New here and new to NAS

[tophatjohnny]

Hello, just joined the forum as the audio forum I am part of doesn't really have a strong segment of members that are knowledgeable in the NAS area. My name is Johnny. I just purchased a Synology DS215+ and 2 WD Red 4TB Hard Drives with zero knowledge of what I am doing but I do know what it is I want to do. This is strictly a project for my music files which now are all on a 2TB external HD and it is completely full. Problem there is my network player will not see files on anything larger than a 2TB drive and I want to keep on ripping and building my music library. I was told by a tech at Cambridge Audio as well as a knowledgeable tech person at Crutch field that I need to go with a NAS device to do what I want to do. So, here I am, and after doing some reading around on the internet I came up with the items that I just ordered. Not the most expensive but not the cheapest parts either. Questions for the community are not (or I don't think they are) cut and dry, but more looking to hear if I am (in your opinions) on the right path. That and is this the right equipment for the project? I plan on transferring all 4800+cd's from my external HD to one on the 4TB drives in the NAS and continue ripping files to this 4TB while the other 4TB in the NAS acts as a back up. So, is this possible to do, and when I am accessing files to listen to, will I be able to kn ow which of the 2 4TB drives I am using that is in the NAS? This is all so foreign to me so please forgive the (not so smart) questions and if you know & understand what it is I am trying to get done and feel that the parts I ordered are all wrong, please tell me. I can cancel and reorder if needed. That's all I have for now and sure hope that if someone takes the time to reply I will be able to see that. This looks like a huge forum and kinda hard to find my way around here. Thanks, even if all you do is read my post! Oh yeah, I have Time warner and they said that the router they provided me will work with the NAS and I use windows. Thought I better add that?????

 

[Someone Somewhere]

When you first set up the NAS, tell it to use "RAID 1". This means that the exact same data will be written to each disk, and the NAS will read from either drive.

You won't see two different drives; it'll show up as just one 4TB drive.

 

[Karsten75]

IMHO you are better off

1: going to the actual Synology forums and asking your questions there
2: using Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) during Synology setup.

Next time, try using a few paragraphs in your post. It makes it really much easier to read.

I have a Synology NAS, which I bought on the recommendation of a few friends who all have one. It seems to be the market leader in SOHO NAS.

As for your question on "right equipment", changing to a NAS isn't going to magically get your network player to overcome its intrinsic limitation of 2TB storage maximum. You probably need to look at a different player.

The way the NAS works - if you want redundancy - is to hide the details of the drives from you and present the two drives as a agglomeration of space. If one of the drives should fail, you can replace it and the box will over time recover the data onto the replacement. So as a user, you should only see the file structure created on the NAS, not the individual drives.

 

[tophatjohnny]

When you first set up the NAS, tell it to use "RAID 1". This means that the exact same data will be written to each disk, and the NAS will read from either drive.

You won't see two different drives; it'll show up as just one 4TB drive.

Thanks for the answer, but how will I know if the other 4TB hard drive is actually the back up, or will it really not be considered a back up??

 

[Someone Somewhere]

RAID is not a backup. It saves your data if a drive fails, but if the enclosure goes bang, or if you delete the files, or if you get a virus, RAID doesn't help. You should always have a separate backup, ideally offsite.

But it should say on the NAS's web page that RAID is working and the array is healthy.

PS: I'd forgotten synology had their proprietary stuff; use that.