Though I admit as I read your reply I did feel the “oh this is too much for me moment”, please stick with me. I need to get the basics down pat before I move any further. I’m certain that I’ve made errors in my initial sertup and for that reason I’m thinking of starting all over again with setup my Synology NAS from scratch reformatting my HDs however I may add two or maybe three additional hard drives to take advantage of the DS1520’s advanced features. Your comments please.
Seems to me as if you have chosen the folder /CANON M50/ on your (external?) drive Seagate_SSD_1TB_Garry as a destiantion for your Synology Drive sync folder.
Go to the Synology Drive client in the Menubar and edit the preferences of your “Synology Drive” connection to your DiskStation. Since this is your first and only NAS there most likely is just one connection. You can specify where that folder should be located. I recommend your home folder, but keep in mind that for a full sync you need the space to accommodate all the files sync’d.
Yes I have it running 24/7, and at night it backs up and also runs a security scan. I have it on a UPS. If you get the right one then NAS will detect it and shut itself down gracefully when the UPS gets close to running out. It will also start itself back up when power is restored. I have both the NAS and my router on the UPS so that we have internet for awhile (maybe 50 min) after the power goes out, that way we have time to download what we need before we lose internet access.
(Most drives are 1000000 MTBF which is
like 110 years if my math is correct?)
Irrespective, I have seen a LOT of folks who
are into home automation (which continues to
be a problem in search of a solution IMHO)
that take great delight in turning it on and off,
I am just waiting to hear the horror stories…
Hi Leo, I’ve been away from home for three months and therefore away from my Synology NAS. I’m about to pick up where I left off in May following your recommendation which was:
Leo’s recommedation:
Go to the Synology Drive client in the Menubar and edit the preferences of your “Synology Drive” connection to your DiskStation. Since this is your first and only NAS there most likely is just one connection. You can specify where that folder should be located. I recommend your home folder, but keep in mind that for a full sync you need the space to accommodate all the files sync’d.
You recommend my ‘home folder’ and this is probably going to sound really dumb but is my home folder on my NAS or on my Mac? As you can see my knowledge level is still bare bum basic.
So it seems that you have correctly configured your Synology NAS to work as a TimeMachine host and have set your Mac’s TimeMachine preferences to recognize it properly as a destination, but it running out of space. This is a problem independent from the Synology Drive situation.
You are correct, it should purge old backups “parts” once the assigned TimeMachine “shared folder” on your NAS is full. The question is how do you limited the size? There are two options: You either have capped the maximum shared folder size to 1TB or you set user quotas. If you have defined a maximum shared folder size, but maybe backup multiple Macs to it, the available storage will most likely not suffice. The other way would be to use user based quotas and by that not setting a maximum size limit for the TimeMachine shared folder itself. You could assign a quota of for example 512GB to each user that can access the TimeMachine shared folder. This is done in the shared folder properties in the Control Panel (where all system settings of the Synology NAS can be found) via DSM. I recommend to choose at least twice the size of your Mac’s storage. (MacBook with 256GB internal SSD → 512GB quota.)
Since you use TimeMachine I wouldn’t use Synology Drive Backup for the Mac. For Windows I’ve heard good things about their backup and the direct integration into the Windows Explorer’s file recovery feature, where you can right click on a folder and restore it right from there, is neat
For the Mac I would only configure the Synology Drive client (the local one in your Mac’s Menubar) and have it sync to a folder in your local Mac home folder (~/Synology Drive/ for example). By that Synology Drive would work like Dropbox. All files in it will be sync’d to a shared folder on your NAS. You can specify those in your Synology Drive Admin Console settings in DSM.
I use Synology NAS as one of the TimeMachine destinations for all our Macs in the family (three), with other destinations being USB disks. Works well. I also use the Synology Drive backup app to backup “very important” stuff, e.g. ~/Documents into the user’s home space on NAS. And I occasionally (a few times a year) test restoration of files to ensure all working. Belt and Braces.
Hi Leo, Further to you writing me on May 6 about RAID I’ve been saving my pennies. I have ordered three additional IronWolf Pro 12TB drives which are, as you recommended, identical to the two drives presently in my Synology DS1520+. They are due to arrive this week. You provided me with three options from memory. Which of those three options would you choose?
How often do these drives fail? Do I need that 5th drive as a hot-spare or should it be a further expansion of RAID 6?
Re the failure rate of these drives … I don’t know, but I know that BackBlaze publishes extensive data on drive reliability … take a look there. Other data might be out on “net” somewhere also.
If you are talking about what RAID type to choose for your storage pool, it largely depends on your goals and needs. I explained RAID 5 and RAID 6, as well as using multiple RAID 1 in the previous, detailed reply.
I personally go with multiple RAID 1s myself, but I’ve also set up other types for clients.
As I explained above, restoring a large amount of data from a degraded storage array (due to failure of one drive) takes a long time. During that time all data is at risk if just another drive fails if you use RAID 5, because it only relies on one drive as a parity.
With RAID 6, you have at least two drives as parities and therefore could afford to lose two due to hardware failures. Yet, that does not mitigate the risk of the taxing restore. Think of it that way: A degraded RAID 6 with two defective drives will first be restored to a RAID 5 and then to 6 again.
RAID only “protects” against acute hardware failure, but is no backup.
It is therefore even more important to have multiple backups of the valuable data. Both, offsite to a different location and offline to external disks.
Do you know what Dropbox or Google or other major cloud services use for backup? Do they go with something like RAID 6 and have the ability to quickly restore, or do they have reundant capability with a true mirrored backup of all their data?
Hi Leo, Further to your advice of May 12 I’ve been unable to “Go to the Synology Drive client in the Menubar and edit the preferences of your “Synology Drive” connection to your DiskStation.” However I went to the home folder where you suggested that I relocate it and to my surprise it appears to be there already. So could it be duplicated on my external SSD and if so is it simply a matter of deleting from the SSD? Now if I’m to go to preference or setup this is where I ran into difficulty as I could not find preference or setup via Synology Drive Client as you described. Please see four images I’m about to upload/attach. Each image has text on it. Two images relate to this issue and the other two have seperate questions for you that relate to other issues. Thanks & Cheers, Garry
Google says: “Rather than storing each user’s data on a single machine or set of machines, we distribute all data — including our own — across many computers in different locations.”
I have been using Synology DiskStation 8-bay NASes for years. I have one on my home network (10GBE). My iMac and MacBook Pro M1Max automatically realtime back up files to the NAS using the Synology Drive client application. It works great and seamlessly.
I have a number of shared folders on my Synology for back up destinations for my 8TB of photo and video files, personal financial and other documents, receipts and
TimeMachine back ups.
I have a NAS installed on my office network, 8 miles away, that realtime backs up my home network NAS using Synology Drive SyncShare app.
I also have surveillance cameras installed at my home and office. I run these with redundant backups of the video files to/from my home and office using a second NAS installed on my home network as the “hub” running Synology’s Surveillance Station.
All of it works great and has proven to be very reliable and easy to maintain.
The only issue that I have had is a power supply failure in an older DS-1815+. It was replaced under warranty and 2 years later the replacement unit failed for the same reason. I migrated the 8 disk drives to a DS1817+ and was up an running in about an hour after the migration process was completed. Very easy!
Synology’s technical support is excellent. I have called them and submitted tickets on their website. They are prompt to respond and very patient with my noob questions.
Cheeers.
Bud James
www.budjames.photography
