DS212J setup

tintin82 · 14 Aug 2012 at 17:47

Hi guys,

I am planning to buy a DS212J and fit it with 2 x 2TB (raid1) drives.
This will be used for back up, and primarily as a media / download / storage drive with the aim of having no mechanical drives in my main PC (also getting a 512gb ssd for games).

Anyone else have a similar setup? Works good?

Another question i have is seeing as i am hoping this setup will last for years and years, and the fact that files and storage requirements will increase as always, is it easy to change out the drives when the 2 TB drives are full and i want to upgrade? Is it a case of removing one 2TB drive, popping in a 6TB drive (when they exisit in years to come), and letting it copy to the 6TB before removing the remaining 2TB and popping in another 6TB to complete the RAID1. If that makes sense?

Just trying to save some £ as i currently am a long way of filling a 2TB drive

Thanks for the help

welshdragon · 14 Aug 2012 at 17:51

Hi tintin

I have a similar setup using a DS712+ with two 2tb drives in raid 1 and an ssd in my rig for os/apps. I still have a 1tb in my rig but won't be replacing it if it ever dies, I use it just for some extra redundancy.

Upgrade is very easy. You take out one of the harddrives and insert the new one and wait for it to rebuild the system. Then when it has completed you do the same with the other hard drive and it will rebuild and it's done. Simple as that.

I will shortly be changing my green drives for reds and will do it as I just described. Change one then wait for it to rebuild then change the other.

In case you are interested I feature all the new Synology enclosures on my site HERE and any questions by all means post here, email via my site or signup to my facebook page!

tintin82 · 14 Aug 2012 at 17:57

Brilliant, just the info i was looking for!

Would i need to consider upgrading my router? I have the one that Sky supplied with my Fiber broadband. Will it bottleneck the HDDs or the other way round?

And finally, energy saving HDD's or standard 7200 rpms? I do want to lower running costs, but seeing as the drives can just hibernate im tempted to get faster ones for performace?

welshdragon · 14 Aug 2012 at 18:24

Check your router is a gigabit ethernet one. Don't knwo much about sky routers but if you post make/model we can take a look.

Personally, I would go for the new Western Digital RED hard drives 'designed specifically for nas'. From what I can see you get the speed of a performance drive and the heat/noise/low power use of an energy saver plus a good few other features. You'd be looking at £99 roughly for a 2tb red. I think it's worth it.

If you don't then I currently use Western digital green drives and have done for the last few years with zero problems and good performance. Streams hd fine etc

Whichever drives you get make sure they are compatable. See here for compability checker