Synology ds218+ NAS

peterbaker

RAID 1 is just simple disk mirroring? In a two disk system, would that not effectively be providing a basic level "backup" or at least "redundancy" against a one disk failure? Or is there a real risk of corruption of the data on the good disk as a latent side-effect of the first disk beginning to fail?

So from the Synology knowledge base, it would certainly seem that RAID 1 can be set up on a two bay Synology machine: https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/storage_pool_change_raid_type
and indeed, DS218Play supports it.

So arciere, might you recommend

• purchase of a second disk to put in the OP's empty bay
• then setting the two disks up as a RAID 1
• then employing Synology Cloud as the remote back up?

Or would you introduce an external drive into the regime?

arciere

peterbaker wrote: »

So from the Synology knowledge base, it would certainly seem that RAID 1 can be set up on a two bay Synology machine: https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/storage_pool_change_raid_type
and indeed, DS218Play supports it.

So arciere, might you recommend

• purchase of a second disk to put in the OP's empty bay
• then setting the two disks up as a RAID 1
• then employing Synology Cloud as the remote back up?

Or would you introduce an external drive into the regime?

Pretty much any NAS with at least 2 bays will provide RAID1, which is the most basic RAID array.
To answer your question, I would definitely add the second drive (it sounds like a waste of capability if you don't use it). HDD can and do fail, having a second drive with the same data will save you a lot of time (copying all the data back from backup can take ages, plus you will probably need to re-install all the Synology software on top of that).
RAID1 is obviously a must, don't bother with RAID0, as I said before you are just doubling your chances of failure with pretty much no performance benefit.
In regards to the backup, I am not familiar with the Synology Cloud system, but you can't upload 6TB (or even 1TB) to the cloud (any cloud) in a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, if you will ever need to get hold of that, it will also take a while.
So, yes, I would definitely use an external, even slow drive (USB should do). Just make sure you plan the backup schedule carefully. There is no 'right' way of doing it, it all depends on how often the data on the NAS changes.