Question 1

I want to use 4TB HDD in a RAID 5, but I do not want to shell out money for 8 HDDs at the same time. Could I set up with 4 drives initially, and add the last 4 later without refomatting or losing data?

Accepted Answer

The short answer is, yes. This is especially true if you use the Hybrid RAID format that Synology provides by default.

When I first for my NAS, I created a 3TB partition with 2 WD 3TB RED drives (RAID 1), I later added a couple of faster Seagate 3TB drives to the same array, producing and 8+TB partition (RAID 5). Only then I realized that I wanted to use those faster drives in a separate partition for video.

So I then proceeded to remove each Seagate drive from the array one by one, replacing them with an identical WD 3TB RED drive. It took about 20 hours for the NAS to rebuild the array after each drive was removed, but I lost no data and had no down time. You just have to make sure the array is done rebuilding before the remove the second drive.

Hope that helps.

Question 2

What kind of DDR3 RAM do you buy? Server or normal?

Accepted Answer

I haven't purchased any additional memory.  I'm running the unit as a home server so it isn't under really heavy use.

The memory usage with the 2 Gig it came with has been very efficient.  I would recommend that you try it with the memory installed and monitor the usage.  You may not need to increase the memory.

If you do want to add memory, check with Synology to verify what you should buy.  I believe that you only need standard DDR3 memory.

The server memory will be more expensive and I don't believe it will handle the server memory because the memory is using error checking methods not found in the standard memory.

Question 3

I need to make backups of various sizes, varying from .5 to 20 TB each. Can I set one of these up in sort of a JBOD mode where I burn files to specific disks so that I can pull them out as groups?

Accepted Answer

I believe that while technically you can set this unit up in a JBOD situation, in my opinion it would be a waste to do so with this unit. When setting up disk groups, you can specifically select physical disks and group them by RAID type but it is generally not friendly to just yanking out disks all the time.
Also, the Synology DSM (unit management software) installs onto the drives on the disk array, so you'd have to set up the DSM onto one or two specific disks and leave those in there all the time. This would leave only 6 or fewer drives for you to swap out based on your backup procedure.
It almost sounds like you'd be better served by using a large 4-unit hot-swap USB/Firewire drive unit that is made for drive swapping and where each disk would show up independently of the others.

Question 4

I would like to know from those of you who own this product and access it from the WWW, what did you do to make sure your data, and the machine itself, is secure?

I just found an article discussing a very simple security exploit that compromizes the whole machine. Do a google search for "CVE-2013-6955 Synology DSM remote code execution"

Accepted Answer

If by "www" you mean over the internet, no I do not. I do access it via http on my LAN but it is blocked from the internet. Just in general, nothing should be open to the internet unless necessary.
I personally ssh into one of my home servers, and then mount a synology share from there, all inside ssh. And that's either nfs or cifs/smb. I see no reason to open http from the synology to the internet.
To answer your question, I blacklist my storage servers from talking to the WAN in my routers. If I need data while away, I access it via another computer on the LAN. So that exploit really doesn't concern me.

Question 5

Can you setup the Synology 1813+ with the first four bay as Drive 1 and bays 5 - 8 as drive 2.  Then have Drive 1 mirror Drive 2?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can; that is not the issue. (A benefit is a reduction in procesor use, relative to SHR.) The problem is that you will not be able to increase size individually by the drive as you could with SHR. (I strongly recommend a 2 drive backup SHR, rather than 1 drive SHR.)  With SHR, you dont' have to upgrade ALL the drive as the same time, which is 'easier on the wallet'.

THere are a couple of ways to make sure you have redundancy in the box.  There is a 'time backup', analogous to the Apple's "Time Machine", within a 'drive'.  You can also set up the drive to do routine backups from "Drive 1" to "Drive 2", typically set to when not in use. (This is a more sophisticated function than you might imagine.)

A third alternative--if you havent' bought the box yet--is to use Synology "High Availablility" application (free, made by Synology). Get two  5 bay boxes, and set these a 'redundancy' between both; one acting as an active server, and the other as passive.  As in the set up you asked, Box 2 will 'mirror' Box 1; should Box 1 die, you will have box 2 as a backup.

Question 6

Does this device support the newer 6TB hard drives?

Accepted Answer

The synology website has a hard drive compatibility list per model if you would like to confirm your hard drive will work. Otherwise it may not be supported if you run into problems with your NAS.

Question 7

What is the advantage of adding that 2nd 2GB memory module?

It already comes with 2GB of memory.   Adding the 2nd stick would double that.   Sure bigger is better, but why?

also, if you did add the 2nd memory stick, what make and model did you get?

Accepted Answer

I also have this model, and I added the extra RAM when I initially bought the NAS.

As a sidenote, I believe there were only certain RAM modules that work, so be sure to check the Synology compatibility webpage before buying. I don't recall which brand/model I bought, but I didn't purchase it from Synology directly, and it was much cheaper and has worked great.

I have two of these 1813's, one as the primary NAS, the second as a backup of primary. I put the extra RAM in the primary, because I figured it would be more heavily loaded with IO. So I actually have two 1813's, one with 2GB, one with 4GB. To be honest, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from how they operate.

I am looking at both machine's web interface now, and primary is sitting at 7% of RAM used, backup is at 28%. Both are essentially idle. So probably, no, you do not need the extra RAM (28% leaves a lot of headroom). But all backup does is act as an rsync (Synology calls it Network Backup) target, and receives data from primary. Primary only runs the Syslog Server app, and shares folders via SMB and NFS. So they don't try to do much, just serve network shares.

The case where I would see the extra RAM needed is if you plan on running extra services on the NAS (or want the ability in the future). Synology has a bunch of apps you can install like antivirus, media servers/indexers, DHCP/DNS servers, and databases and web services like Wordpress. It's cool to have those easy-to-install services/applications, but I run other servers for that, and leave my NAS clean (just does network sharing). So if you also plan on having the NAS just serve network shares, it will almost certainly never be able to load the system to the point RAM becomes an issue. If you plan on making the NAS become your main/only server and it runs a variety of stuff, it may be a good idea. Running lots of services will consume additional RAM.

Question 8

Is it possible to link this unit directly to a computer via either eSATA or USB 3?  I ask this because in addition to wanting NAS support out to my render farm, I also want my main work station to have full bandwidth of data over the 1GB max from Ethernet.

Accepted Answer

Since this NAS (and pretty much all NASes) are essentially simple computers and manufacturers aren't excited about extra hardware that 1/2 of 1% of customers might want, and you can't connect two computers via USB without some messing around (and hardware), nor do you connect two computers together via eSATA, the answer is NO.

The solution however is to do, literally, what these guys were designed to do in having high bandwidth.  They have multiple ethernet ports so you connect all of them.  I have different ports connected to different switches and have implemented some routing rules.

You need to understand what you're doing if you decide to install a second ethernet card in your PC and connect it through a switch (or directly) to the NAS since it is possible to do it badly and actually slow things down badly instead of speeding access up.

It is the same for the 1513+.

Question 9

I want to expand this to the full 72TB as well as expanding to the fullest storage space possible....what to buy to accomplish this?

Accepted Answer

To expand to the full 72TB, you would need to buy the Synology DX513. You would also need an eSATA cable to connect the DS1813+ to the DX513. Lastly, you would need 13 x 4TB drives. While all this stuff is available on Newegg, please read a strong word of caution:

To get 72TB of storage, you need to use a technology built-in to the boxes known as RAID 0. It doesn't matter what kind of environment you are using this in, you should NEVER use RAID 0. The caveat with RAID 0 is simple: IT HAS ZERO REDUNDANCY. All data is striped across all 13 disks, so if you get one bad drive (which is going to eventually happen, no matter what) and you have 72TB of stuff on the boxes, you can say goodbye to ALL 72TB. Please, I beseech you one last time, for the love of all that is good: NEVER USE RAID 0. Ever. Period.

Question 10

Will this work with SAS drives? The Synology web site doesn't list SAS drives as tested, but the internal port is compatible. Just wondering if anyone has tried?

Accepted Answer

I just checked inside my Synology DS1813+ and it only shows Sata and Sata ports on the backplane so I doubt SAS drives will work.  Also make sure you get NAS SATA drives as they last longer, they are the Western Digital ones that have Red labels.  By mistake I just bought three regular Western Digital 4 TB drives and they are working fine.

I took a picture w/ my iphone of the backplane but the DSPhoto app from synology is very very buggy and I can't show it to you, the instant upload won't let me put it in the folder I want and I when I search for it via various mechanisms via dsphoto via browser I can't find it.  Despite this bugginess i still like the synology ds1813+ and recommend it.  I use it to back up PCs and MAC, act as my own dropbox, use survelliance station for cameras, plex to stream movies and attempt to use dsphoto+

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