Synology DiskStation

I finally set up my Synology DiskStation DS418. It is a four disk unit with 1 GB Ethernet. It took me a very long time to get it up and running the way I wanted, and I still want to improve the setup. My general impression is that Synology is a very flexible solution, which naturally makes it more complicated than a simple plug and play solution which does very little.

Right now, I’m just sharing video clips with a colleague who will edit them. Works fine for that. I’d like to be able to share photos attractively with clients. There seem to be ways to serve up photos so that they’re viewable through Google drive and other methods. I backed up about 5TB of photos to the array but I don’t have a computer backup solution configured yet.

I’m happy to share what I’ve learned and get suggestions from more experienced Synology users.

I don’t yet have it setup for photo viewing. I hope this thread lets us collaborate on ideal ways to do this.

I’m just sharing a folder for a colleague. I created a user account for him, set it up with the correct permissions, and he can browse, upload and download files. Very basic.

One problem with the setup is that even gigabit Ethernet isn’t very fast; about 65 or 70MB/second over your LAN. Copying terabytes took a long time. 100 GB copies take about 20 minutes, and that’s using an Ethernet cable. Over WiFi, no matter what, it’s slower.

I have found the Synology enterprise boxes more reliable than the consumer ones, but I have moved away from SYnology in recent years because of their decision to not allow third party drives in the enterprise boxes. I'm using QNAP NAS boxes now. Cheaper than Synology even without the huge tax that the company charges for their Synology branded drives.

I use GoodSync for backups and synching.

I picked up a DS418 for under $300 a few years ago, and finally got around to setting it up. I have about 10.5 TB available, which should last me a few years.

If you will be thinking of a new setup, this one www.truenas.com/ is pretty good.

I ended up going with QNAP as well. The NAS is setup to real time sync to a DAS. If there is a mechanical failure with the NAS the DAS can be disconnected from the NAS and attached directly to my MacBook or PC. The NAS itself is backed up to a rotating collection of USB drives. Now I just need to decide on a 10GBE adapter and switch.

Interesting. I use alwaysync with 5 drives Jim. I see goodsync bought out alwaysync, so how are you finding it Jim with goodsync. No issues I take it? I'm thinking about the upgrade but see it's now on a paid plan.

Danny.

The QNAP switches are nice.

I like GoodSync a lot. It is pretty powerful now, and has interfaces to lots of cloud storage services, including Google, S3, and the enterprise version of Backblaze.

Well that was interesting and very easy Jim. Downloaded it and signed up through the allwaysync software and it picked out all the "jobs" from allwaysync. Amazingly simple. I'll give it a good run thanks Jim ;-) Nice.

Danny.

What exactly do you mean by photo viewing? At home, on your smart TV, on forums/websites, mobile viewing, what exactly are you looking to do?

I have a Synology NAS myself, I've got it internet connected off my home network through my router. I use 2 factor authentication, and have the login set to 5 wrong attempts & it blocks your IP address forever. To discourage hacking. Had it for a year or two now, the log files tell me it must be working as it's registered no successful attempts so far. The 2 factor authentication is in the form of a sign code generated in an app on my phone, which makes it difficult to try. I've got the app on a couple of phones, it only allows 1 phone to use the authenticator at a time, the one that you allow access to. That phone lives in my pocket, so should be quite secure

Personally, I think it's the greatest thing I've ever bought. I'm not the slightest bit an IT expert, I'm in the steel fabrication industry as my day job, but even I can work this all out, set it up to work and access it securely on my Windows network, Chromebook & also a Linux computer. From anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Which is really handy, as I do wander around various countries on the odd occasion :)

I was using the Synology photo's app with albums to organise & view my photos, from any device with an internet connection, but of late I've just been organising all my photos in folders in the generic photo album directory from DSM on the NAS, and then creating shared folders with a link. You can share a single photo, like this andrewNASaccess.quickconnect.to/mo/sharing/vqlhPz092
Or an album with multiple photo's, like this andrewNASaccess.quickconnect.to/mo/sharing/z8Bg0qKtj
Or this andrewNASaccess.quickconnect.to/mo/sharing/NdqjxOXng

You can set up passwords, expiry dates, or a few other options depending on what you want to do.

For uploading to web forums, I've set mine up so it appears as a native drive on your system. On my Windows computers, Chromebook and Linux. I haven't quite figured out how to do it most securely on Linux, it seems to want to use SMBv1 as its Samba share protocol, it works if I set my NAS to SMBv1, but I'm not comfortable doing that. A bit more investigation required there. Hope this helps, like I wrote, I'm no tech expert, but given a bit of time I seem to be able to figure it out :)

Guys, what are we doing here? Please, focus on the problem…
There’s another thread asking about choosing a Drobo replacement. But, I have a Synology. Others have Synology. We want to figure out ways to use the Synology boxes we already have, not replace them.

Can we please steer back to the topic? Cause I could really use help with it.

This is what I want to do.
Can you give me more details about how you set it up? Is it the Photo app which allows the anonymous logins, or do you need to set up special permissions to serve those pages?

You can do it in the phone app, or on your PC through Synology photos in the DSM Browser login. I'll have to go look at the exact steps on how you do it, it's quite self explanatory once you start. I'll get back to you. Have you got quick connect set up? Use the Synology "Find my NAS" assistant to find it, then log in from there

This page will guide you through that bit kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/Unable_to_Locate_NAS It should be already set up, as that's how you set the NAS up in the first place :)

In short:
You can install 'Synology Photo' from the Package Center, create albums inside it and upload your photos to them. To enable others to view the photos you have to create an account for them on your Synology and give this account access to Synology Photos. If the people you want to share with are at a different location (behind a different router) you will have to grant your Synology access to the Internet through your router. Be advised that this brings risks with it, as your Synology then becomes a target for hackers.

No you don't. I'll show you how to do it in the next post.