Setting up Synology DS212J NAS Drive
My customer purchased a DS212J diskstation and two WD 2TB red drives for backup. The hardware is installed but now I’m trying to set up the software.
He has three computers
1. A Windows XP system running in an IMAC (not sure the exact Mac system, but probably pretty old)
2. Dell Optiplex desktop computer running Win7 pro
3. Samsung laptop running Win7 home premium.
The diskstation is attached to a netgear router. The customer doesn’t have a huge amount of data to back up. Maybe 150GB all told on the three computers. I want to set this up as simply as possible, two separate drives not in a raid configuration.
I have set up the Synology Assistant and installed DSM on the Windows XP system running in the IMAC. I’m not sure how to proceed from here. I know I have to set up at least one new volume but my options all mention RAID. To me that means two separate disks, one mirroring the other and I don’t want that.
Thanks,
Alan
He has three computers
1. A Windows XP system running in an IMAC (not sure the exact Mac system, but probably pretty old)
2. Dell Optiplex desktop computer running Win7 pro
3. Samsung laptop running Win7 home premium.
The diskstation is attached to a netgear router. The customer doesn’t have a huge amount of data to back up. Maybe 150GB all told on the three computers. I want to set this up as simply as possible, two separate drives not in a raid configuration.
I have set up the Synology Assistant and installed DSM on the Windows XP system running in the IMAC. I’m not sure how to proceed from here. I know I have to set up at least one new volume but my options all mention RAID. To me that means two separate disks, one mirroring the other and I don’t want that.
Thanks,
Alan
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Al,
I'm curious why you wouldn't want to have a RAID setup, particularly if this is for backup. Your customer only has 150GB to back up, and you have 4 TERABYTES of disk space in the DS212J. That's a lot of leftover disk space! Since the purpose is backup, and you don't want a situation in which the backup drive fails, leaving the client with nothing, it would make a lot of sense to use mirroring, it seems to me. Synology's own RAID setup, "Synology Hybrid Raid" is very easy to set up, and you get no data loss if one of the disks fails. Given how much space you have available, as compared to how much space you need, it seems to make a lot of sense. And it's actually MUCH simpler to set up and use than a RAID 0 setup (i.e., no RAID at all.) With the Synology using SHR, if a disk starts to fail, you get a warning, you can turn off the Synology, swap in a new disk, turn it back on, and the good disk clones itself to the newly added disk, very simple and easy. With no raid, if a disk starts to fail, you may be screwed, and your client may ask, "Why didn't we have redundancy?"
I'm curious why you wouldn't want to have a RAID setup, particularly if this is for backup. Your customer only has 150GB to back up, and you have 4 TERABYTES of disk space in the DS212J. That's a lot of leftover disk space! Since the purpose is backup, and you don't want a situation in which the backup drive fails, leaving the client with nothing, it would make a lot of sense to use mirroring, it seems to me. Synology's own RAID setup, "Synology Hybrid Raid" is very easy to set up, and you get no data loss if one of the disks fails. Given how much space you have available, as compared to how much space you need, it seems to make a lot of sense. And it's actually MUCH simpler to set up and use than a RAID 0 setup (i.e., no RAID at all.) With the Synology using SHR, if a disk starts to fail, you get a warning, you can turn off the Synology, swap in a new disk, turn it back on, and the good disk clones itself to the newly added disk, very simple and easy. With no raid, if a disk starts to fail, you may be screwed, and your client may ask, "Why didn't we have redundancy?"
ASKER
I don’t think Raid is best here. This is a home computer setup, not a business where you would need a copy of the system up and running immediately in order to go on working. We have three computers to back up. They are not heavily used. The only case where Raid would be critical is if two of the drives, a hard drive on one of the systems and the primary Raid drive both crash at the same time – a highly unlikely event.
I have seen backups fail to restore successfully. What saves you is multiple copies of backups. Here I feel the extra space is more useful for providing redundancy of versions. Put multiple versions on both drives. That’s just my opinion.
Darth Grimnir’s suggestion worked. Thank you so much for that. But now I’m having further problems setting up these systems. Is there any way, within Expert’s Exchange, for me to offer him/her or some other expert additional money to get on the phone and help with things like this? I and my client would be willing to pay for this. Or are there Synology Consultants around that will do this for a reasonable price? The agony of software is that it’s all different and it takes time to learn the ins and outs of any system. I think what I’m trying to do here is probably quite simple. But this is my first time with Synology and nothing is simple the first time with a software system.
Thanks,
Al
I have seen backups fail to restore successfully. What saves you is multiple copies of backups. Here I feel the extra space is more useful for providing redundancy of versions. Put multiple versions on both drives. That’s just my opinion.
Darth Grimnir’s suggestion worked. Thank you so much for that. But now I’m having further problems setting up these systems. Is there any way, within Expert’s Exchange, for me to offer him/her or some other expert additional money to get on the phone and help with things like this? I and my client would be willing to pay for this. Or are there Synology Consultants around that will do this for a reasonable price? The agony of software is that it’s all different and it takes time to learn the ins and outs of any system. I think what I’m trying to do here is probably quite simple. But this is my first time with Synology and nothing is simple the first time with a software system.
Thanks,
Al
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Thanks for your assistance.
Al
Al
ASKER
Al