How do I format a Synology NAS Unit?

1) I just purchase a Synology DiskStation 1817 and would like to use it for holding years of files on Mac formatted drives. What's the best way do do this?

You can't. You must use Synology formatting, so any Mac formatted disks you insert... all data will be destroyed...

2) I would also like to connect via USB.

The Synology DiskStation 1817 only has Ethernet ports (hence why it's NAS - Network Attached Storage).

To convert to USB... This will produce incredibly slow access time, so it's unlikely you'll do this.

Better to use something like a Thunderbolt -> Ethernet adapter, if you think you must direct attach this device.

Better to connect using one of the Ethernet ports directly into your WiFi system, which should be 1G+ WiFi speed to keep up with the 1G Synology native Ethernet speed.

I’m less concerned about the “Mac format” and more how the files will handle the transfer since I’m coming from a Mac environment with special naming and huge files (many around 300gb each

for instance, if I move a bunch of my files to a fat32 or ntfs drive I know there would be issues

1) I’m less concerned about the “Mac format"...

Good, because your Synology only supports it's own format, not HTFS (Mac) format...

2) and more how the files will handle the transfer since I’m coming from a Mac environment with special naming and huge files (many around 300gb each.

Then you won't use USB... ever... To slow...

You'll use Ethernet.

Note: If you must have 1G+ speed, then you won't use a Synology NAS, you'll use a Synology Thunderbolt V3 direct connect enclosure, which will run 40G, rather than 1G.

3) for instance, if I move a bunch of my files to a fat32 or ntfs drive I know there would be issues

If you're using NAS, then speed working with disk files will likely be far slower than direct connect disk drives.

As I said in #2, if you require fastest speed, you'll use a Thunderbolt V3 direct connect Synology enclosure.

I probably need to start over and list what I'm looking for. I've been using Mac OS Extended formatted drives as long as I can remember. I've been a Mac user for about 20 years and everything has been done on the Mac, so I have files going back that far.


HERE'S WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR:

• A scaleable and affordable solution. I'm moving away from Drobo because of cost and proprietary nature, etc
• For the next 2 years at least I'd like to be able to go up to at least 100TB in storage
• A system that has some fail safes, but with decent speed - I'm thinking of going RAID 5.
• Decent speed for network users, but mostly for archival retrieval of large files. Those files will in most cases be transferred to a local computer's drive/external RAID setup.
• Occasional quick transfers. In the beginning I have a lot of data to transfer (around 60TB and would rather that not take forever -- less than a week would be ideal. This is a 5-6 times (around 5-10tb each time) a year need as we would move data from a computer to the new archival system. I'm guessing a local connection (ie. direct ethernet, USB 3, etc could work).

HERE ARE SOME OF MY CONCERNS:

• I have about 60 TB of data, and probably 90% of that is video related.
• I have many files over 8gb.
• I have a ton of bundle/package type files such as Final Cut Pro Libraries (.fcpbundle) and AVCHD. Some of those bundles were created on a Mac, where the packaging is a clean way to transfer files and keep everything neat. Other bundles are based on file size restrictions. For instance many of our video files were recorded on cameras with file size limits of 4GB because it was on a FAT32 file system. However I know that these AVCHD files should transfer fine since they were optimized for a much older/simpler file system which I imagine is the most compatible.
• I'm not familiar with filename length restrictions between drive formats, but I know HFS+ allows longer names than FAT32.

Synology and most NAS are stripped down linux.  Fortunately, Synology is one of the few that actually patch against security vulnerabilities.  Many others don't.  I've rescued a few of those hacked NAS by hacking them myself to remove the hack.

Since it's Linux, it's usually doing a SAMBA share and Macs can connect to SAMBA shares.  The Mac permissions will keep, as long as you only connect with Macs.  There are issues when you connect with both Mac and Windows.  The permissions will switch.

You should install extra RAM on the Synology to at least 6GB if you do indexing.  2GB won't work.

On every Mac, you should run defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores bool TRUE on every Mac user account to prevent contention if multiple users connect to the same shares.

Synology has their own RAID type.  Use their default.  Don't worry about RAID types.

RAID 5 is obsolete and bad if the spinning disks are over 1TB.  You're going to lose data if one drive fails and you have to rebuild.  The rebuild will tax all the drives and the probability of a 2nd drive failing before the rebuild completes is just too high to be safe.  RAID 5 still works for under 1TB and for SSDs at the moment, but the higher storage sizes are making RAID 5 a high risk failure mode that shouldn't be used.

Synology has several models that will let you expand the total size with expansion units.  They have iSCSI units for easy sharing to VMWare ESXi servers.

60 TB will probably not copy in under a week on any NAS.  Expect longer.  Even with 4 GigaBit ethernet links on some of units.  Spinning disks just aren't that fast.  Several years ago, it took 5 days to copy 11 TB over a single GB link to an 8 disk NAS.  And that was when I settled on 4 simultaneous rsnyc to improve total throughput on the multi-CPU unit by about 30%.  I started with cpio to run initial copies up to 5% faster than rsync, followed by rsync each day to capture the changes that was happening by the 2nd day to catch up to the cpio commands.

If you're copying from single disks, expect it to take even longer.  You might be able to accomplish it if you just used SSDs, but I suspect you don't have them currently stored on SSDs.  Since the 1817 has 2 GB ports, you could use 2 different Macs to copy from two different disks if you mount the Synology using the 2 separate connections from each system.  This should speed it up slightly, but you still won't finish in a week.