Synology formatting / initialising new drives to BTRFS

Flake87 · 12 Sep 2024 at 08:22

I'm having difficulty with this despite much google searching and loads of irrelevant returns Synology don't give a lot of information about how to initially set up a new system. I don't have the NAS yet, but I am planning on the DS224+ with 2X 14Tb HDD which will arrive with no formatting. I even downloaded the Synology owners manual which includes the usual basic how to assemble the thing physically but doesn't give any information about how to initialise the discs.

Can anyone please help me with this? It might all be obvious when I come to the setup, but at the moment it's all a little confusing.

m4cc45 · 12 Sep 2024 at 17:07

Insert the drives, you can then use the utilities such Synology Web Assistant to find the device and connect to it, then you'll install / upgrade DSM (the OS) which will wipe the drives.

A good video:

M.

Flake87 · 12 Sep 2024 at 17:15

m4cc45 said:
Insert the drives, you can then use the utilities such Synology Web Assistant to find the device and connect to it, then you'll install / upgrade DSM (the OS) which will wipe the drives.

A good video:

M.

Ah, these drives are not initialised at all, new with no formatting, there's nothing to wipe. Windows can see them in disc manager but the OS cannot see them.

m4cc45 · 12 Sep 2024 at 18:29

They don't need to be if they're going in the Synology NAS.

If you want to use them before hand then yes you'd need to initialise / format them to NTFS, but they won't be able to be used in the NAS afterwards without the formatting (hence the video showing you the warning). You can't use BTRFS on Windows.

M.

Flake87 · 14 Sep 2024 at 15:16

Well I set it all up today, and yes the User Interface is very intuitive and makes set up reasonably easy, although the video is now very out of date compared to the latest DSM. I thought it might be a good idea to ask it to check the disks before writing data to them not knowing it takes a day to perform the operation!

Thank you for your help, it is much appreciated.

Flake87 · 15 Sep 2024 at 14:04

Well I set everything up and then ran into another problem to which there is no help or answers available. The problem I have found with Synology is that the people offering advice put the blinkers on and cannot get past the NAS drive itself, when that is only half of the system, so there is tons of advice on how to create a new user, but there is zero advice on how that user then connects to the NAS itself!
The user I want to add uses a Mac and can see the NAS but none of the folders, and because the user permissions are for the folders (which can't be seen) is unable to connect to the NAS using the account name and password. Does anyone have any advice as to how we get past what I'm sure is going to be a minor issue here?

Semple · 15 Sep 2024 at 14:15

Flake87 said:
Well I set everything up and then ran into another problem to which there is no help or answers available. The problem I have found with Synology is that the people offering advice put the blinkers on and cannot get past the NAS drive itself, when that is only half of the system, so there is tons of advice on how to create a new user, but there is zero advice on how that user then connects to the NAS itself!
The user I want to add uses a Mac and can see the NAS but none of the folders, and because the user permissions are for the folders (which can't be seen) is unable to connect to the NAS using the account name and password. Does anyone have any advice as to how we get past what I'm sure is going to be a minor issue here?

It sounds like what you're wanting to set up is an NFS share. Can't recall the exact steps, but they were pretty straightforward.

Flake87 · 15 Sep 2024 at 15:06

Flake87 said:
Well I set everything up and then ran into another problem to which there is no help or answers available. The problem I have found with Synology is that the people offering advice put the blinkers on and cannot get past the NAS drive itself, when that is only half of the system, so there is tons of advice on how to create a new user, but there is zero advice on how that user then connects to the NAS itself!
The user I want to add uses a Mac and can see the NAS but none of the folders, and because the user permissions are for the folders (which can't be seen) is unable to connect to the NAS using the account name and password. Does anyone have any advice as to how we get past what I'm sure is going to be a minor issue here?

Solved it, the NAS login does not like being on a different WiFi access point from the Nas drive, by loging onto the same one we were able to get the account working.