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diddykiddy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2008
28
2
hello, I'm hoping for some advice from anyone using a Synology unit (ideally ds215j) hooked up to a mac mini.

my great old mac pro 3,1 recently died and I'm on the cusp of ordering a mini to replace it, my plan is to buy some kind of external storage to keep my data on, I don't like to trust data to single hard drives!.

So thinking is this;

Mac Mini i7, 256SSD, 16Gb Ram (about £1k in uk)

Synology ds215j - loaded with 2 x 3TB WD RED - raid 1. Connected via USB 3.0. (approx £330)

I intend to keep my home folder on the synology, so that it is always safely on the raid 1, and then keep an external backup on a single drive on a weekly super duper copy script.

I have a couple of questions if anyone can help;

1. While the read/write speeds be fast enough?
2. do the synology units work properly with OSX?
3. can I put it two different drives and copy form one to the other (i.e. put my 750Gb drive from my old mac pro and copy the data across to a new WD RED 3TB, then swap out the 750gb for the other 3TB RED and then make it RAID 1? - I will ask synology support this one!)

any thoughts / comments / suggestions appreciated ! thanks

David
 
hello, I'm hoping for some advice from anyone using a Synology unit (ideally ds215j) hooked up to a mac mini.

Synology ds215j - loaded with 2 x 3TB WD RED - raid 1. Connected via USB 3.0. (approx £330)

1. While the read/write speeds be fast enough?
2. do the synology units work properly with OSX?
3. can I put it two different drives and copy form one to the other (i.e. put my 750Gb drive from my old mac pro and copy the data across to a new WD RED 3TB, then swap out the 750gb for the other 3TB RED and then make it RAID 1? - I will ask synology support this one!)

I have quite a few Synology NAS's .. I started off with a Single DS209, then bought a second one, then a DS412+ and finally a DS1518+. Needless to say I have a crap load of drive space.

1. The speed of the nas is limited by your network, It is not as fast as a USB3 or Thunderbot drive, but quite a bit faster than a USB2 drive.
2. Yes the work perfectly fine with OSX. I have one of my DS209's acting as a TimeMachine for the two mac's inside my house. it backs everything up great and with two WD 3tb green drives. (there is little point going RED with a mirror.)
3. NO. Synology doesn't use the same drive format as the mac does. it also created a different partition pattern. You can however if you wanted to, put the 750gb drive from your old mac into a USB case and hook it up to the Synology and copy the files over that way.

The DS215j is not a very fast unit, so you might consider looking for an older DS214 or DS214+ as the unit will be significantly faster in response time. My 209 is brutally slow if you are trying to use it as a file server. but for TimeMachine i really don't care. It is slow to get files off the unit, but it's not like that is a daily occurrence.
 
thanks so much for your very detailed reply !

good information. I've actually decided to go for 2 x usb drives, one for data and for for backup. I went for the G-Drive USB 4TB, both drives together works out less then the sinology plus two drives. I also have ordered a newer tech voyager s3 to easily access the data from my raid drives.

just ordered the mini and drives and voyager, should have them all by next week

thanks again, best wishes

Dave
 
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