TOP 6 Synology MISTAKES New Users Make

In this video I will be reviewing the top mistakes that I see new users making most often when they set up their Synology NAS.

Links mentioned:

Synology Recommendations*:

#nas #synology

TOC:
00:00 Introduction
00:27 Mistake 6: Buying a NAS without enough bays
01:54 Mistake 5: Immutable snapshots or WORM before you are ready
05:39 Mistake 4: Not setting up BTRFS and snapshots
08:23 Mistake 3: Opening up ports to the internet
10:16 Mistake 2: Saving things in the homes folder
11:21 Mistake 1: Thinking RAID is a backup
12:50 Honorable mentions

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[QuestionMan]

In my experience, the largest barrier to NAS usage is that so much of it does hinge on "don't use it until you understand how it works" with a side of "you need to use this to really benefit from your NAS." It's getting better, but I really wish NAS makers could crack that nut of making feature concepts more accessible to the layman.

[MrSunDevil]

Long time Synology user. You helped me greatly with choosing my DS 418 and upgrading to DS 920+ and replicating them remotely. Good content as always—great that you help the newbies but don’t forget about the advanced people although that cuts into your consulting dollars….

[jbourgeois]

@SpaceRex, thanks for all the info. Been watching the your beginners videos and trying to figure out what I need for my first NAS (or if I even do). I've got so many files spread around different computers, flash drives, external HDDs, and on the cloud. I think I need to centralize and make them available remotely for when I'm traveling or at work. Not sure what capacity or setup I need, but these videos are helping narrow it down

[DavidM]

I came oh so close to buying a 2 bay but, given the small additional cost, I bought a 4 bay. Now that I have a much better understanding of Raid and volumes, I would probably buy a 6 bay.

[starfoxBR]

Looking forward to watch it after work!

[MrYukma]

Hi! I am a total newbie to NAS and your tutorial videos are truly a saver! Could you elaborate more on your last tip on not using file station to manage files when we are in our local network? It appears to be quite convenient. What is the downside? Grateful for your help!

[skesinis]

My first mistake when I bought the 6 bay DS1618+ was that I used RAID5 on 6x 4TB drives. If I had used SHR instead, I wouldn’t have to buy the DS923+ with bigger hard drives. I did that to copy all my data to the DS923+, before I format the old one to SHR too, so I can make it expandable as well by start replacing some of the smaller drives with bigger ones, without having do that for all, before seeing that in actual free space.

Also, another thing that I did back then, to backup some of my external HDDs, was that I plugged them in to the USB3 and I copied them from within the NAS’ terminal to get 5Gbps during the copy. However, this also copied the permissions of the files (some of them were root) and I needed to use sudo to copy them from one NAS to the other. This was giving me trouble with the script that I wrote to do so, because every time the copy or rsync would fail for some weird filename or whatever other reason, I had to type the sudo password again.
Eventually I changed the ownership of all the files to the admin user I was logged in on the source NAS, and that fixed this issue.

[xellaz]

Great Synology NAS tips as always! I wish you would cover the new UGreen NAS too in the future though. I luv my Synology NAS'es but they can get too expensive once you get to the higher tiers. The UGreen NAS has great specs at reasonable prices albeit the software still needs improvement but you can install 3rd party OS on it too like TrueNAS or unRAID if you want.

[pilske]

one of your luxaflex shifted to the left!!!! Not good for my OCD :) you so much for all your lessens. I am a new user with a 224+ and all the lessens you gave me while ordering made everything so much easier and better. Thank you so much !

[Carl-kgrmzzy]

Love your channel!
Any tips on how to quickly sort up data that has been accumulated over the years! Also how to get rid off duplicate files quickly?

[Frankhe]

A two bay unit works out perfect for me. I understand not everybody is able to make a descent estimation of the amount of data storage they will be needing in three or four years from now. With some good planning you are fine with a two bay NAS. After a good four years I swapped my two 4 TB drives for two 16 TB drives without any downtime. Keep it simple and all will be well.

[userperson]

I absolutely love your content. This is so valuable and informative. Thanks, and.. Cheers!

[blcjck]

If you are determined to learn about port forwarding, you might as well go learn about about reverse proxy as well. That way you can have as little as one port open. Combined with a properly setup firewall, should be as secure as needed, and still be practical for multiple users in day-to-day use.

[gryzman]

looking at backups, cloud backups - these seem to cost more than a cost of new NAS with hard drives - and convincing one of my family to host it for me at their home.
I'd love to be able to store 40TB of data somewhere, guaranteeing that most of it won't change often. Any tips ?

[mikemckenna]

Google Drive. But that may change. I’m trying to take all the stuff one step at a time.

Thanks so much for the feedback! Truly appreciate it

[random_memory_dump]

The one with leaving free bays is good one :)' can you elaborate on home folder on nas?

[TehMezdawg]

Love your videos man. Had a blast playing out with my Synology and various other NAS OS options but still need to practice my Linux skills. Have you ever thought of doing a more personal video on your background and that kind of thing? Thinking about taking a computer networking diploma because I find it interesting (like an internet plumber!) and was curious if you had any suggestions to get into that line of work. Thanks for the videos!

[regwatson]

The idea of the BeeStation is a great one. Running a NAS without investing a lot of time having to watch videos like this to understand how to set things up is not something that appeals to the ordinary user. However the single drive NAS BeeStation is not much better than using an external hard drive if backup is what you want - just adds ease of external access but retains the danger of "all your eggs in one basket". And 4TB is not nearly big enough for all the files and photos and videos we want to store these days and you still have the issue of if it dies all your data dies too if that is all you have relied on (as most Beestation users will have).

[aartis]

In this video you state multiple times when "something is a huge pain" but you never really say why. This would be good context to have in such a video.

[Frankhe]

I backup the NAS home folders and therefore all Synology Drive data to an off-site location, in this case to Synology C2 Storage. I disagree about the claim not to backup files that came from a desktop or laptop to the NAS via Synology Drive, either through backup or synchronisation. Files on my computer are important and Synology Drive creates a copy on the NAS but this is only 'one' backup. "One backup is no backup". Bring the files off-site in a second backup. This is very important!