Hi all! Looking for some "current" guidance as it seems things have changed since I first learned of all this.

Some background first, if you care...

I purchased a DS920+ (because of hardware transcoding) years ago with plans of self-hosting many things eventually. It took a while for me to get started, several years actually, as my initial attemps were full of frustrations and failures. Lost count how many times I failed at getting Pihole to work, even with all the guides and YT videos out there.

But, last year, I hunkered down and decided that enough time had passed, and I REALLY needed to take advantage of the NAS. Started with Pihole, and got that mostly working. Then continued adding useful apps slowly, Paperless, Jellyfin (yup, the main reason for getting the 920, and not the "newer" model), LMS, etc. and enjoying the benefits.

That is, until I got to Immich. I've been using Synology Photos for standard back-ups for a while. But I finally got to a point where I was able to turn off Google Photos! Which, of course led to some frustration because, well, Synology Photos isn't great when it comes to scrolling a feed. Super slow, for some reason. Which led me to Immich.

Loving Immich, but BOY, it's that ML container is a resource HOG! It has already caused my stacks to drop several times now. I've taken to disabling the ML container, and only running the jobs interactively, every so often.

Which leads to this post...

I remember when I was researching what NAS to get, I saw videos and read posts that you should increase the RAM to "max" AND get an SSD installed to create a volume to run Docker containers. I also remember several folks talking about sites and spreadsheets with confirmed RAM that works, and what amounts.

So, yes, in this horribly expensive RAM market, here I am! Looking for advice on:

1. What RAM options/modules/size should I get for my poor DS920+? This is probably the most immediate and important need at the moment. As I've reached a natural cap and cannot continue adding more "apps" until I fix this.
2. I, for the life of me, can't seem to find any guides on using an SSD to create a volume for Docker and what size is recommended. Was this patched out, or something, and all these old videos and blog posts just get deleted or archived??? The ones I've found all talk about caching, which, really doesn't serve much of a purpose in my environment.

And, before anyone advises this... Yes, I am considering getting a 2nd device so that not everything is running on the NAS. Possibly a Rasp-pi, or an old laptop, or something else. Heck, I seem to remember seeing a post somewhere where someone used an old Android phone to host stuff?!?! (Not here, btw. I thought I saved that post but was wrong. Should be easy enough to find, I hope) But for now, that's not really an option.

Anyway, hoping some of you power users here can point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

I still have DSM 6 on my NAS because I love PhotoStation. I have tons of photos that my family and friends can access. I tried Synology Photos a while ago but didn't like the layout. Has it gotten any better? When I tried it, for example, it didn't have an Apple TV that all my family has include me. How long can I trust DSM 6?

Hi guys, I’m a full time professional wedding photographer looking for advice on moving from external hard drives to a NAS system.

For the longest time, I’ve been archiving my photos on WD 16 TB external drives. I currently have three of them, with roughly 38 TB of photo archives spread across those drives. With hard-drive prices rising, I’m considering moving to a NAS for better organization and easier long-term growth.

My situation is a little different because I live in Maine for six months of the year and Miami for the other six months. The NAS would stay at my home in Maine, which has fiber internet and approximately 400 Mbps upload/download. I would like to securely access it remotely from Miami so I no longer have to travel back and forth with archive drives.

I would not be editing directly from the NAS. My plan would be to download an active project or older RAW files to a local SSD in Miami, edit locally, and then upload final files/backups back to the NAS when needed. I may also use it to pull older weddings if a client wants revisions or I want to re-edit past work.

I’m currently looking at an 8-bay NAS, but I’m lost on the drive configuration:

• What 8-bay NAS would you recommend for this use case?
• How many drives should I start with?
• What drive capacities make sense—16 TB, 18 TB, 20 TB, etc.?
• Which brands/models should I consider for NAS drives?
• Would you use SHR-2/RAID 6 for two-drive redundancy, or something else?
• How much usable capacity should I aim for if I currently have about 38 TB of data but need room to grow?
• What is the best way to handle a true backup in addition to RAID/NAS redundancy?
• Is there a remote-access method you would recommend for secure access from Miami? Tailscale, VPN, Synology QuickConnect, etc.?

I want a setup that is reliable and reasonably future-proof, but I also do not want to overspend on capacity I will not need for years. I’d appreciate any recommendations from photographers or anyone managing a large RAW photo archive remotely.

I just updated to DSM 7.4.1-90080 and it looks like my UPS (APC BX500MI) is not recognized by the system anymore. Everything worked fine with DSM 7.3.x versions.

This is happening even if in the release notes of this DSM version update I see the following:

Fixed Issues

1. Fixed an issue where a USB UPS could not be recognized after updating to DSM 7.4.
2. Fixed an issue where USB devices could not be used on certain models after updating to DSM 7.4.

Did it happened to someone else?

Is there something that I can do?

APC Back-UPS Pro BR1000G-IN 1000VA / 600W Premium UPS

Planning to use the UPS with NAS server

My main requirement is **automatic graceful shutdown** during a prolonged power failure. From what I understand, if the UPS is connected to the Synology via USB, DSM should detect the power failure/battery status and automatically put the NAS into safe mode or shut it down before the battery runs out.
I’d appreciate advice from anyone using this model with a Synology NAS

Just want to verify that AI isn't hallucinating.. I want to order this ram - https://www.amazon.com.au/Crucial-CT16G4SFD8266-2666MHz-Notebook-KVR26S19D8/dp/B071KP8CGJ, does my NAS support this? Or are there better bang for my buck options?

I have two refurbished Seagate drives in my DS423+. For a while I've gotten notifications saying the number of bad sectors has increased on drive 1, and in the last few days it's started increasing on drive 2. I tried running a SMART test on drive 1, and it said it would take 1100 minutes, but it finished immediately and just says "attention required." I ran a SMART test on drive 2 overnight, and it still says it's healthy.

Does this mean drive 1 is about to fail? Are they both failing? This is the first NAS I've owned, what's the best course of action here?

Hello everyone,

I wanted to brag about my newest purchase,

I got a very cheap DS414J with four 1TB Harddisks. SMART shows 95.000 hours runtime.

A bit of math -> 95.000hrs / 24hrs-day / 365days = nearly ELEVEN YEARS RUNTIME!

Yeah!

Would you use it?

Have a wonderful day.

Bernd

Hello together,

my Internet ah home is getting to slow for all the Backups - so I‘m looking for the cheapest 4-bay-Nas coLocation in Europe. I don‘t need all the stuff like emergency energy and so on - but I would be happy if they don’t lost the hardware.

Anybody having Tipps?

I have a few questions about how iPhone works and how to work around it.

I have an Android, and my partner had an Android too, but she recently moved to an iPhone.

I have a Synology NAS, so I use Synology Drive to back up the DCIM folder to the NAS. The main purpose is to have a backup of mine and my partner's phone camera photos.

When I feel like it, I move those photos from the backup folder into another shared folder on my NAS, which is accessible from Lightroom and DS Photos, so I can see them from my PC and both phones. When I move the photos, they get moved from the backup folder in the shared folder "Mobile Backup" to another shared folder called "Photo."

When she had an Android (and this still happens on mine), the photos that get moved are detected as "deleted" by Synology Drive, which then deletes them from the phone too, since I have the sync rule set to Two-Way with "keep the most recent version."

Now on the iPhone, this doesn't seem to work. I have to choose a "Remote path on the server"; on Android this was, for example, a folder named "S22 B" for my partner and "S22" for me, both inside "Mobile Backup." That part's fine, as now I've created a folder named "iPhone" inside "Mobile Backup."

The issue is the other option, "Local path." On Android I choose the DCIM folder, but on iPhone I can't choose anything. It just says: "The system will create a folder in the Files app. The local folder cannot be changed."

It's like there's no access to the iPhone's storage the way there is on Android, it just creates a folder inside the Files app instead. I know iPhones are more restrictive, but it's still my phone (o, my partner's), so I feel like I should be able to use it the way I want, including having access to storage the way I would on Android, not going through an app to get to it. Not trying to start an OS war here, but on a MacBook, for example, you get real access to your storage, not just through one app.

Anyone found a real way around this, or is this just a hard iOS limitation with Synology Drive / Synology Photos?

For now, the only alternative I see is to use DS Photos to backup the photos from the iphone, and then delete them manually from the iphone when I move them between shared folder.

Could've been a little sooner but it works.

I have regular instances of containers in my Container Manager (e.g. sonarr) stopping unexpectedly and restarting (I receive an email).

It tells me to go to the log to see what's happened, but at the time of the crash the log had restarted so there's nothing to see that would tell me why it's happened.

Any ideas.

We have a client who's historically used Video Station for their internal training videos. Video Station has been perfect for exactly that because of its simple to use interface, login page, etc. I've read a bunch online about Emby, Plex, and JellyFin. I'm familiar with Plex but it is far too complex for the use case here. I am trying to move them to something that is similar to Video Station in its simplicity. They really only need to be able to sign in and watch videos + have the ability to resume their progress if they don't finish a video.

I'm taking on the task of archiving all our family photos and getting the hang of Synology photos, which seems really good.

As there are hundreds of photos I wanted to check if I am doing things the most efficient way.

I'm scanning them with an Epson Fastfoto to my Mac and then uploading into Synology Photos and organising into albums from there.

Is there a way to scan directly on to the NAS or am I doing this the correct way ?

Anyone else no longer able to connect to NordVPN after the most recent DSM update?

Purchased brand new from Amazon on July 24. Used in part of an SHR storage pool. Got this error today: An I/O error occured while accessing this drive. (Read error: [08/16/2026 12:32] at Sector [7324315896]). Replace drive immediatly.

Has this happened to anyone else? I'm getting it replaced with Amazon, but that's concerning. Is this common?