrosenberg
May 23, 2012
Great blog. Very helpful. A DS212 and 2*3TB Seagate disks should be on my doorstep tonight. I posted to the synology forum a question about sizing a ‘partition’ for use by Time Machine, and in addition to the recommendation you made (dedicated volume), the consensus there was that creating a shared folder with a quota is more flexible. Any thoughts on this option?
macsynology
June 27, 2012
I like multiple volumes for the simplicity of keeping a fence between my media files on the NAS and my backups. Quotas are a great way to keep anyone user (or in my case where I give a different user login to each Mac’s Time Machine app) from hogging too much space (but as an admin I like to have control over everything).
If you are the primary user and are going to use a variety of mixed items on your 2 drive setup I would choose what works best for you (ie getting your head around how you’ve set it up). The main reason for writing this blog was that I kept forgetting how I did something or why, so I started with note taking and it turned into a blog!
source
May 29, 2012
Just discovered this blog through Bing, what a way to brighten up my week!
macsynology
June 26, 2012
Happy it helps and I’m happy this blog is now bingified!
alvin
July 2, 2012
Good point about leaving space to create additional volumes in the future. However, one question… If you later decide to swap your drives out with larger ones and expand a volume, will it restripe/rebalance across your drives? Or will it just concat/append?
macsynology
July 28, 2012
Synology Hybrid Raid formatting allows a lot of flexibility and will rebalance the data across the drives.
I’ve never heard of anyone swapping a smaller drive in, but I believe that would work fine and the other drives could rebuild the volume as long as it was big enough to store what used to be on the other drive and still have space for it’s share of redundant data (a 4 bay NAS with 1 drive redundancy means the other 3 drives have to share the data that is on the new drive and vice versa).
Dawei
July 12, 2012
Hey, I’m not too interested in RAID and figure JBOD should do me just fine. I have a 1TB and 3TB drive. I understand 1 of them will be wiped when i install the DSM. So my question is….will the 2nd drive require formatting when inserted? Or if I select JBOD during the initial setup, will read the existing data after inserting the 2nd drive?
macsynology
July 28, 2012
All the disks will be wiped/formatted since Synology won’t take them in FAT/NTFS or Mac HFS formatting.
JBOD doesn’t offer any of the advantages of recovering from hard drive failure, but for some this is just fine when they want to maximize storage and the content is redundant.
Since you have to format the drives anyways take the time to look at your drive configuration options. Synology Hybrid RAID really gives a nice set of features that most folks go with.
If you are worried about copying all the data you can slave the Synology NAS via USB 3 and copy the data over faster than via ethernet.
Brent
July 28, 2012
@Dawei – DON’T use JBOD!!! The whole reason I bought a Synology was because a single drive failed in an 8-disk JBOD array that I used to have and I lost EVERYTHING. I just lost a drive in my Synology and the process was totally painless and only took 5 minutes to fix, with no loss of data. I HIGHLY recommend using the SHR even if it does cost a bit of drive space.
Todd
August 18, 2012
Great instructions! Thanks! One question I still have — How do you keep the three Mac users (with three different synology logins) from seeing each other’s time machine disk images? I still have one large volume (didn’t see your instructions soon enough), and I have a “shared folder” that is designated as the “Time Machine” folder in “Mac File Services” settings. Synology only supports one global Time Machine folder, so I cannot create separate folders for each user. As a result, each TM user has access to this same folder and therefore can see and mount the other time machine disk images. Any idea on how to provide read protection between the users? If I create a separate volume for TM, will that provide this protection? Thanks!
Todd
August 19, 2012
I have been struggling with this question for a few weeks…and 1 day after posting my question I think I figured out what I was missing (of course! :)…
Using the latest version of Synology (DSM 4.0-2228), I went into “File Station”, selected my “tm backups” shared folder that contains all 3 disk images (directories as viewed in File Station). I selected the directory containing one user’s sparsebundle data, selected “Properties” from the “Action” menu in the File Station window. In Properties, I verified the “owner” field was correct already, and then I selected the “Permission” tab. In this tab, all check boxes were checked so that all of Owner, Group, and Others could read/write/execute all contents of this directory. I removed all check boxes for “Group” and “Other” so that only the owner could read/write/execute. Then selected the check box for “Apply to this folder, sub-folders and files” (recursively). Then clicked OK.
At this point, when connected to the server with AFP as a particular TM user, I can only have access to my own backup. The others appear with little locked icons — which is what I was trying to achieve.
If you see a downside to what i did here, or a better way to achieve it, please let me know.
Thanks again for the great blog!
macsynology
October 26, 2012
Thanks for the info. Always happy to see a Time Machine backup success story!
susanna chisholm
August 25, 2012
Hello, Thank you so much for taking your time to write this amazingly thorough blog. I wish I had done my research before I bought my Synology. I had no concept of the complexities involved in its use. I probably would not have spent the money had I known. It took 3 days to complete, but I’ve managed to get Time Machine working (I think). However, transferring the bulk of my data from my MacBook Pro to the DS is proving more difficult. It won’t let me transfer folders – only individual files – and I cannot understand why. I’ve gotten around the issue by making folders into archives and then transferring the archives across, which seems to be working, sporadically. But transferring anything of any size takes hours, as does unarchiving the folders once they are on the DS, and I usually have to attempt the whole process several times before it actually manages to complete the job. Also transferring anything over to the DS seems to make all open web pages require reloading constantly. Is there some solution to moving folders across to the Synology without creating archives first? Any advice gratefully appreciated.
macsynology
October 26, 2012
You are definitely a pioneer in the Wild West! Being on the West Coast I often wonder what made people leave the comforts of their old homes and settle new areas. Definitely a lot of work, but I give you kudos for rising to the challenge!
If your Synology is doing the file transfers via AFP then slow speeds are the norm. I’ve been looking hard at Apple’s new Thunderbolt standard and bought my first Seagate Thunderbolt hard drive. It is blazingly fast compared to USB3, FireWire800 or Ethernet. I hope Synology is looking at a Thunderbolt NAS because it would solve a lot of speed issues you are running into.
Make sure your Synology NAS and your Macbook Pro are CAT6 ethernet cabled to the same gigabit router for best speeds. If you are only using WiFi on the MacBook for large file transfers you are putting up with too much pain!
As for the files vs folders I’m guessing you don’t have Apple’s File Services (AFP) properly configured. You should be able to access your NAS like a hard drive with file AND folder support. Maybe a quick call to Synology might help. Let me know.
Tommy
August 25, 2012
Can you confirm if the SHR was set up with only one volume that the only way to add a volume is to back up existing and recreate the SHR with two volumes?? This unfortunately happened I saw your blog but forgot to follow it in the set up. IS there any other way to restrict the Time Machine backup size with out creating another volume? Many thanks in advance.
macsynology
October 26, 2012
You can use logins with disk quotas to limit how much space Time Machine backups can have access to. No worries. My post was just my preferred method for doing this.
johnwmorgan
September 22, 2012
This is a brilliant tutorial and I certainly have learned a lot from it.
One question regarding strategy. I hear a lot of people state that the Synology NAS shouldn’t be considered as a backup? My plan was to use my DS413J (I only have two 3TB discs in at the moment) as Disc 1 for all of my iMac data files, this then mirrored to Disc 2 in case Disc 1 fails. This would then give me network access to all my files from the NAS. I am hoping then to transfer all of my Aperture, iMovie, iTunes and document data to Disc 1 of the NAS and get my iMac to send all future imported data directly to the NAS.
I was then going to put a 3TB Hard Drive onto my iMac’s USB as my backup disc and ‘point’ Time Machine at this?
Not too sure whether:
Time Machine will backup data from the NAS to the USB drive wirelessly?
Aperture and other software can operate on a wireless networked drive NAS?
As you can see from this post macsynology, I am very new to Macs and Synology :-(.
I hope you will be able to comment or even just share URLs of other stuff you must have written around this
Thanks very much again for all of your sharing, it is very comprehensive
John M
Cafefoxx
October 1, 2012
Hi, this blog is very useful. I also need your help. I am a novice at setting up the MAC and Synology. I need your help. I have an imac and i just got the Synology DS212j. I have a 3TB WD drive in the Synology and I began the process of settign it up. I got to the stage where I created a password and then the rest is a blur. I belive a Hard drive (am not sure which ) began being formatted. About 30 minutes later, I mistakenly cancelled whatever Synology was doing. and was left with an mber/orange blinking status light on the Synology and I was also left with a Macintosh HD that was ‘modified.’ Whenever I try to start installing Synology again, it kept telling me that configuration was lost and that i should save somethign on a file path and I go in circles. i would like to do two things. First, I want to revert my Macintosh HD to where it was before I ‘allowed’ modification to occur and second, I want to start the Synology setup from scratch ….from the point of putting in a password. Please help.
macsynology
October 26, 2012
Your are better off contacting both Apple and Synology Tech Support. They’ll both try to point the fingers at each other, but Apple TS should help you get your Mac back up and running, and Synology should be able to get your DS212j reformatted and ready to go again. Best of luck!
Robert Lowery
August 4, 2014
I am also a newbie. I got the Synology DS412 for iMac backup. To start, it was well reviewed on CNET but I will say that I could not have set it up at all if I had not found your blog!! I am about to do the Extended S.M.A.R.T. test on the 4 drives and then try to backup the Mac.
BTW, what are the screws that came with the Synology for?
macsynology
April 13, 2012
For our Polish speaking folks you might find this poster’s review helpful. costa.info.pl/2012/02/synology-diskstation-ds212j/
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