Question 1

Is there a maximum size drive that can be installed and a limit on the installed drive TB total?  I'm using 4TB drives in a Drobo unit I'm replacing and that is its max size drive allowable.

Accepted Answer

The max drive size shown on the manufacturer's compatibility website is 16TB per drive for a theoretical max capacity of 80TB in RAID0, or 64TB in RAID5/SHR1

Question 2

Does anyone know which drives are compatible with this unit? Is the RAID level set to 1 when the unit arrives?

Accepted Answer

You can set up the volumes in any number of different ways including with RAID 1. It is recommended that you use Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). I personally use SHR1 (1 drive fault tolerance) vs. SHR2 (2 drive tolerance. I also us the Btrfs file system.

Question 3

Do you have to have all the drive bays loaded? Meaning, can you have empty bays while still using the storage? I would like to be able to buy two very high capacity drives, instead of 4 or 5 small capacity, and then just buy two more high capacity drives later one.

Accepted Answer

You do not need to populate all bays. With two drives, you could use RAID 1 (mirroring).  Synology's srn1 or snr2 setup can configure a RAID even if the drives are not the same size.

Question 4

Why does have 3 ports for ethernet?

Accepted Answer

To facilitate multiple connections to the unit. Looks like it's designed for running virtual machines so if you have three VM's that would give each one the same dedicated bandwidth as a single ethernet for each.

Question 5

What is this device?

Accepted Answer

It is a NAS or 'Network Allocated Storage' device. It holds hard disk drives in the bays and acts as a file storage server on a network. Once set up, you can use it to store files and/or backups (great for Apple Time Machine snapshots), run simple linux-based applications, and even create virtual machines to run from the device. Check out the manufacturer's website for more on what these can do.

Question 6

what is the TB capacity of this unit?

Accepted Answer

This comes with no drives, so storage is determined by what and how many drives you purchase to install in the unit.

Questions & Answers