BTRFS Features EVERY SYNOLOGY should be using

[@jastorino]

Great job on this and all your Synology content. Super detailed and valuable!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Much appreciated!

[@pietschreuder5047]

Great! A year ago I already migrated my NAS to BTRFS because of your video's. As a former ICT employe I was very drawn to the methods You described. It was a time consuming job, but worth while. I still use my 4 WD consumer disks I bought in 2012 on my 411j and migrated them to my 416play. They are in Raid 5 and still work flawlessly, I make one Dailey backup on an external HDD and a continuous backup to a cloud provider for the most essential files. And now I have used Your last tips. Great videos!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you like the videos!

[@Jakeeenator]

Hey random question: I also have a 416play and for some reason my external connection is slow (about 2mbps up and down) while my lan network connection is fast (100mbps). Info shows that it's full duplex and I've tried both DDNS and Quickconnect. Any advice?

[@chrispage3803]

@@Jakeeenator try synology support. they are often helpful with things like that.

[@kubev]

15:29 - I'm really glad I watched this video. File Fast Clone has already been really useful for me. I've been ripping my movie collection to my NAS and making a separate copy of each movie for each unique commentary preset for each movie (which I realize is a tremendous waste of space, but I have plenty of storage space), and copying certain movies several times (since some of them have 3 commentary tracks) was taking a long time. I assumed File Fast Clone wouldn't be much help, given the size of these files, but it's reduced what would've been several minutes to copy each file down to 2-3 seconds for each file, and they're immediately editable so I can make the appropriate changes to the metadata. Great feature! Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

In this case its even better because you are not doubling your storage used when you use fast copy to clone things!

[@brianhansen6906]

excellent video. i have watched alot of your videos and find them very useful! I backed up my whole nas w/ hyper backup yesterday then wiped it and started over with BTRF because of the awesome features like snapshot you taught me about. i had no idea what i was doing when i set it up the first time and did EXT4. Now i have snapshots set up and feel alot better about my ransom ware protection as well as just stupid delete protection.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I did the same exact thing! It’s a huge pain but well worth it once you do it! Plus you get access to all the awesome apps

[@ygiagam]

Thank you. I truly appreciate your work. Your videos are easy to watch and comprehend. You have a talent for making difficult concepts easy to understand.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks man!

[@curtisleonard3731]

Thanks! I have learned a lot watching your videos keep up the good work👍

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks so much!

[@DarianCabot]

Great explanation of BTRFS. You cleared up some confusion I had, thank you 👍

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you liked it!

[@tonyvalenti6614]

Yes! Please do an in-depth tutorial on Snapshot! 🙏🏻 Great BTRFS video BTW! 😉👍🏻

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks! and I for sure will!

[@fordsrmaster]

Thanks for the great video. I changed some of my setting and added snapshots after watching this video.

[@cjonesuk86]

Thanks for this video, found it very useful for setting up my DS1621+. I always like how you speak as though there is a baby sleeping in the next room! A welcome change to the usual 'shouty' KZbinrs.

[@fmax30000]

Great video. Thanks a ton!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you liked it!

[@michaelrobinson9643]

THank you for explaining these in your usual clear, helpful and relevant way :)

[@SpaceRexWill]

Glad you like them!

[@Vaip3rr]

Hello Will, congratulation on your video. ❤ I'd love to hear your opinion, as well as the others here. We have a Windows Server 2022 that used as a File Server. We bought a Synology NAS DS920+ which I will use ONLY to backup files from Windows Server 2022 File Server every day, every 2 days, every week and every month. (4 Backup Folders). My question is should I use: i) -Schedule the data check ii) -Enable data checksum for advanced data integrity and iii) -Enable fast file cloning

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yes to 1&2 you don’t need 3

[@EatToBite]

i hope i wont regret choosing btrfs rather than ext4. thanks for this vid

[@paulmaunder3007]

Thanks for your videos. I've just had a problem with my Synology DS1821+ where several folders automatically moved themselves into the Recycle folder. Some files within a sub folder disappeared all together. Do you know how this could have happened? I didn't manually move anything there? Also, now I can't double click on a file on the NAS from Mac OS to open it. I have to open things using a File Open command from within the respective app on the Mac.

[@evtyler]

Fantastic video, thanks for sharing!

[@valin0r]

Thanks for this video, learn some new things!!!

[@cyberwasp461]

Great tutorial, I already had most of them set except for, "the fast clone."

[@andrewdatar9880]

Thank you. Fast Clone is very interesting feature. I will give it a try. But what will happen if you uncheck it in the future? The NAS would start copying files like crazy, potentially running out of space, and probably stuck in inconsistent file system (clone is off, but not all clones were copied)?

[@wrehtube]

Would BTRFS make sense if you use your NAS manly as a backup target. What does btrs do when you replace a file with almost exactly the same file which is copied through samba by an external PC. That external windows PC (using robocopy) would copy the whole file again even if just 1 byte has changed. Does btrfs (over time) compare the latest version with to pervious version to only store the delta or would that not work in this scenario? Would it store the whole file twice?

[@jph364]

Space reclamation is running for days already on my ds218+ (it can run 15 hr/day) after I ended time machine (relying now fully on active bfb) and deleted the 500 Gb shared folder I was using for it. I have still 50% (or some 5 Tb) free space. Is it normal that it runs this long?

[@TheNintendoFanBoy01]

Hey... I really would like to know with the Data Reclaimation.... If I turn my Computer off will the Data Reclaimation still run? Do Tasks still run? Or do I need to have the Computer on and Synology running?

[@hoccontrol]

I really enjoyed this video, so many useful features I'll immediately have to try out! But, can you do a video about data deduplication and finding duplicate files? Would really enjoy that ;)

[@SpaceRexWill]

It’s mentioned in another video coming up. I need to do a specific video on it though

[@hoccontrol]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks! I'll keep an eye out for it ;)

[@hirodash2112]

Great video, thanks! The first time I run Snapshot Replication, it says "Record File Access Time" is detected on my volumes, and its update frequency may affect the replication performance. Do you recommend setting "Record File Access" to Never or just keep it enabled? What impact would keeping the setting as is have on system performance when using Snapshot Replication?

[@tim64163]

Do you have a tutorial on setting up S/FTP, FTPS, or SSH ? which is better ?

[@fabiankeppler315]

recommend setting playbackspeed to 1.5, great video though lengthy

[@DavidM2002]

i run it at .75 so i don't miss a word, let it sink in and slllowwwllly move on

[@uLuGaBi]

Always nice videos, thanks. By the way it would be interesting to explain the differences between "Snapshots" and "Versionning" within Drive server.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Thanks! So interestingly enough if you have a BTRFS volume within drive versioning actually used BTRFS snapshots to have old versions of files. BUT there is a big difference because with versioning if you make a ton of changes the old versions are removed. This could mean a hacker could just make tons of changes to the files until the uncorrupted version is cycled out. With snapshots the only way the are removed is through time

[@uLuGaBi]

Your answer made me even more curious now: I had read before that the "Drive" was working on File level vs. "Snapshot" on block one. From your message I understand there is no such difference under BTRFS: Apps have different UI but they rely on the same backend, in other words if "Snapshot is activated there is no point to activate "Drive" versionning, am I right? Regarding fast clone, were you able to see how the system would behave after light changes made to the file? For instance if we copy a picture then add/update some tags, will it takes 2x the size on disk or just 1+ some blocks? PS: In case someone ask you if it works with Teracopy, I tested and the answer is no, needs to be turn off to works with SMB.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would only activate drive versions IF you need users to have access to them

[@DavidM2002]

When you talk about BTRFS RAID, do you mean SHR ? I'm not technically astute enough in this area but would like to understand it a bit more. I always thought that SHR was one of the best features of Synology.

[@SpaceRexWill]

BTRFS raid is it not SHR. Synology does not have BTRFS RAID because of the issue. Both SHR and RAID5 (and all the other raid options on synology) are all just versions of MDADM. They do the raid before BTRFS ever sees the data

[@mistakek]

Why use snapshot replication over HA? If you have 2 Synology's, HA would give redundancy and pretty much no downtime, so why not use that instead?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Unless you have a department labeled “IT” you do not need HA and there is a good chance HA would cause more downtime than if you just had a replication. HA only protects against hardware failure. For most businesses RAID is enough protection. For the time every 5 years your NAS fails having half an hour of downtime while you fail over is not that bad. With failover you are not just protected from hardware failures, but also software. It lets you be much more flexible as well

[@mistakek]

​@@SpaceRexWill I watched Tom Lawrence's (Lawrence Systems) video on Synology HA and it basically fails over instantly. I'm looking at deploying this at work in the next few weeks and feel HA would be best for us as it won't just be files. We can't afford any downtime, and as I will have some Proxmox VM's that will be running off the NAS at 10Gb that are mission critical, and replication won't cut it I think. I have been thinking which way to go, but I'm heavily leaning on HA due to the circumstances. Will also have active backup for business and o365. Thoughts?

[@SpaceRexWill]

VM’s are the only time that I have recommended HA storage for people. The only thing you need to make sure is to have a fast direct connection (not going through a switch) between the two NAS’s in HA. If this cable fails you can end up in some really weird circumstances. You also need to make sure that the write speeds going into the NAS will not need to be higher than 10GbE (example LAG going in) You will also take a performance hit on any writes as they have to be committed to both NAS. I would force the ABB backups to go over a 1GbE connection to make sure that they do not steal performance from the VM’s

[@michaelkreitzer1369]

Snapshot replication is a disaster recovery solution. It's designed to solve a different problem than high availability solutions. The difference between the two could fill a book, and I recommend learning about it.

[@BruiserFL]

Great video. Currently, none of my shared folders have the "Enable data checksum for advanced data integrity" box checked. However, I want to add this feature to my files. To do this, I will create new shared folders (with this feature enabled) and transfer my old files to them. Two questions, please... 1)-Would "Enable File Fast Clone" expedite my process? 2)-I'm setting up a new DS1522+. Can I migrate my old NAS files (shared folders without data checksum) to folders on a new NAS folders that were created with the data checksum feature enabled?

[@Rhuun1991]

I'm having the same issue as to where "Advanced data integrity" is not enabled on my shared folders yet, as I just recently moved to a new NAS and migrated to BTRFS. I'm no expert in this field, but I assume fast clone would help in this case, as the data is not directly copied, but referenced to the "original" space where it is saved. Maybe someone can validate or clarify this. The only problem I'm seeing is with the default shared folders of Synology for "photo/music/video". Especially with the photo folder, Synology can be quite picky with not recognizing the pictures in there. Could any problems arise there? Maybe I will wait until they add a feature to enable this function for already existing shared folders. Other than that, thank you for the great videos SpaceRex. I was able to learn a bit more of some features and optimize as well as harden my setup. Keep up the good work.

[@kaib1340]

I have a question which I don't find an answer in the web. Do you know why my Files and Folders have an icon (red dot with a white bar through it. Kind of like "do not enter" sign in traffic) when I browse through a snapshot? I know the icons weren't there when I set up snapshot replication. Thanks a lot and keep up your good work!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Those are just read only files (because you are in a snapshot)

[@geoffc7941]

Data Scrubbing is well documented for HDDs, but what if you’re set up with an all SSD array? Is data scrubbing still recommended or is not it more likely to cause premature wear to theSSD’s?

[@SpaceRexWill]

You always want to scrub. A scrub is a read only process (unless it finds a corrupt bit). SSD's only ware out with writes. Therefor scrubbing will not have a negative effect on the lifespan of the SSD's as it is read only

[@michal_szymanski]

By the way, the question is how trouble-free is RAID5 with larger disks? I currently have four 6TB drives in RAID5. Are there a lot of article against using RAID5 due to read errors when rebuilding RAID. The question is whether BRTFS improves this problem or is it recommended to use RAID6?

[@SpaceRexWill]

This has really been a non issue, it was predicated in the early 2000's that RAID5 would fail trying to rebuild 12 TB volume, but its just not the case

[@achan7396]

Hi, great explanation of btrfs. I just setup a simple 2 drives with btrfs in a Raspberry Pi 4 for backup. So if I understand it correctly, I should have the advantages of having data corruption with my setup. Is there a way to use the raid you mention in my setup? Thank you!

[@SpaceRexWill]

If you have 2 drives you are either RAID0 or RAID1. BTRFS RAID only breaks for RAID5 or 6. The other thing you likely already did was use MDADM to build the RAID, then build a BTRFS File system on top of that

[@richardbennett4365]

Would you tell your audience once and for all whether autodefrag on solid state media such as NVMe or older SSD as option goes into /etc/fstab for btrfs subvolumes. I read autodefrag to btrfs means not what we are used to knowing about defragmentation on HDDs and is recommended. Do you concur?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Unless you volume gives you a warning that it is fragmented you should not defragment it. BTRFS does its best not to get fragmented in the first place

[@khostevan]

Thank you! Your videos help a lot! But what I don't understand is, what is the benefit of snapshots, when I have daily backups du Synology c2. I can do with those backups anything, that a snapshot can do, right?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Snapshots are great because they are so fast to recover from. You can get back up in running in a second vs hours to days to download a backup

[@khostevan]

@@SpaceRexWill OK, that is a good point. I guess I will re-enable snapshots again. Your videos are so valuable! Without them I would never be able to decide which NAS I should by, what packages to install and how to configure everything. Now I did everything in no time and it runs perfectly! Very much appreciated!

[@marc9870]

Great video Will! I activated file fast clone but when copying and pasting a large file via SMB it’s not duplicated immediately but showing the progress bar as usual. Any idea why that is? Thx!

[@SpaceRexWill]

It needs to be in the same volume. Then you also will want to make sure you have disconnected and reconnected the SMB server.

[@marc9870]

I talked to Synology support and they told me that fast clone is not compatible with Mac.

[@EricFischer-NL]

I think I have set up my 918+ not in BTRFS.. how to check this? Can I convert the system?

[@SpaceRexWill]

You have to blow away and rebuild unfortunately

[@a_mouse6858]

Does advanced data checksum apply to LUNs?

[@SpaceRexWill]

They do not

[@pbrigham]

What about array rebuilding if one drive fails? in ZFS takes minutes instead of hours or days, how long time takes in BTRFS?

[@SpaceRexWill]

MDADM and ZFS will take about the same time. Both put the rebuild priority at the bottom, and also have the ability to only copy over data, not free space

[@pbrigham]

@@SpaceRexWill Ok, thanks for the reply, it will be nice to see a video changing an HDD in MDADM array as most people still have the notion that this can always take 9 to 10 hours, in fact, being done in minutes reduces a lot a failure of losing data because during this 9 hours is when you have more risk of a second drive failure.

[@SpaceRexWill]

so I think you might be confused by a resilver and a rebuild on ZFS. Resilvering is when the data is already on the hard drive, but has been disconnected for some time, it just has to make sure the data already there is up to date. A rebuild is a long process as all of the data on the drive has to be copied over. For example if you had a full 16TB drive that you had to rebuild it has to transfer 16TB of data to it. It therefor will take a least a full day to rebuild, likely longer.

[@pbrigham]

@@SpaceRexWill ok, understood. Basically, the only way to rebuild arrays faster is to have all disks in SSDs. For me should be fine as I only need 3 or 4 TB max of space, but most people will need to continue to use HDDs. Thanks once again for the explanation.

[@richardbennett4365]

ZFS does data scrubs and self-heals.

[@SpaceRexWill]

They are similar file systems. Both COW with checksums

[@richardbennett4365]

No, and don't have a COW about it. Btrfs and ZFS are redirect on write systems. 🐄 COW systems are more costly in terms of io write operations. In fact, 50% more. 🐄 needs 3 write io operations whereas row systems only need two. Row systems, like btrfs and ZFS, are commonly used, but cow systems generally are used for a quick write, a backup, and then a delete.

[@DaveTaste]

Alright how's it going y'all.

[@Net7GiantMeteor2024]

CoW is great unless your a VM image file, then your performance is dogwater, yeeeesh

[@SpaceRexWill]

I routinely use Synologys running BTRFS as NFS backends for virtual machines and haven't run into any performance issues at all. What issues are you running into?