It's not just about sufficient but how reliable and secure your important data in the NAS.

The possibility both HDD failure is high in 2 bays. Cause you buy the hdd at the same time and same batch. If the data is important, get the 4bays.

Photo doesn't take up much space. But video and movie collection will fill up in no time. Check back your history how fast you expand your pic and collection per yrs. And estimate the hdd size.

AI recognition by Synology photos is pretty 'meh'
Do more research if that is your main usage for getting the NAS

photoprism is good enough as a replacement? their demo looks good, not 100% there yet but still offer plenty of feature on google photo

https://demo.photoprism.app/library/browse

I'm currently running the following NAS at home. All are located on an IKEA Hejne rack.

DS-410J X 2 units
DS-411J
DS-213J
DS-216J
DS-1010+

Each with 2TB drives. Why? Because 2TB was cheap and plenty in the used market especially for Enterprise or Black drives. I usually buy those with less than 40000 hours.

About a week ago, I found a DS-2411+ for cheap and decided to get it. It was old but perfect for my home office and a chance to consolidate and retire the old J units.

I loaded 10 drives of 2TB as 1 storage pool and another 2 more 2TB drives as Hot Spare. No need to worry about pool degradation as the unit will recover itself automatically.

Today, I'm retiring the following.

DS-213J X 1 unit
DS-216J X 1 unit
DS-410J X 2 units

The DS-411J will continue to serve as my temporary storage during the migration period and the DS-1010+ will remain as my TV series storage.

Once all is done, I will put these up for sale at Carousell.

This post has been edited by acbc: Apr 3 2024, 10:38 AM

wow, 12 bay unit
nice find!

DS-1010+ with fan mod.

Stupid server fans cost a bomb. I opted for regular PC fans and grounded the yellow cable to the chassis. No more pesky warnings.

what OS should I use to have a custom build OS? that can install this photprism

My current spec I plan to use

HP Slimline Desktop PC 270
Core i3-7100T (Build 6 Aprl 2017)
4GB DDR4 Single channel.. (tried install 32GB DDR4 cant boot)
Pre installed Windows 10 Home edition

depends on what you want to use it for, is it only to backup the photos and videos. can be as simple as a windows machine running a SMB folder. you can also use other linux based operating system like unraid, truenas scale, or open media vault.

nvm... i decided to spend on Synology DS423+ with 2x12TB Ironwolf Pro instead... hope this works else wasted 5k

Explore more with it, not just for Photos. A lot function can be added especially with Docker

i liked immich

i installed truenas. you can check out my project if you are interested to see what that looks like
https://forums.truenas.com/t/qnap-ts-877-tr...as-journal/1646

for apps like photoprism you can then install as a docker app.

though i prefer immich


uh....4gb is not good enough for truenas, not recommended

This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: Apr 22 2024, 09:24 AM

Ok just got my NAS this week.. DS423+ with Ironwolf Pro 12TBx2 ..upgraded to 18GB ram

So far, I have installed WordPress and Pihole only and backed up my Google Photos. There's nothing much I can do now... I don't think I'm running any Plex media as I'm on streaming apps OTT (Netflix, Disney,HBO).

what else should I run this NAS for?

OpenVPN or Tailscale for connecting securely back to your local network when you're outside.

Synology own Drive or third party such as Nextcloud as replacement for cloud storage.

Self hosting Bitwarden for password management

Calendar and Contacts self hosting.

Active Backup for backing up your computer

Synology own note taking app or self hosting

Check out the list here for other stuff that you might be interested to self hosting
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

thanks..will definitely check it out




By the way, I have a question about PiHole.

I am using Deco XE75 with PiHole and MACVLAN set to 192.168.1.2. The gateway is 192.168.1.1.

I set the Pihole .2 in DHCP Server Primary DNS. However, a problem arises when I set the secondary DNS to 1.1.1.1.

I set the secondary DNS as a backup in case PiHole goes down, so the internet doesn't go down for the whole house. But when I set the secondary DNS, for sites that PiHole blocks, the device will use the secondary DNS to query, effectively bypassing the PiHole function.

Does anyone know what the solution to this is?

Also, I have disabled IPV6 in the router, but somehow the device still manages to get an IPV6 address. It's frustrating as I am not planning to change to another router because I need the mesh capability, and it's a waste to change to a higher-end router (only on 800Mbps Unifi plan).

Since the primary DNS server (pihole) can't resolve the DNS, it will query to secondary DNS server.
Your pihole regularly goes down? Mine very seldom.

If you must use secondary DNS server, setup another self host DNS server. Or add the sites you want to block in the router setting

If you have disabled ipv6 connection in the router, even if those devices have ipv6 address, it won't be able to connect to internet using ipv6

actually it never goes down as its on UPS and no other docker running ; it just that many devices will 'bypass' the pihole... i.e I see ads still (on Huawei phone).. which the IP gets from DHCP

Don't put the secondary DNS, see if that solve it

did you look at netbird? it also looks like another good option to tailscale


This post has been edited by Moogle Stiltzkin: May 14 2024, 06:12 AM

I didn't know about Netbird before this.
Looks like good option if want to connect certain devices without opening many ports, but must have public IP or public domain.