RAID vs SHR - Why you should use Synology Hybrid RAID on your NAS

Comparing both these RAID implementation types on Synology NAS's, and why SHR provides significant benefits and provides better value for money from your NAS.

Thank you to everyone for watching!

[sometechguy]

I mentioned in the video that BTRFS was a requirement for SHR, and I want to clarify that this isn't correct and it is possible to use EXT4 with SHR. However, BTRFS is the recommended file system, and it provides a number of benefits, most relevant being data scrub capability. Apologies for the erroneous information there, and although its not central to the video I want to make sure the information is as complete and correct as possible. Thank you all for watching!

[gearboxworks]

That diagram was excellent. I made assumptions about how SHR worked, but it wasn't until I tried to make sense of your diagram that I realized my assumptions were wrong. Great job explaining!

[mikezupancic]

Thanks for the explanation for beginners. I bought a 1522+ and 2 drives with the intention of adding several months down the line. Im glad to know that i can easily do this and increase the storage exponentially.

[helloyassine]

Thanks, this was so much help especially the graphics that explained it clearly.

[drillthrallable]

Really enjoyed learning about SHR here from you. Thanks. I too am coming over from my beloved Drobo 5 bay drive. I'm looking strongly at Synology SHR as a replacement. With Drobo I could mix and match any size TB drive from any manufacturer and Drobo would work it out. If the smallest drive got filled Drobo would notify me to replace it with a larger drive. I'd pop that smaller drive out, say a 4TB drive, and put a larger one in, say an 8TB drive. Drobo would let me do that live without stopping what I was doing. I guess I'm hoping that sort of hot-swap of a smaller drive for a larger drive is something that Synology SHR can do too. Thanks, again.

[DavidSchamis]

Thanks for this - I never understood how SHR worked (though I knew that it did) - very helpful!

[MrChans_S]

Thank you so much the graph and your explanation so much easier to understand!!

[TheTrulyInsane]

You can use SHR on any Synology device, the caveat though is that you must create it on a device that supports it, then you can migrate the drives to the units that don't support it and it will work as normal from there.

[whophd]

Thanks for giving me the heads-up on SHR! It sounds a lot like Drobo (although I used the old BeyondRAID calculator via Wayback Machine and found Drobo often created 10%-33% more usable capacity, e.g. look at 10+10+10+6+6 — there could be good or bad reasons for this). Your channel is amazing — I'll give 10x more if you make content about what we've lost with the demise of BeyondRAID and where we can find a modern substitute. I'm talking about a DAS with direct mounting native filesystems (as if it's one big disk on USB or Thunderbolt or internal), and where mixed sizes and changing sizes are normal, not just a fallback. I'm sure if Drobo didn't start dying 5 years ago they would have supported APFS and SSD speeds by now.

[tonyv]

I couldn't make heads or tails out of the Synology Raid Calculator. I'm running SHR2. The concept of SHR didn't make sense when the calculator was showing "unused space" for drives bigger than those installed. This is the video I should have seen before I purchased the expansion unit with the same drive sizes as the other 4 and changed from SHR to SHR2.

[garnetsteen]

Fantastic video and a great explainer. I was replacing 6TB drives with 14TB drives and thought all the extra capacity of the new drives would go wasted until I replaced all the smaller drives. I was pleasantly surprised to see the reality was as you described in the 9 minute mark. One question I have is, when you eventually replace all the smaller drives, doe the separate RAID arrays combine into a single volume?

[MrPirfree]

My NAS has 12 x 4TB drives. After being in the enclosure for 7 years, I had two disks fail in the array, both within a week or two of each other; before I noticed that the drive had failed. It was not a Synology NAS, but it was configured for RAID 6. At times I had considered rebuilding it as RAID5, but I really didn't need the space.. The point is, multiple drive failures can and do happen.

[automatedrussianbot]

only bad thing about Synology is the 108TB max limit

[sylvainalain]

The only video on YouTube about how shr really works . How did you figure this out ? Synology documentation is complicated or unavailable :) Thanks for your video :)

[xarishark]

Your work is amazing mate. dont stop. Also I would love to see a video about the intel LGA 1700 chipset comparison like you did on AMD

[HappyBuddhaBoyd]

I watched this video months ago.. and when I bought new HDDs for my NAS, I switched to SHR. After using it for 2 months.... I switched back to Raid 5. Raid 5 gives me 20% more storage area and seems faster in transfering files.

[artomontonen]

I assume Synology has a hardware problem or a software problem with SHR if the limit on the number of hard drives is exceeded. The reason may be reasonable. Standard RAIDs have existed and been available for a much longer time. In the days of Amiga computers, remember SCSI hard drive validation started if the power went out unexpectedly. Nothing could be written to the SCSI hard drive if validation was in progress. After validation, the hard drive worked normally again. A protection like this could help with RAID systems, but many people could get nervous waiting for a complete check and repair.

[grahamjones]

Isn't this what Drobo's have been doing for years?

[anonymusmester]

so SHR allows for smooth replacement of grandparents? x)
Strange imagery, but very helpful video.

[BoraHorzaGobuchul]

The stock footage cut-ins re health and legal are priceless