Hey all,
I’m running a Synology NAS using SHR, and I’m trying to get ahead of drive failures instead of reacting to them.
All my drives were bought and installed at the same time, and I honestly haven’t dug much into SMART stats or health metrics yet—not even sure what’s available on DSM.
A few questions:
- If all drives are the same age, is it risky to just run them until failure? Any proactive measures?
- Should I proactively replace drives after a certain number of years even if DSM reports them as healthy? (If DSM can)
- Is it better to stagger replacements to reduce the chance of multiple failures during a rebuild?
- What are the actual important SMART stats I should be watching in Synology DSM (reallocated sectors, pending sectors, etc.)?
- Are Synology’s built-in health checks enough (if any), or should I be doing extended SMART tests regularly?
Use case:
- Home NAS (plex, media, photos, backups, light VMs)
- 24/7 operation
- No failures yet—this is more about planning and best practices
Would appreciate any real-world advice, especially from long-term Synology users.
Thanks!