Synology NAS

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2 Dec 2010
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I ordered a Synology DS212j yesterday and I have a few questions I'd like to get out of the way before I get my hands on it. Basically, I have WD Elements 2TB formatted with NTFS at the moment and I'm wondering if I could simply yank the drive from that, put it in the DS and that'd be it ready to go? Or would the DS need to reformat the drive to use it? It's just that with HDD prices being the way they currently are, I don't fancy buying another drive and switching to ext3/4 just yet.
 
It will want to reformat the drive as it stores some OS files there
Damn. Will have to connect my current one to the Syn's USB until I can get another drive then. ~£140 to 2TB is ridiculous.

EDIT: Would it reformat even if the drive's already on ext4? Wondering if I could turn the unused space into ext4, transfer the files to the new partition, then erase the NTFS partition completely. Would the drive be okay with that or is it literally "new drive - reformat"?

EDIT2: Nevermind, have been told that the only thing I can put in there without it reformatting is a disk from another Syn NAS.
 
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Have you managed to get yours up and running yet?
Thinking about ordering one this morning but hoping to find some people that have used the thing first...
 
Have you managed to get yours up and running yet?
Thinking about ordering one this morning but hoping to find some people that have used the thing first...

Was setting up my brothers last week and it's pretty impressive although setup could be a little easier (it isn't ball busting but it isn't as straight forward as I thought it'd be). You do need an internal drive because, as celliott said, it uses a portion of the drive for OS files. And realise that it can take 12+hrs to format a pair of drives; took over that for a pair of 3TB WD's in Raid 1.
Other than that it's a great device, quiet, low power, and streams media without any hassle (although transcoding is out of the question on the DS212's). Only little niggle was the lack of remote access to Transmission, which it uses for its torrent downloader, and no easy way of installing blocklists (both issues can be sorted if you install your 'own' version of transmission apparently).

Synology forums are a must read as there is a vast wealth of information on installing applications/packages etc.
 
I've got an earlier model, they are very nice. Make sure you upgrade the OS (DSM) as they keep adding new things.
 
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