Synology NAS Migration - Anyone done it?

Conanius · 30 Sep 2019 at 18:33

Wasn't sure if there was a better forum for this - apologies if I'm in the wrong place.

I've got a Synology 218J with 2x1TB drives in there. It runs Plex, but I keep getting buffering after 10-15 minutes of play. It seems to be struggling.

I'm tempted to swap to a more powerful model in the hope it fixes this.

Has anyone done a migration to a new model? is it as simple as backing up the config and slotting the drives into a new enclosure?

sja360 · 10 Oct 2019 at 09:52

What's the content your trying to play? Just full HD or ?
Have you always had the buffering issue?

Undesirable · 12 Oct 2019 at 02:36

I tried slotting my hard drives into a new model when my QNAP NAS failed, but it wasn't having any of it. The setup wizard wanted to re-initialize the disks and format them without offering the option to restore data. So be aware that some Linux command line tomfoolery may be needed to reclaim files, which in my case involves invoking mdadm (software RAID Linux tool). Unless it's completely different with Synology.

e.g.

mdadm -A /dev/sdc1

Assembles the specified drive (find out exactly which one it is and then replace "sdc1" with the correct drive) ready for mounting. Otherwise the drive partition with your stuff on it is simply recognised as a "RAID member" without a readable file system.

QNAP's position is that it's your responsibility to back up all data to a volume(s) that is always readable (even RAID-1 is not good enough) and they seem to be reluctant to provide support for partitions that are not immediately accessible where there is no backup.

Rroff · 12 Oct 2019 at 02:42

Most NAS will format a drive that hasn't been "seen" by that NAS before even if you take discs from the same model, etc. you definitely want an additional backup and migration is not a simple task unless you do something like NAS to NAS sync with drives in each.

pcfarrar · 12 Oct 2019 at 09:13

Migration from one synology device to another is really easy. Pull the drives from the old one, put them in the new device and 5 minutes later your back in business. I would upgrade the 218j to a 218+ as these work great with Plex and hardware transcoding.