Not sure the best place to ask this.
I have a DS420J 4 bay NAS, primarily used for my Plex server and data backups (among a few other things). I currently have 8x6x6 TB Iron Wolf NAS drives in a single volume with SRH and an extra 1 TB SSD JBOD. I have my Plex app and metadata stored on the SSD due to the increased performance I have seen vs. having it installed on the large pool (7200 RPM cap). I am sitting at about 85% used storage of my available 10.8 TB on the primary volume. As such, I am pre-planning my next storage upgrade and am curious about my options while staying with the current hardware. The future plan will be a NAS upgrade, but this little beast has been chugging along so perfectly I want to push it as far as I can.
If I was to remove the 1 TB drive and replace it with another 8 TB Iron Wolf, I would jump to 20 TB available storage. https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator?hdds=6%20TB%7C6%20TB%7C8%20TB%7C8%20TB This increase would last me for quite some time ahead of a full NAS upgrade with more bays. In order to do this, I would obviously need to remove the 1 TB SSD to be replaced by the new drive. I have na external enclosure for this drive that can connect over USB to the NAS.
My question: I am finding somewhat conflicting information on how external drives are intended to be used/what their capabilities are when connected to the USB 3.2 port. It seems the intended functionality for backups (which makes sense). Am I able to utilize a USB connected drive and have it function in a similar manner to it being internal? Are you able to install apps from the Package Center to an external drive? Create volumes? I assume there will be some performance degradation due to the translation from SATA to USB, then back to SATA, but I anticipate the SSD will still perform better than adding the app back to the main pool. I just don’t know if I am potentially missing something with my evaluation. Those that have more experience with USB connected drive with their NAS, I would love to hear your experience. Thanks!
Thank you for the detailed reply and thoughts! This is definitely helpful information and you make very good points.
You know, it’s funny. I have been considering taking the dive into Docker for some time, just to learn how it works and leverage its capabilities. I could have sworn I’ve seen a Docker app in Package Center previously, but when I just checked - no results. Interestingly, their documentation seems to include the DS420j as an approved model. I anticipate this is because I am still on DSM 6 and it is only currently supported on DSM 7. So, this is still something to consider. I appreciate the suggestion.
Yeah, this is one of my concerns with moving it to be over USB. I mean, the SSD is already in the NAS (and is not a NAS grade SSD by any means, just an extra I had) so I don’t necessarily think the uptime will be an issue as I have a backup in case it dies anyway - more of how the added power and data translation that will have to occur and its effects. Might be a total non-issue. I suppose the only way to really know is to test it and find out :)
To your final paragraph - That is a great point and part of the reason I wanted to make this post. The primary reason I want to go with the second 8TB is that, due to SRH, I can have no wasted space with the 6x6x8x8 configuration and enough additional space to last me until I am ready to upgrade to a more mid range box with large drives. Since I want to use it to expand the primary volume for more Plex storage, I don’t know that an external drive is going to do the trick even if I can swap drives out (though as noted, maybe with Docker. I will definitely be looking into that more). The downside to the RAID though and my current drive sizes is definitely that, yeah, I can’t just buy a giant drive and throw it in there to solve the problem.
Thanks again for the reply!