Monthly Maintenance: Keep your NAS running smoothly

[@LivingEasy]

I'd suggest that you add cleaning the NAS as one of the maintenance procedures. Dust and dirt accumulate and can have a negative impact.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Good one! should have added physical stuff here too!

[@christerwiberg1]

Ooops, I haven’t done it yet on my DS 918+ that is around 5 years old by now, guess I shall consider that soon 😮

[@osphere]

Might as well make a video out of it lol

[@MirandaRagland]

Yeah definitely clean it every now and then. I just did this earlier this week and it was nasty!

[@blcjck8121]

Came here to say this 👍

[@smellthecoffee5314]

These videos were invaluable in setting up a business on Synology for the first time. Thanks!

[@jonicolton]

almost 100k subs… bro you are killing it! so happy for u.

[@RegCoulter]

Rex, Really excellent video, with a straightforward and easy to understand explanation. I do all of these things you recommend, as well as shut down my NAS completely, once per month. I pull out the drives (I have them numbered), vacuum the NAS itself, as well as the drives. It’s amazing how much fine white dust accumulates. Doing this certainly keeps overall temperatures down. I tried using women’s pantyhose pulled over my DS918+, and it did an amazing job of filtering out a lot of this very fine dust. But, as a male, finding pantyhose hose without having to buy it, is harder than one might imagine, so I stick to y monthly shutdown and clean routine. I am glad I am regularly checking my Hyperback ups, as I recently had a volume corruption issue, due to a power supply that was starting to fail. When it did fail, I replaced the power supply and was very happy to have a working backup on the external USB drive. Thank you very much for producing these excellent videos. You provide a lot more information, easy to understand, that I can get from the Synology web site and their FAQ’s.

[@PatrickBijvoet]

About Updates; The worldwide problem with Crowdstrike in Windows proved your point at 19:00 etc. It was a very helpful video again. Thank you!

[@TazzSmk]

business users should do at least some tests before deploying updates on scale indeed!

[@PatrickBijvoet]

@@TazzSmk It is amazing that airports, airlines, banks, hospitals, etc where shut down because of an update and that worldwide. So I agree.

[@TazzSmk]

23:21 - I did actually fix a problem for client that complained about NAS being full, turned out the empty recycle bin schedule was broken for years, and literally half of the NAS was unemptied bin :D

[@AntonioRosatFilho]

> Another suggestion could be a video explaining updating from a 2-NAS disk to a 4-NAS disk, and what to do with the data already stored. Tks. Antonio, from Brazil.

[@IntoxicatedVortex]

If you're doing this with Synology, you 0) get your 2-bay and 4-bay to the same DSM version, or nearest to - this means starting your 4-bay, update it, then reset it back to factory - which means you give yourself the simplest upgrade path… then… 1) backup your data if you can from the 2-bay 2) shut the 2-bay down 3) take the disks from the 2-bay and put them into the 4-bay in the same order 3) turn on the 4-bay and you will be given a transition path to retain your data and settings 4) insert your new disk(s) and use storage manage to grow your RAID set - hopefully you selected a storage type(like SHR) that is transitionable from what you have to having more drives otherwise you'll have to take a different route. Typically I'd recommend in your situation to go with 4 new drives in the 4-bay so that you can keep your 2-bay as a handy backup (or other).

[@AntonioRosatFilho]

Tks !

[@whya2ndaccount]

Learn something new everyday - I didn't know I could add "storage" to that dashboard! Now I can see at a glance rather than opening storage manager, etc.

[@bluetheredpanda]

Just wanted to thank you for a very clear, very useful video. I already did all of that from time to time, but this allowed me to formalize it into an SOP and it feels great to be assured of what steps to take. Thanks a ton!

[@fantasticjack10]

Great advice. I checked in our online back and found that it complete the initial backup (took a 6 months - Comcast has TERRIBLE upload speeds even for businesses), and that the schedule after that was never set. It was not backing up for a couple of months. Catching up now, luckily it'll only few days.

[@wesc6755]

I would add doing a Hyperbackup "Check Backup Integrity" with "Check if backup data can be restored" every so aften too. Index integrity checks after every backup is yay, but I get paranoid.:)

[@chrismierzwinski1398]

would you consider doing a video diving a little deeper into truenas snapshots. More in the area of a balance of having some and having too many too frequently and potentially fragmenting your data. i recently got a notification of passing 500 plus snapshots with a warning that it could impact performance. i didn't know that. but maybe discuss how to maybe balance the snapshot act and practices to defragment data if necessary. I'm a new truenas user so kinda learning about it still. thank you for your videos i've learned a lot from some as i did my build.

[@cyberwasp461]

Very well done as it opened my eyes to a few things that I missed.I do wish they'd put a switch in snapshots so we can pause them. They tend to interupy certain cleanup operations.

[@808orion]

Perfect timing for this. I'm building a computer and am moving and backing up things in my NAS. Many thanks for clear instructions.

[@robertoghinato5754]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ tutorial as always will, stay blessed

[@dreiphi]

If you loose the encryption, don't throw away the drive. There's a tiny chance, that quantum computing once will be capable to recover your precious family photos 🤞

[@erichfunke4219]

Will, you mention we should "lay our eyes on the encryption key". How do we do that? Where do we go to "lay eyes on it"? (Also, when I clicked on HyperBackup and clicked "version list", I saw a series of versions, but not "key" per se.)

[@brianhansen6906]

Where ever you saved the file. It’s a digital file you save to a usb thumb drive or whatever and put it somewhere safe. Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.

[@Oregonian1]

My guess is that your HyperBackup is not encrypted so there is no key to check.

[@brianhansen6906]

@@erichfunke4219 if you can click on the version list and access it without a password your backup isn’t encrypted. The key is just for if you forget the password the key is your 2nd and only other way to get in. If you forget your password and lose your key you’re SOL. That’s why he says make sure you know where your key is in case you forget the password.

[@dean-a-5767]

@@brianhansen6906how do you click on the version list?

[@justinknash]

Do you recommend running file system defragmentation on volumes (circa 1998)? It's a feature in DSM.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Only if the NAS tells you

[@EuroPC4711]

Hi, Injust checked HyperBackup backups, as younsuggested. I figured out, that some have a version lost and some don’t. So I’ll try to figure out the reason.

[@cyberwasp461]

There should also be a way to manage the snapshots, maybe be able to disable them temporarily or even clean them out. I came across something similar in control panel that had over 5 gb of temporary files. once I told it to delete it the system sped up considerably. Haven't found it since, old age,

[@SpaceRexWill]

There is, in snapshot replication

[@devonlee5815]

Is testing the restore functionality of a single smallish file considered a good proxy for doing a complete restore if the main system goes down? I’ve heard online that ideally you would do a complete restore drill, but I worry that the amount of messing with swapping drives, cables, and time and network bandwidth required for that just isn’t feasible and maybe detrimental compared to leaving the machine alone physically.

[@SpaceRexWill]

So the NAS does an automatic integrity check that is constantly testing different files for their ability to be restored. The simulated check is pretty good, as it's very rare for the consistency check to not find anything, and you still be able to restore a few files, but have a ton of missing data elsware. One thing I do like for businesses is to use snapshot replication over hyperbackup as the onsite backup. This is because snapshots are sending over the underlying file system, meaning that they either all work. Or it hard errors

[@reneGOW]

My Nas DS1621+ does not back up my M.2 drives connected to a thunderbolt extender as my Mac Studio does not have enough usb ports how to fix this?

[@raylopez99]

I don't encrypt backups unless they key is something I can remember (even 15 alphanumeric digits, I can memorize a phrase). You see what happened with encryption keys and Crowdstrike.

[@Tony-sp4ix]

are the any known issues with hyperbackup back up data other than limit of 1000 files per folder and slow backup speed? I have heard some other person using usb copy that discovered that some files were missing from the backup.

[@MrFloRolf]

Can you do a video about changing the main (OS) drive of a synology? I currently have an ext4 HDD running and want to change that to an btrfs ssd. What's the quickest way to do that to keep my entire setup? 🤔

[@EuroPC4711]

Hi, Injust checked HyperBackup backups, as younsuggested. I figured out, that some have a version lost and some don’t. So I’ll try to figure out the reason. Well, Imfound out: though the backup appeared to be fine, certificate authentificatiin failed.

[@iamnotapoet]

SpaceRex, as always, thanks too much for the great video. Every since Dropbox started forcing “APPLE FILE PROVIDER” changes, I have started to panic because that means Time Machine and Backblaze no longer backup those folders because Apple no longer gives them access to the /Users/zork/Library/CloudStorage/ folders. Before my main question, do you know if Apple is forcing those changes? What the good and the bad of them is? Have you considered a video on those Apple changes and how they affect Dropbox, OneDrive etc? Now my main question, dropbox used to have a kink with Synology of when you RENAMED a file on Dropbox , Synology Cloud sync DELETED those files on the Synology and then had to RE-DOWNLOAD them. When you added 1 character to a file name it thought you had DELETED the file and then delete it, and then though you added a different file. This would wreck havoc on Synology, internet etc. And, my guess would be that would also EXPLODE your Snapshots. Do you know if that situation has been remedied in the past couple years? Have you covered this in a video? What are your works of wisdom on the kinks of FILE renaming CloudSync files? Thanks, as always for the FANTASTIC videos. - Eric ZORK Alan & Sweetie [ 🤣Professional🤣Poets & Bed 🛏 & Beer🍺 Vloggers ]

[@grahamsenini8024]

G'day Wil from Australia. On an unrelated topic (I am posting here because it's your most recent upload), is connection from file explorer on a Windows PC to my Synology NAS using WebDav still a working option? I watched your post about this on the weekend (option 4) and can't get it to work. Yes, my ports are forwarded and open. There seems to be a bit of a theme on the web that recent updates may have somehow killed this function. Have you tried it yourself recently?

[@thaitichi]

Thanks to this I just noticed that the external hard drive connected to my NAS is waking up from hibernation every day. Sometimes twice a day. The exact times seem random. My hyperbackup task is only scheduled for once every 3 months. Any ideas what could be causing this? For now I plan to run a backup today and simply power it off. I'll physically reconnect it in 3 months for my next backup.

[@byrd203]

There is away to test the key get enough drives using the ESATA expansion unit create a virtual DSM restore the NAS to that on a second nas then power off do this monthly

[@ZhiYin]

I just added in my google calendar to remind me to re-watch this video every half a year.

[@gokulraj2850]

Hi,i need to restrict internet access for a domain user on a Synology nas , but i need to share a file via nas to the user , how can I do that ?

[@CaptainWafflos]

also whisper gentle words of encouragement to extend the life of your storage (not shouting in the datacenter!)

[@omkar_sawant]

how do I make sure the antivirus definitions for Synology Antivirus update automatically? I only see options for a manual update.

[@Michael-jp3qe]

Based on your recommendation, I signed up for DeleteMe. My experience has been questionable. First, the login I created to get into my account does not work. Then, DeleteMe can't seem to email me a reset. Finally, they have not customer support. I've been waiting all day to hear from them. Can you help?

[@lexicon77]

how to recover if the NAS itself is broken?

[@clifs7419]

I have a 4 port ETH NAS with 1&2 bonded. Could I bond 3&4 or would that be redundant or useless?

[@osphere]

Depends. You could add port 3 & 4 into the bond you already have, which would increase redundancy... but would be useless if they are all connecting to the same switch. You might have an increase of performance if you do adaptive port balancing but you'd need a considerable amount of traffic to take advantage of it. If you had another switch, connecting 3 & 4 to the other switch would be my suggestion to increase redundancy, but that would mean you need to manage an alternative IP to the NAS. Another alternative, is to create 2 bonds each with their own IPs, and segment the traffic e.g., clients connect using the IP of one bundle, and admin tasks run on the IP of the other bundle. A few ideas, ultimately it depends on your needs and network setup. Good luck!

[@Karlchen-]

Maybe this is just the beginning. first codecs, then video station, then the audio station will follow. In the end, note station, calendar, contacts, etc. will probably also be dropped and it will become a pure server...

[@AmericaAndAllies]

If you use the Synology account in the DSM, are they saving away your encryption keys on their server?

[@SpaceRexWill]

They are not.

[@AmericaAndAllies]

@@SpaceRexWill Bummer, that sure would be nice if they backed the key up along with your config data. Thanks.

[@thaitichi]

@@AmericaAndAllies I would be very upset if Synology kept a copy of my encryption key without my knowledge.

[@AmericaAndAllies]

@@thaitichi I wouldn't. The can encrypt the key and store it as an option for those not protecting national secrets, like me. I just don't want some low-level B&E thief browsing my data.

[@JoshCross-v8e]

it seems like all of your affiliate links to amazon for the NAS's are to out of stock or are outdated devices??

[@SpaceRexWill]

So the DS1821+ is often out of stock on Amazon, but it is still the NAS that I recommend to business’s all the time! You can get it on BHPhoto

[@Key_Capz_]

md5 will test data, encrypted don't really know but it should.

[@lupoal4113]

... oh yes they are so stable! ... so stable that at certain point my 220+ stopped doing external backup, with hyperbackup, on hdd that worked fawless for 8 month before... and nobody understand why... the hdd is good, the nas connect and navigate it without probems but hyperbackup fail... simply ridicuous is help online that doesn't help to solve the problem... so no external backup --> no snapshot --> no protection against ransomware

[@Tntdruid]

My nas has been fine for 5 + years, whitout doing any anything 😄

[@c.w_]

Mine is 10 years old

[@radimvybiral105]

Imagine, if manufacturers do, what you do. They should pay you in gold.

[@blackthebanner]

Love the channel but this the most California accent I’ve ever heard in my life and I forget every time until I click on the vid 😂

[@johnkardier6327]

Je crois que je vais renoncer à acheter un nas.