Goodbye Drobo | Hello Synology DS1821+

A network attached storage array can be an invaluable part of a video editing workflow. With a few minor tweaks, the Synology DS1821+ protects your data against drive failure, provides fast read and write speeds, and does away your that drawer filled with small capacity removable hard drives - and allows for latency free 8K video editing.
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[@daverussell457]

Multiple people have found that if you upgrade the memory in the DS1821+ to 32GB or more it now supports 200TB per volume.

[@neilfisher]

@daverussell457 - woah! That's fantastic news. Nearly doubling the potential capacity by simply expanding the memory will surely benefit many - myself included. Thanks for sharing this 😃😃😃

[@ruanth]

I don't often comment on videos. I've probably watched hundreds of NAS / DAS videos in the past few months. As a post-production professional, I'm working mostly from home and since cloud providers (dropbox) has stopped with unlimited storage, I've been looking at alternate solutions. While this topic/unit isn't unique to this video, your perspective definitely is. I can't find enough creators considering budget and giving a visual step-by-step data migration breakdown with illustrations (wonderfully done by the way). The fact that I'm also a new father really hit home for me in this video if I saw that tiny hand correctly. 1500USD as a father has a different shade than 1500USD as a bachelor. Thank you for the wonderful video, I'm planning to move 182TB of data out of the cloud ultimately (combined team data), but will start with my personal data just under 13TB. Considering an all SSD NAS using SHR-1 and slowly building up.

[@Kellysnorthshore]

So glad I found your video. I have a Drobo 5D, still working great but I know my time with it is limited. So I have been trying to find a similar replacement. Like a Terramaster or OWC but the fact that you have to use a software RAID, you can’t mix and match drives and you can’t increase the volume makes it a hard no for me. I am better off buying a 20TB drive, use a dock to connect to my computer and back up the data to my Drobo and my 2 Synology 1815+ units. When the Drobo dies, I repurpose the 5x8TB drives in the NAS’. Can’t believe someone did not buy the Drobo tech, not the fastest solution but damn easy!

[@jweezy78]

One of the other things missed in the video is the expandability of this specific model. It supports 2 addition enclosures (hence the 18 in the model name) . Might be different volumes, but doesn’t require a whole new NAS

[@neilfisher]

Very good point @jweezy78 - totally forgot to mention this 👍👍👍

[@antichang9215]

Glad to see you back!

[@neilfisher]

Many thanks@antichang9215 👍 Appreciate the support 😃😃😃

[@talktomenowxbmc]

Good job. One of the better videos about use of Synology.

[@neilfisher]

Thanks @talktomenowxbmc 😃 Greatly appreciate the feedback👍👍👍

[@Frostulv]

Nice video, care to talk more about your backup strategy and solution?

[@IWCpilot]

Great video, I would like to add that you should definitely attach the NAS to a UPS and for an 8-bay NAS I would also use RAID-6 or SHR-2 for two-disk redundancy.

[@AleVoltolina]

Excellent video! Extremely clear! Thank you!

[@neilfisher]

Many thanks @prolive46👍Appreciate the feedback😃😃😃

[@PolarRed]

Great vid, one thing with Synology is that you always have to remember you're paying for the top of class OS and software, not the hardware (that's usually mediocre at best)! Just curious, as you you said you're not so interested in the NAS capabilities (don't understand why, they're pretty damned good, but hey! your call) did you try just connecting the volume (or shared work folders) using an iSCSI LUN from the NAS to your PC/Mac?

[@newart88]

Nice video, it's answered many questions.

[@neilfisher]

Many thanks @newart88👍 Appreciate the feedback😃😃😃

[@macdoctorsg]

Hi, thanx for the informative video. I currently edit 4k videos on my Mac (attached directly to a Drobo 5D3 via thunderbolt 3) that's at least 5 years old and has an ethernet connection maxed out at 1000baseT. Will this Synology drive upgrade be useful? I'm thinking of switching out my Drobo for this.

[@neilfisher]

Yes, the DS1821+ paired with a 10GBe to Thunderbolt 3 adapter will allow for the speeds required. Ironically, OWC makes a terrific adapter that should work for your needs.

[@macdoctorsg]

@@neilfisher thank you! will the one Apple sells work too? So it's just basically plug and play from here?

[@neilfisher]

To my knowledge Apple only manufacturers at 1,000Mbps Ethernet to Thunderbolt adapter - you'll find the speeds of the OWC 10GBe adapter significantly faster 👍

[@NITOENT1]

Ok so I have the DS1821+. I have installed a 10gig network card to it, a ssd for caching, hooked up to my 10gig network switch using cat6a cable, which is then hooked up via another cat6a cable to the 10gig network card on my PC. I'm only getting around 260mb/s transfers though. I haven't done anything with the RAM. Do you think this is the issue? I can't figure it out.

[@ghargettCarolina]

Such great information. Some other vids have spoken about the value of selecting a more vintage Synology unit that supports decoding video faster if you use Plex or similar. Is it worth 'going to the older stuff' for that purpose, or getting one of the newer 2023 models?

[@Noodles.FreeUkraine]

Unfortunately, as great as Synology is, their development cycles regularly see glaciers passing by at break-neck speeds. I have no idea why he bought a NAS from 2020 in 2024, but even the newer models use the trashiest AMD CPUs Synology was able to find. His DS1821+ runs on a 14 nm AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B from Q1/2018 and a newer NAS, e.g. the DS923+ boasts a 14 nm AMD Ryzen Embedded R1600 from Q2/2019. That's what they're offering in 2024, with a straight face to put a cherry on top. And yes, to cut a few more cents of the already anemic CPUs, they decided to ditch integrated graphics. So good-bye Plex, unless you grab a DS918+ or a similar model. That's the one I got and I'll run it until the day it dies or Synology comes to its senses and starts offering NASes with actual CPUs in it that deserve the name. Blows the mind how they'd rather alienate all of their Plex users instead of offering a model that isn't already 5 years old when it hits the market. They're gonna lose more money due to lost sales than they stand to gain from the miniscule savings. I guess the bean counters in Taipeh weren't able to figure that out.

[@neilfisher]

When I purchased the DS1821+ in 2023, Synology had yet to release their DS1823xs+... and for my needs the latter is still the more cost effective choice that delivers equal performance. I use the DSD1821+ only for video and photo storage and editing - and don't have need for real time video decoding. Don't really think it's mind blowing that a company identifies the differing customer usages of their products and scales accordingly. The Plex userbase likely doesn't represent an adequate product share to make proactive targeted product development worthwhile. Just my two cents 👍

[@QU1RKONE]

Excellent Video

[@neilfisher]

Thanks @QU1RKONE 😃 Greatly appreciate the feedback👍👍👍

[@TopGear351]

Interested to know what your plans are to backup all that data?

[@neilfisher]

oooo... solid question @TopGear351 and one that I now wish I had mentioned in this video. Over years of incrementally upgrading hard drives as capacity demands grew and hard drive prices decreased, I have amassed a considerable collection of small-capacity hard drives. Using these small-capacity hard drives along with one or two new large-capacity and relatively inexpensive 5,400 rpm hard drives, I mirror all my data off-site at a relative's house. It's not a perfect schedule, but I try to conduct backups of all my data at least once every two months. That said, if there's an important project that I am working on: all assets are duplicated until the project is completed and backed up off-site.

[@DavidDowns61]

I have my full 15TB backed up online via I-drive. It does incremental backups every night

[@skynetintex5878]

Really good video.

[@neilfisher]

Many thanks @skynetintex5878 👍 Appreciate the feedback😃😃😃

[@zu5295]

Hi - did you see an increase in WRITE speeds to the nas with the RAM upgrade please? I have the 1821+ with 8x10TB drives, 10G Card and with standard 4GB RAM installed. I am getting ~850MB write speeds to the NAS, if I upgrade my RAM to 32gb or 64gb will I see an increase to my write speeds?

[@zu5295]

I just installed 64gb of Crucial ram in my 1821+ and now I'm consistently getting north of 1GB/s write speeds to the NAS, I was already get >1GB reads anyway, so yea, having the extra ram does make a significant difference! since it helps cache the writes to ram as it writes to the disk

[@50sidu]

What is the best raid available in Qnap? something like SHR in Synology to add new drives to the existing pool.

[@neilfisher]

@50sidu unfortunately I don't have any experience using Qnap products.

[@sifar9712]

Please can you provide links for all the products you've used. It would be great help.

[@neilfisher]

@sifar9712 I'm honestly not overly inclined to post product links within video descriptions. Products featured in the videos I create are purchased with my own dollars - and the unsolicited driving of traffic to a manufacturer's website feels a bit too much like free advertising for said manufacturer. I realize this may sound counterintuitive, as I mention specific products by name and discuss them at length, but that's in an attempt to educate and share my opinion with others.

[@sugarat333]

Why not just use MooseFS on a couple servers?

[@neilfisher]

Fair question @sugarat333, but the answer is just the same reason with TruNas and a Jbod wasn't chosen: time. I simply don't have time to learn, setup, and potentially troubleshoot. A prebuilt NAS is simply easier to setup and has manufacturer support if any issues are encountered.

[@DavidDowns61]

Very helpful! I had read that DAS drives were not compatible with NAS boxes? I have the DROBO 5D3 with 5 Seagate Barracuda Pro 8 TB drives.

[@JonDisnard]

Drobo was probably the first to release storage products featuring "hybrid" mismatched drive sizes. Synology and the other vendors figured out how to replicate the technology, which is just Linux storage with an absurd configuration. Please do not use any kind of hybrid storage, and do the correct thing which to install same sized disks with traditional (proven) software RAID. I wont go into the technical details as to why one should avoid hybrid types except to say they dramatically reduce the chances of recovery. Hybrid types are a gamble of ideas, like being so penny pinching cheap to rationalize the value right now vs the future cost of lossing the data when one of the mixed drives fails. To be fair hybrid types can usually recover when a few sectors suddenly go bad, but the risk increases when an entire drive fails, and especially when the failed drive is the largest sized of the set. Anyhow, do yourselves a huge favor and forget hybrid.