Question 1

Are the drive bays for 3.5" form factor drives or 2.5" (laptop) drives?

Accepted Answer

The drive bays can fit either. 3.5" drives fit into their mounting trays without extra hardware, and 2.5" drives are attached to the tray using included screws.

Question 2

What does diskless mean.  I have to buy the drives inanition to the server?

Accepted Answer

Correct.  The NAS will ship without any drives installed.  It is recommended that you use NAS-rated drives as the vibration caused by multiple drives installed in a common chassis can cause premature failure if they are not designed for a NAS environment.  The Synology support website has a listing of hard drives that have been tested successfully in their equipment.

Question 3

I'm looking at storing my DVDs on this and using it as a home entertainment storage device, can this stream movies?

Accepted Answer

Yes it can. The DS415+ can run Plex, along with its own proprietary media streaming software. The OS is very powerful and flexible.

Transcoding may slow things down as the unit's processor (Atom C2538, Quad Core) and memory can't really compare to a full blown workstation. Still, it is feasible. I tried it out on mine and it worked pretty well. Disk I/O and network transfer speed was more than enough to steam to at least one device.

Question 4

If I just want to upload my business's share drive to the cloud through this product, do I also need to purchase a hard drive in addition to this product?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You would upload your data to this product with drive(s) installed. The NAS would then upload your data to your cloud provider of choice. before investing, ensure that your cloud provider is supported.

Question 5

Is there a limitation on each disk size you can install in this unit?

I'd like to install four 5TB drives in this unit.

Accepted Answer

No. The only limitation is the limit of current technology in disk drive capacity. Right now 6 TB is the largest normal disk drive. There are 8 TB models but the access speed is reduced because they use a different recording technique.

Question 6

Can you connect and transfer files to/from a computer via the USB connection?

Accepted Answer

No the USB port is used to plug in an external hard drive to back up the NAS. Cannot transfer files from a PC over the USB.

Question 7

I currently have a 207+ that's been just spectacular for about 7 years.  Anyone know how easy it is to pull out the drives there and upgrade them in this or do I need to copy data?  Ty

Accepted Answer

I went from a 207+ to a 410 to most recently a 415+ and each time it was easy to upgrade.  I pulled the drives from one and put them in the newest model.  Use the Synology Assistant to find the new model and install the latest DSM for the unit, it's very good about preserving data.

However, if you have your DS207 in mirror mode (RAID1) you can always take one drive, put it in your new unit and do an upgrade.  If everything works as expected and upgrades properly you can then introduce your second drive and rebuild your mirror.

Check out synology's website for more detailed guides.

Question 8

How much are each drive and where can I purchase?

Accepted Answer

"My Guy" said if you plan on running 24/7 use these guys. I haven't rebooted in the month since I installed them.
 
4 x Western Digital RE WD2000FYYZ 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Enterprise Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Question 9

What is the read/write speed?

Accepted Answer

Using Crystal Disk Mark with 4 WD WD60EFRX 6TB NAS Hard Drives in a SHR configuration, I got the following data:
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read :   110.972 MB/s
Sequential Write :   111.172 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :   106.428 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :   102.665 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :    14.912 MB/s [  3640.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     5.422 MB/s [  1323.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :    83.367 MB/s [ 20353.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :    41.549 MB/s [ 10143.9 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [X: 15.6% (2604.4/16687.0 GB)] (x5)
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

Question 10

Can this be upgraded to 8GB ram?

Accepted Answer

Generally no but I got that same answer about my 412+. And yet when I got the cover off the board it was a laptop sodimm and I upgraded it to 4GB

Questions & Answers