NAS 920+ configuration?

[Enquiries]

Hi,

My brother and I are very new novice users of a Synology 920+ NAS and we have watched some of your videos about how to set up e.t.c. which have been extremely helpful.

Up until now we have been using just a USB drive to copy and save files from our pcs and phones in case one of the pcs or phones fails, but we wanted to set up a NAS to automatically save pics from the mobiles and to store important files from the Windows pcs.

We have three 4TB drives that we are looking to use and we are wanting to know the best way to configure them to achieve our goal of having two of these drives in the NAS working constantly, with one allowing us to store the mobile phone pictures and important pc files. The second drive to be a live identical copy of the first drive, in case one of these two fail and with the third drive we want to be able to copy or clone the first drive, physically remove it and store it in a remote location as a longer term backup every 3-6 months.

Is there a way we can set this up with the Synology 920+ so that we can use it the way I have explained?

Also can we then take the third drive and connect it to a pc and copy/view the files on it or is it only readable through the Synology NAS drive?

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[TribalHound]

Welcome to the world of NAS....
I'm going to address your principle concerns, not in order you asked, but in order of setup.

So your NAS is capable of housing 4 HDDS so the first thing to think about is not that each disk is independent of another, but they work in harmony together to provide you protection against disk failure and data loss. (This is called RAID).

As a starting user with 3 discs, you have two choices. Link two together (Raid 1) or all 3 (Raid 5). Any other Raid configurations / permutations you can consider when you know & understand more about your NAS and Raid configurations - not meant disrespectfully - but these tow choices are the fundamentals of all basic to mid level NAS and all a home user needs.

So in raid 1 you have two disc - each mirrors the other automatically so you always have 2 copies. Since they mimic each other you only have 4TB of usable space.
In raid 5 you link 3 discs - increasing your capacity and also your level of redundancy (when a disc fails) by replicating your data and sharing the copy across them (instead of duplicating exactly per disk).
(You may need to reset your NAS if you already started configuring it) so save your data externally - reset it then use 2 discs in Raid 1 or 3 discs in Raid 5 - you can expand to Raid 5 while it's running with 3 discs, once your data is back on it, but you can't shrink Raid 5 to make Raid 1 later.

In both cases, if a single disc fails, the system will alert you - follow the NAS instructions, replace the damaged disc and it will rebuild it for you (back to two copies) then bin the old disc or mark it as damaged so you don't reuse it.

Obviously this doesn't cover you if the NAS fails - that's total data loss - so invest in a WD My Passport (or similar HDD in enclosure) and back up everything to there. Not an extension of the NAS - but a single backup solution readable in any Linux / PC / Mac. Make sure this disc is encrypted before you back up to it - don't want your data unlocked for all to be able to access.

Since you're using PCs & Phones (not Macs) I'm assuming you have a OneDrive account each (other cloud storage is available, but check you NAS cloud compatibility before committing all your photos) .. Set your phone to backup to One Drive (and your PC to backup your docs) then configure your NAS (via the build in Cloud link software) to act as a One Drive backup itself - now you have a copy on the phone / PC - a copy in One Drive and 2 copies on the NAS taking care of themselves. It's the simplest solution - and one that just works.

So every time you take a photo your phone has a copy - uploads it to one drive and your NAS downloads it and makes a mirror copy which you backup to an external HDD. (Hope you're still following as that's a lot to take in first time, but with all those copies - you're covered for everything but a nuclear holocaust - at which time your data is not important).

Any disc in the NAS is managed by the NAS - therefore if the NAS fails assume (worst case) all discs are inaccessible. Having that external HDD means it's readable on any device.

Depending on if you choose Raid 1 or Raid 5 you will have 1 or two slots free in your NAS. With 2 slots you can run another Raid 1 mirror (maybe movies) or two standalone discs. With Raid 5 you have 1 spare slot, which you can use as a 'Hot Spare' so when a disc dies your NAS recovers itself.

With two users and two One Drives you can have your own logins keeping your data apart and well covered against all eventualities, without the need to keep plugging in USB sticks and copy / paste files all the time.

I'm not familiar with the Synology mobile phone apps - but QNAP have File Manager and a file sync folder for each user account. If Synology do similar, you could sync a copy of important docs / photos that follows you to all your devices.

But do yourselves a massive favour. Change your NAS Admin user password (at least) or create a new Admin user (not called admin) for configuring your Synology and give it a complex password. Set yourselves up as 'data users' and grant only the access your phone / pc / cloud needs. If you want to make changes, login locally as the admin.

Anyway - that's a hell of a lot of info to take in. Robbie has a great selection of videos that cover most (if not all) the above, so be sure to check them out if you're unsure - or come back and ask another question.

Hope this helps..