Synology NAS In-Depth Review, Setup & Installation Guide

This is the age of high-resolution images and videos and hence you are always craving for more and more storage as much as possible. This carries the same tag to your smartphone also. So it is necessary to offload or backup the files from the PC to certain local hard drives and whatnot.

Moreover, suppose you don’t have a particular hard-disk at your place or have accidentally left it at your office, you might have a hard time finding your files or using the files when the hard drive is unavailable. There are certain ways to share your files with friends and family too in case of an emergency but being challenging, it is also highly risky in certain situations.Hence came the manufacture of NAS (Network-attached storage) devices which have proven to be really useful and time-saving for heavy consumers of data. As the name clearly showcases, NAS drives are high-capacity storage devices that connects them to your home or office network easily and helps you manage or use them whenever necessary regardless of the presence of the drive at a particular physical location.

Once you have decided with the storage of files on a network drive, then you need to see what kind of NAS devices you would need to purchase based on the frequency of use, data transferred and the security required for the files that you may store. The best solution to setup your Synology NAS device is to use the Synology Assistant find.synology.com.

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Technical Knowledge

RAID

RAID stands for ‘Redundant Array of Independent Disks’ is a specific way of storing a particular data in different places on two or more hard-disks or solid state drives (SSD’s) to have backup of that data in case of an accidental drive failure or data access. Using multiple drives increases the ‘Mean time between failures (MTBF)’ and hence increase fault tolerance levels as much as possible.

RAID works by placing the data that you store in multiple disks and making a balanced form of input/output pattern which also helps in improving performance. On your computer, the RAID appears like a single logical drive. But, in reality it deploys ‘disk mirroring’ as well as ‘disk striping’. Mirroring will help us copy our data multiple times in to different disk locations while disk striping will spread it into multiple disks available.
A RAID controller is used to manage these disks in the storage array. The RAID controller acts as a level of abstraction between the operating system and the physical disks where the partitions of the disks are presented as logical drives. This helps you manage the drives in your computer, improving performance and also help you protect your data even in cases of hard disk failure.

RAID devices use different versions which are named as ‘levels’. The RAID setup has 6 different levels ranging from RAID 0 – RAID 5. They are differentiated into three major categories – Standard, Nested and Non – standard RAID levels.

Standard RAID

• RAID 0:
  This level has only striping without any sort of redundancy to the data stored. It cannot provide any sort of fault tolerance too.
• RAID 1:
  Here ‘Disk Mirroring’ is prominent as two disks (minimum) are used. There is no data striping.
• RAID 2:
  This type of configuration uses striping across multiple disk drives. There are some disks which have ‘Error checking and correcting’ features included. RAID 2 also uses a separate Hamming Code parity for error correction.
• RAID 3:
  This level has a specific technique which implements striping on multiple linked drives and dedicates one specific drive to store the parity information. ECC (Error checking and correction) is embedded within the drives. Data Recovery is done by calculating excessive information that is recorded on other drives.
• RAID 4:
  This level uses a larger form of stripe on more drives present physically. Overlapping of I/O can be possible only with read operations as write operations need to update the parity drive after every write operation.
• RAID 5:
  Here, parity block-level striping takes place. This means that the parity information is striped across each drive. Hence, this allows the drives to function easily even if one of them lead to a disk failure. The array’s architecture is made is such a way that multiple read and write operations are possible giving you an amazing performance which cannot be availed from a single drive.

What is Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)?

Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) is an automated RAID management system from the Synology brand, which makes the overall storage volume deployment easy and in general SHR is recommended to set up the storage volume characteristics on your Synology NAS.

This makes storage volume deployment much easier and advanced when compared to basic RAID management. It will enhance RAID management, expansion of storage drives and also maximize the storage capacities improving the read and write speeds. The main advantage of SHR is that it allows up to 2 drive redundancy which means that even after the failure of two disks, you can still recover and use your files seamlessly.

In regard to the traditional RAID technology, SHR divides each drive volume into smaller chunks of drive space and helps create more disk space with added optimization to the drives for better data transfer. By using this technology, you can even use an unavailable 4.5 TB volume into small chunks of storage which in turn maximizes the storage that will be available for use.

Which drives do we use?

We recommend you to use the hard drives which have a specific ‘NAS certified’ seal on them. Brands like Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital have these certifications and drives are exclusively made for such uses.
For example, Seagate manufactures NAS-class drives which are present in the series of ‘Iron Wolf’, ‘Iron Wolf Pro’, and ‘Iron Wolf SSD & HDD’.

How to setup Synology NAS storage

You can start with your synology Nas storage setup with the help of the web assistant or you can also download the UI from its official website.

How to create a storage pool in synology nas?

• Open ‘Storage Manager’.
• Go to ‘Storage pool’ and then click on the ‘Create’ button.
• Now, choose storage pool type. There are two types:
  o Better Performance: This type of a storage pool supports only one volume but is ideal to provide a good performance.
  o Higher Flexibility: This type of storage pool helps supporting different volumes which includes Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) and the RAID group feature which is
• Next, configure storage pool properties:
  o Storage Pool Description: It gives you information about the storage devices available.
  o RAID Type: Different RAID types as discussed above will be presented before you to select for your drives accordingly. This allows better data redundancy and protection.
  o RAID Group: RAID types 5,6 and RAID F1 supports this type of feature. A single drive here can have multiple RAIDs in them allowing flexible redundancy and increase in its capacity.

How to Install hard drives in Synology NAS?

• First make sure you have a large table or a flat surface sufficient enough to provide you room to set it up.
• Now place the ‘Synology NAS’ drive bay horizontally on a flat surface.
• First, remove the front panel of your drive bay. You will be able to see drive bay placed inside it.
• Now, slide out one of the drive bays. Remove its side panels. Now slide the inner part of your exposed hard-drive (PCB board side) on the bottom side of the tray. You place it in such a way that the SATA port is facing outwards.
• Once you have placed you hard-disk properly, replace the side clips onto place to fasten the hard-drives into the tray.
• Repeat the same for each of the trays in which you wish to add hard-drives. Now before we move into the setup, make sure your NAS drive bay is placed close to the network from which you which to store and backup files and also connected to the same network as that of your computer or mobile phone.

Setup Procedure

• Once you hard-drives are installed into your NAS bay, connect an Ethernet cable from your router to this Synology NAS device.
• Now is the time to connect the power cord to your NAS drive bay. Replace the front panel removed earlier.
• Now power the device by pressing the ‘Power’ button present on the front of the device. The hard-drives will start to power ‘ON’ one by one and you can hear the drives spinning as they produce some noise based on the capacity and technology it uses.
• So once the LED’s on the top glow ‘green’ in color and once the device produces a ‘beep’ then it means that your drives are ready to be synced and used.

Open a web-browser

• Now open a web-browser on your computer/laptop and enter ‘https://www.synology.com/en-global/support/download’ in the address bar and search for it.
• You can either search for your Synology NAS model driver which should be given on your box or else you can download the ‘Synology Assistant’ which is ideal if you wish to download the driver as well keep your device up to date with the latest firmware in the future also.

• You can also find your Synology device by going into find.synology.com login.
• Once you’ve opened Synology Assistant, in the list of software’s installed, you can see that the Synology NAS device will be detected and have the ‘Not installed’ status.
• Double-click on that button and a setup wizard will open automatically. Click on ‘OK’ after reading the User Agreement and EULA.
• It will redirect you to a new page on the web-browser. Click on ‘Set Up’ button. On the next page, it will ask for your permission to install the ‘Disk Station Manager’ (DSM) into your NAS directly. So, click on ‘Install’.

• It will show a pop-up box telling that the data on the disk will be wiped. Click on the check box and click on ‘OK’ to continue the installation process.
• On the next page, you will need to enter certain details to register a Synology account. This is the http://find.synology.com default login.
• Enter a ‘Server’ name that you need and then enter the ‘Username’ and ‘Password’. This is the administrator credentials. SO make sure you remember it at all times.
• It will ask for some preferences which can be ‘Enabled/Disabled’ based on your requirements.

Setting up the Storage Pool and RAID on synology storage

• Click on ‘Main Menu’ at the top of the screen and click on ‘Storage Manager’.
• Click on ‘Create New’ and then it will ask you to select the type of storage pool you wish to use. We recommend you to select ‘Higher Flexibility’.
• On the next page, fill the ‘Storage pool Description’ as you wish and select the RAID type based on your usage, security and number of drives you will be using for storage.
• You can select ‘SHR’ or ‘RAID 1’ for better data redundancy with lesser storage space or else ‘RAID 1’ for a higher disk storage space. Click ‘Next’.
• Select the disks that you want to utilize.
• On the next page, it will ask your permission to perform a disk check. This will clear any sort of errors and clear storage as much as possible. We recommend you to select the ‘Yes’ option.
• Click on ‘Apply’ to save all the settings made. Your ‘Storage Pool’ is setup and ready to use.

Volume

• Select the ‘Volume’ option from the top-left of the app screen. Click on ‘Create’ button.
• Select the ‘Custom’ option. Click on ‘Next’.
• On the next page you can see that you have an option to create a new ‘Storage Pool’ (if you haven’t created one already).
• Select ‘Choose an existing storage pool’. Click on ‘Next’.
• Select the ‘Storage pool’ that you had created some time ago. Click on ‘Next’.
• On the next page, you can select the ‘file system’ It is recommended by Synology to select the older ‘Btrfs’ file system as you get a better data redundancy compared to ‘ext4’. If you are a tech savvy and have a great knowledge about the architecture and working of hard-drives, you may go with the ‘ext4’ type of file system.
• Click on ‘Next’. On the next page, you can give a description for your volume (optional) as well as modify the space it will use from the total storage of your hard-drive.
• Click on ‘Next’. You can confirm the settings made on the next page, and click on ‘Apply’ to save changes.
• You can do such multiple volumes as per your requirements and add encryption and passwords for added security to your data stored.

Shared Folder

• Now come to the home page of the Synology NAS configuration. Click on ‘File Station’.
• It is a file browser. On opening, it will ask your permission to create a new ‘Shared Folder’ It is essential, so click on ‘OK’.
• This feature is highly essential if you wish to access you files wherever you go without carrying your hard-drives around.
• On the next page, give a name to your shared folder. Select the location which is the ‘Volume’ you may want it to be assigned / linked to. Leave the remaining settings as default and click on ‘Next’.
• On the next page, you can either enable/disable the encryption. Even though enabling it would reduce performance by a small margin, it is highly secure to set an ‘Encryption Password’. On the next page, you can modify more advanced settings if required. Click on ‘Next’.
• Once you verify the settings done, click on ‘Apply’ to save the changes made.
• Now, you will be able to see the ‘rights and privileges’ for your ‘Shared Folder’. You can set the read/write and other rights for the admin, users and guests too.

Final Steps

• Once again, open the ‘Synology Assistant’. Right click on your NAS drive and click on ‘Map Drive’.
• Enter the administrative credentials that you have set up. Click on ‘Next’. It will display the shared folders you might have created. Select the one which you wish to use.
• Click on ‘Next’. Now, on the next page, select the letter that can be assigned to your logical drive. Click on ‘Next’.
• Open ‘My Computer’. You will be able to see this shared folder and will be ready for use.
• Synology NAS Default Credentials:
  • Username: ‘root’
  • Password: ‘root’
• Synology NAS Default IP address: 192.168.0.500

Synology Assistant Cannot find NAS device. What do I do?

• If you cannot find your Synology NAS device at ‘find.synology.com’, then first visit the Synology Download Centre at ‘https://www.synology.com/en-in/support/download’.
• Now download the ‘Synology Assistant’ on your desktop.

If you are still unable to locate your Synology device, then follow these steps below:

• Make sure to connect your computer/laptop to a stable internet
• Now in the ‘Synology Assistant’, open DSM  Control Panel  Info Centre  Device Analytics. Here, under ‘Share Network’ option, click on the ‘Enable Web Assistance’ checkbox.
• Now go to DSM  Control Panel  Network  General. Either verify or change your ‘Server Name’.
• Temporarily disable your antivirus and firewall services.
• Connect your Synology NAS device using an Ethernet cable directly to your computer / laptop. Set your computer’s IP to ‘DHCP’ mode and try again.
• Try running the Synology Assistant on another computer and search for your Synology NAS device if possible.
• Change your Ethernet cable and try again.
• If ‘Synology Assistant’ isn’t supported or functioning well or ‘Synology Assistant’ connection failed, you may use the address ‘find.synology.com’.
• If your Synology NAS is not detected after all these above steps, then it is recommended to shut down the device, remove the drives, restart the whole device, and reset the entire device.

Synology NAS not secure. What is the issue?

Issue:

• While connecting to the official domain, you might experience a warning screen on your browser or ‘Not secure connection’ at the top left corner of your address bar.
• This is majorly because your external browser requires a third-party certificate to verify the identity of the Synology NAS product. Even i