- I've been collecting photographs, videos
and other data for years and years and years
and this is the kind of problem you end up having.
These are not reliable.
If I store data on one of these
and I drop it or the hard drive fails,
all my data is gone.
That's a major, major problem.
You don't wanna lose your data.
So what I did a few years ago
(continuous beeping)
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna talk a little bit
about some of the pros and cons about NAS devices.
If you just wanna skip to the setup of this NAS,
jump to this timestamp,
and I'll show you the unboxing and setup of this NAS.
I've been collecting photographs, videos
and other data for years and years and years
and this is the kind of problem you end up having.
You probably have something similar
where you're trying to store your photographs
or your data on hard drives such as these.
Small hard drives run outta capacity very quickly
but they're great for being portable.
I've got lots of these kinds of hard drives
and then I've got bigger hard drives,
but the problem is these are not reliable.
If I store data on one of these
and I drop it, or the hard drive fails,
all my data is gone.
That's a major, major problem.
My wife will kill me.
My kids will kill me
if I lose their photographs as an example.
Data such as photographs and videos are so important,
you don't wanna lose your data.
So what I did a few years ago
is I bought a Synology NAS or Network Attached Storage.
This is a DS418.
There are multiple advantages
of using a Network Attached Storage
rather than a hard drive such as this.
One thing you can use is RAID.
If one of the hard drives fails, data is not lost.
You can replace one of the hard drives with a new one
and the data will be built back again.
Be careful with some of the versions of RAID.
Some of them don't replicate data
from one hard drive to another,
so if a hard drive goes, your data is gone.
Now my favorite Network Attached Storage device
or NAS is a Synology.
Again, I've been using these for years.
I've got two of these
but I have this continuous problem
that I run out of storage,
so I was really happy when Synology reached out
and said they would sponsor a video,
but let me say I'm not getting any payment for this video.
What they have done, however
is give me two of these NAS devices.
This is a DS1821.
Synology have given me the NAS.
They've also given me 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
16 terabyte hard drives.
This gives me a lot more storage.
In other words, hopefully,
I'll have enough storage space for a while,
but what they've actually done
is give me two of these devices,
because what I wanna show you in this series of videos
is HA or high availability between two of these NASs.
Let me know in the comments below
the kinds of things that you'd like me to cover.
These are Synology hard drives, 16 terabyte hard drives.
So in this first video,
rather than showing you the crazy stuff
what I've got here is a small Synology NAS
which they've also given me, a DS220+.
So we've got a quick installation guide.
We've got the little Synology NAS in here
and there you go.
They have given us some cables.
The important piece is the Synology NAS.
This one only has two drives in it.
I have to push to release the hard drive bays
so I can take those out
and then I can put new hard drives in here.
Very simple to install really.
Synology have given me two Toshiba hard drives for this NAS.
These are six terabytes hard drives.
To install it,
you simply unclip these two clips on the end, very simple,
and then you insert it into the drive bay.
Obviously, with this pointing to the back of the NAS.
So here's the front and then the back,
and then just clip these back.
There you go, clips in.
So the hard drive is now secured,
and then I can put it back into the NAS like this
and it clips back in.
So do the same thing with a second hard drive.
Once again, you've just got these little clips
that you can release
and then make sure that you put your hard drive
in the right way
and then you can just clip these back,
put this in the right way
and there you go.
My two hard drives are now installed,
and I can put this back again on the NAS.
Now, some people may have worried about how difficult it is
to install the NAS,
as you can see, it's very very simple.
In the past, and on some models
you had to screw the hard drives in
but you don't have to do that anymore.
This one also comes with two ethernet ports.
We've got a USB and we've got our power.
So power adapters here.
They've sent me a US power adaptor,
so I won't be able to use that cause I'm in the UK,
so I'll use a UK power supply or cable lead.
I'll connect to the NAS and then power it on.
So simply put the power in
and then you can use the supplied ethernet cables
or you can use another ethernet cable
to connect the NAS to your network.
What I'll do is use my own ethernet cable
and connect that to the NAS on the first ethernet port
and then I'll power this up and continue the demonstration.
Now just for transparency.
Synology are not paying me to create this video.
They are not reviewing this video before it goes live.
They've told me I can say what I want to
but I can tell you
that I've used Synology devices for a long time
and have been really happy with them
and these are my recommended NAS devices.
Okay, so I'll connect the Synology to my network
using the first ethernet port.
I'll plug it in.
That's now connected to a power supply
and I'll power it on.
In windows, I'll open up a browser
and I'll go to a website called find.synology.com.
That'll allow me to discover NAS on my local network
(disc winding)
and there you go, my NAS has been discovered.
I can see information about the NAS as an example.
I can see its IP address that was provided by DHEP,
so I've got a dynamic host configuration protocol server
basically my home router
that's allocating IP addresses
and the NAS was given an IP address in my local subnet.
I can see the MAC address.
I can see information such as the model,
which is DS220+.
This model has two CPUs and two 1Gb RJ-45 ports,
which I've shown you already.
It supports RAID 1 as an example
where we replicate data from one hard drive to another.
You could use RAID 0 which gives you more hard disc space,
but if one of your hard drives fail,
you'll lose all your data,
so I'd recommend using RAID 1 rather than RAID 0
because not a problem if you lose one of your hard drives.
You really want that kind of redundancy
when using a device such as this.
Okay, so I'll click connect.
You have to agree to the end user license agreement,
so make sure that you read that
and then click "I have read it" and agree to the terms.
Synology have a privacy statement
that you need to read and then you can click continue.
Now, one of the great things about using a NAS,
locally rather than a cloud provider
such as Google or Dropbox
or one of those other cloud providers is the data is yours.
It's stored locally on your own server.
It's not in the cloud
where cloud providers could charge you more money
or they could index your data or sell your data,
sell information about you.
I personally prefer this.
I do use Dropbox for work
and that's another great thing about the Synology NAS
is you can replicate data from the NAS
to the cloud and back again.
So as an example, I can have the data on my NAS
but also in the cloud,
my internet connection isn't great here,
so it's much quicker to get the data off the NAS
than in the cloud,
but I can use Dropbox as an example
to share files with other people.
You could remotely connect to the NAS as well
if you wanted to.
I can allow other people
to get access to files stored on my NAS if I want to
rather than using Dropbox as an example.
Okay, so I'll click setup and then I'll click install now
to install the Disc Station Manager.
Now you are warned
that all data will be removed on your hard drives.
Now these are brand new drives,
so that's the whole point.
I want to initialize these drives
and get them ready to store data on them.
Just be aware if you used a drive that has data on,
you're gonna lose all that data
but that's okay for this example.
So I understand that all data
on these hard drives will be removed.
I'm okay with that and I'm gonna click "Okay"
and now the disc station is initialized.
(disc winding)
Okay, so after a while, once the software is installed
we have a welcome screen.
So we're told welcome to DSM 7.0.
I'm gonna click "Start".
I need to give this a device name.
You can obviously use your own information here.
I'll just call this a DS220_1
because that's the first device of this kind that I have.
Administrator name, I'll just use David.
So I'll specify my password and click next.
Now we asked,
do we wanna automatically install important DSM
and packages updates only (recommended)
or do we wanna install DSM and package updates?
Or do we wanna install everything
or notify me when updates are available?
I'm gonna install the important software.
Now you can create a Synology account
to receive more benefits.
If you've already got an account,
you can click "Sign in now"
or you can create an account.
This for example gives you access to your NAS from anywhere.
So if you wanna access your NAS,
when you're traveling as an example via the internet,
you could set up an account.
You can also do around the clock monitoring and protection.
So I'll create a new account
and you just to specify my email address.
So check your email for the code.
I'll enter my code and click next,
specify my username,
I'll specify my user type
and then I need to specify a password and I'll click next.
I'm gonna agree to the terms of service
and click "I have read and agreed
to the data handling policy described",
click "Submit", and then I can sign in.
I need to specify my quick connect ID
so I'll specify that
and click "Submit",
that'll allow me to access the NAS from anywhere.
I'll copy that information and save it
(mouse clicking)
and then click "Okay".
Now there's a whole bunch of software available
with Synology.
You have, for example,
around the clock monitoring and protection
and configuration backup
if you want to back up your configuration
I'm not gonna enable those.
I'm just gonna click submit.
And there you go,
I've logged into my Synology NAS.
I now need to create a storage pool and volume.
So I'm gonna click "Create now".
Basically we have these hard drives
that are part of a storage pool,
and we have to put them into a volume
so that we can use them.
So I'm gonna click "Start".
Okay, so we're told
that we need to configure our storage pool.
RAID we're told is a data storage virtualization technology
that allows us to aggregate multiple drives
into a storage pool.
There are different types of RAID.
The one that they're recommending is SHR, Synology's right.
If you're not sure what the device supports,
Synology gives you information
about the different types of RAID
and you can see the requirements
and additional functions of that,
so that opens up another tab
and you can see that as an example,
this would be used with one drive.
RAID 0 features striping.
This does not provide any data redundancy
and then adds the size of all the hard drives together.
So, as an example, if I go back to my setup wizard
and click RAID 0,
we're told that we need at least two drives,
fault tolerance is zero.
So it combines those drives together
to give us an increase in performance,
but provides no fault tolerance.
If I choose RAID 1, we need a minimum of two drives.
This is most often implemented with two drives.
Basically the data is mirrored
from one hard drive to another,
so if you lose one of the drives, it's not a problem.
That's the type that I prefer.
So if I select two hard drives in this tool,
it'll give me information about the data that I have.
So this is available disc space,
I've got two 16 terabyte hard drives in my NAS,
but that only gives me 16 terabytes of data
because one is used for protection.
If I chose RAID 0, as an example
I would get to the full 32 terabytes, but no redundancy.
So I would typically choose RAID 1
because that's what I'm used to using,
so I'm gonna select that and click next.
I need at least two drives,
so I'm gonna select my two drives.
Notice these are six terabyte hard drives.
I'll do lose some disk space.
So I'm only gonna get 5.5 terabytes.
Click next.
Now we told that these drives
are not on the compatibility list.
So if I click on the compatibility list,
I'll see the drives that Synology recommend
and you can see there's a whole range of hard drives.
You typically want hard drives
that are built for this kind of application,
not just standard drives.
Now these Toshiba drives are drives that Synology gave me,
so I'm gonna assume that they good,
but in your deployment
you may want to use a drive on their list.
So as an example,
this Seagate IronWolf drives are really popular.
You may want to use one of these,
which is optimized for data storage applications,
such as this
or you may want to use a Synology drive such as this one.
We can now perform a drive check
to make sure that everything's okay.
Default is to skip that,
so I'm gonna skip that.
I'll give the volume a name, My Data Volume.
I need to specify the maximum size of volume,
so I'll do that and I'll click next.
I'm going to use the recommended file system.
Good idea often to use recommendations,
so I'll click next and I'll click apply.
And I'm warned once again that the data will be erased.
I'm okay with that.
Yes, I am, cuz that's what I wanna do.
So I'll click "Okay",
and now the drives are spitting up.
They're getting made ready so that I have my volume.
Okay. So there you go.
I've got storage pool one, it's healthy 5.5 terabytes.
I've got my two hard drives.
You've got these little widgets that you can move around.
So I can see as an example, that the system is healthy.
I can see resource information.
I'll click plus here.
One of the ones that you probably want to add is storage.
I'll make this a bit bigger.
What that'll allow me to see is my storage,
system health and resource monitor.
You can go through the quick tour, if you want to.
I'm not gonna do that here.
What I wanna show you is that
by going through those simple steps,
I've been able to set up my Synology NAS
and I can now add data to the NAS.
Now in File Explorer, if I go to Network,
I can see my Synology NAS
and if I double-click on that,
you can see that it's opened up a connection
to the IP address and port number of my NAS
and I could continue to that IP address
and then I could log into my NAS.
What I can also do
is connect via File Explorer to the NAS
so double-click on this computer that's available.
I'll log in
and in this case, I'll remember my credentials
but notice at the moment the folder is empty.
I can't copy files from Windows to the NAS at the moment.
So back in my NAS, I'm gonna go to File Station.
We're told that no shared folders are available.
I'm gonna click "Okay"
because I want to create shared folders.
So I'm gonna call this Davids_Data.
My data.
I don't wanna hide this in my network places.
I want to restrict access to administrators only.
I don't want anyone to have access to this.
I'm gonna click next.
I'm not gonna encrypt the data.
You could encrypt the data if you wanted to.
I'm gonna click next, click next
and click next.
So what I wanna do is give David Read/Write access.
I'm not gonna give guests access
and I'm gonna click "Okay".
So back in Windows Explorer,
what I'll do is refresh this
and notice Davids_Data is a folder that's available,
so back on my Synology, double-click on File Station,
we can see that we've got a recycle folder there in Windows.
We can see the recycle folder.
What I'll do is make this a bit smaller,
go to my downloads directory
and I'll copy a file,
let's say this Chrome Setup File,
go to Davids_Data
and click paste
and what you'll notice is
in Synology, if I refresh that
that file has been copied.
So I can now copy files from Windows
onto my Synology NAS.
So basically in Windows, I can go to my network
and I'll see my NAS and I'll be able to connect to it
and then copy files to my NAS.
So as an example, I'll open up another File Explorer window,
go to downloads,
there's a bunch of stuff that I've got here.
Let's say I'll copy my Windows 11 ISO file
and I'll paste that
onto my Synology NAS.
That's a big file.
It's gonna take a while to copy
but going back to my Synology NAS,
if I click refresh
you can see the file is already showing.
Basically what I've shown you now
is how to get a Synology NAS up and running,
very basic setup.
Lot of options are available on the NAS.
I can see my widgets once again,
showing me the disc space,
showing me the health of the Synology NAS,
showing me the Resource Monitor.
There are many many applications that you can install.
Under control panel,
you can, for instance, set up your users if you want to.
You can set up external access to the NAS,
so specify the quick connect ID.
You can go to the Package Center.
You need to agree to the terms
and now here you can install a whole bunch of applications.
One of the ones that I like is Cloud Sync
that allows me to sync my data to a cloud provider
such as Google or Dropbox.
I use Dropbox, so that allows me to sync to Dropbox
but there are many applications available here.
As an example, you could run Docker on your Synology NAS.
You could run Python on the NAS,
set up a WordPress server.
A lot of people use this to stream videos
so have videos on their NAS and then stream that locally.
A lot of applications available.
I'll cover some of the applications in a separate video.
Okay, this video's getting long
but that was kind of like a quick start to Synology NAS.
If you enjoy this video, please like it.
Please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel
and clicking on the bell to get notifications.
I'm David Bombal, and I want to wish you all the very best.
(upbeat music)