Question 1

Do you have to have run 2 drives or will it work with just a single drive?

Accepted Answer

It works with one drive.  I'm currently running it like this while I wait for two new drives to arrive and to do some testing.  Obviously RAID doesn't work, but otherwise it's fully functional.

Question 2

I have a drive with content on it that I want to move to this NAS device. Can I preserve the content on the drive when installing it to this NAS or does the drive need to be formatted when installing it?

Accepted Answer

You can use a separate drive for inside the box, the OS is installed on the internal drive. You can connect your drive with content to the USB port.

Question 3

Is the only thing you need to add are the HHDs and then just set it up and be able to use it. i.e. no other things necessary like memory?

Accepted Answer

Correct. All you have to do is add the hard drives. Then you can power up the NAS and run the setup program. Everything else is ready to go.

Question 4

So, what is the storage capacity?

Accepted Answer

It comes with no drives so whatever you’d like to put in it. I put a couple of 8TB Seagate Ironwolf’s in mine and works great. Nice having local backup along with offsite using AWS Glacier.

Question 5

i have 2 questions 
1.Can I put non nas drives in this and will it work
2. Will this work without using any type of raid? like if i wanted to use this without raid is that an option?

Accepted Answer

(1) NAS drives have modified firmware which prevents certain transient conditions from being signaled as drive failures to the NAS software.  I have no idea how frequently these actually occur.  The consequence (of using a non-NAS drive) is that a member of your RAIDset could be (erroneously?)  be dropped.

(2) I've never tried running a JBOD configuration on my Synology NAS units, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work the same as on a single-bay device.  During initial setup, simply create two independent volumes, one from each drive.

Question 6

How are the USB ports used? Do you connect additional drives to it or can you connect it to a computer and see it as a USB storage device? If you can connect it to a computer, can you access it via USB and network a the same time?

Accepted Answer

Additional drives are connected. It shows up as an separate drive on your network. I connected a 2.5" SATA SSD drive, formatted NTFS, with a SATA to USB 3 adapter so it is powered by the USB port. The benefits to this are that if the Synology box conks out you can unplug the drive and still have the files, and, with the box turned off, you can unplug the drive and add files through your computer USB port. The drive in the Synology box is formatted in a system that is not visible in Windows.

Question 7

Has anyone used this for sharing CAD files? I'm a part of a small woodworking shop and we need a fast way to share files between computers.

Accepted Answer

Sorry, I have no direct experience with  CAD specifically.

To a NAS, a file is a file is a bucket-o-bits .. but there could be a problem if multiple users attempt simultaneous access with intent to update the file.  If the app simply reads the (.dsf ?) file into memory, and then closes the file, the problem doesn't surface until that user attempts to write any updates back to the original file.  If multiple users are at the same time updating, there's no way to synchronize or merge their updates, leading to lost information.

If the CAD app opens the file indicating its intent to update, other users would be locked out until the first user finishes their updates.

Question 8

Can I use this to run my own nextcloud server? and what is the largest drive capacity I can use on these?

Accepted Answer

I do not know what a nextcloud server is. I plugged in to one of my router LAN ports for Network Attacked Storage, it works fine for that.
This is copied from the manual that I downloaded from Synology: Maximum Internal Raw Capacity 32TB (2 X 16TB hard drives) so up to 32TB total or 16TB RAID 1.

Question 9

Can you use this on a closed circuit without connection to the internet? And what devices do you need to acomplish this?

Accepted Answer

I use it without allowing it connection to the internet as I just want local network storage.  You can enable sharing across the web if you want.

For the first time setup, I did have to go to their website to have it download the software on it.  After that it is all just local if you want it to be.  Maybe there is a way to do initial setup without using internet but I didn't research that.

Question 10

Can I use 4TB  Western Digital Blue drives?

Accepted Answer

WD's economy drives are not listed on the compatibility list at Synology's web site.  They would likely work, but they're not as robust as the WD Red drives.  Do yourself a favor, buy good drives.  Your data is worth it.

Questions & Answers