Migrated Pool + Unsupported Drive: Risks After DSM Update?

[pfiorentino]

Hi there,

First off, thanks a lot for this great project, it's been incredibly helpful.

I'm currently running a DS1525+ with 4x WD Red Plus drives.
My current disk pool was originally created on a DS415Play and later migrated to the DS1525+. Everything works well, though the Disk Manager displays a warning indicating that the pool was migrated, which I understand is expected.

I'm now considering replacing one of the existing drives with a brand new WD Red Plus.
Since it's not officially supported on the DS1525+, I plan to use your script to add it to the compatibility list.

My question is:
What happens if I use the script to add the drive, but forget to re-run it after a future DSM update?

Will DSM still allow access to the storage pool and data, or could the pool become degraded, inaccessible, or lose its "migrated" status?

As far as I understand, Synology still offers limited support to "migrated" pools.
But if using the script causes the "migrated" status to be removed or altered, would that result in the loss of any official support or even affect system behavior?

Thanks again for your work. I'm looking forward to your thoughts!

[007revad]

If you forget to re-run the script after a DSM update you'd see the "At risk" and "Unverified" warnings again. I'm not sure if the migrated status would reappear but I suspect it would (for the drives that were migrated) because DSM keeps drive information in a database.

The migrated status only shows for migrated drives that aren't in the compatible drive database.

Your storage pool, volume and data would still be accessible as normal (but with annoying warnings).

[pfiorentino]

... (but with annoying warnings)

Yeah, I already have them, so no big difference here 😅

Thanks for your answer btw! 🙏

[pfiorentino]

Oh and just out of curiosity what does this line from the README.md file mean?

It also has a restore option to undo all the changes made by the script.

For example, what happens if I use the script, add a new WD Red Plus, then use the restore option mentioned above?

[007revad]

If you run the script with the --restore option it will undo the changes it made. Your storage pool(s), volume(s) and data would still exist but the annoying warnings and restrictions would be back.

[jgvicke]

For those worried about what would happen if Synology breaks this script, set up your drives then run the script in restore mode. What you see is what would happen if Synology somehow blocked the script from working.

Awesome script by they way! I just set up my new DS1525+ and while I used Synology drives for my main storage (they were actually cheaper than IronWolfs because I got them on sale), I used the script to enable 2x 2TB NVME drives in raid to run my docker containers on. Worked like a charm with no issues!

[007revad]

I had a report in Issue #473 that the --restore option didn't work 100% because the backups of the db files were actually backups of the edited files. I verified this on myself but have not had time to investigate further.

Their solution was nicely done, and would work, but I thought of a simpler solution.

[pfiorentino]

@jgvicke, where did you buy your HAT drives?

I'm looking into doing exactly what you did, but aside from the Synology website and Amazon, I can't seem to find any other resellers in France.

Honestly, I'm a bit hesitant, I'd like to buy 3 drives directly from Synology, but I'm worried they might all come from the same batch.

And as for Amazon... I’m not entirely confident the drives would arrive safely and in one piece.

[pfiorentino]

Hope this helps!

Are you kidding me? That was absolutely the perfect answer 🥹 I couldn't have hoped for a better one!
Thanks a ton, seriously!

I would start with 1 pool / 1 volume on the HAT drives

That makes sense, and most of what I’ve found online points in that direction too.
I may need to reconsider my current setup and go back to a single pool/volume rather than splitting data across multiple volumes.

The reason I initially went with multiple volumes goes back about 10 years, I had a massive NAS outage caused by a lightning-induced power blackout.
My only pool/volume at the time was degraded beyond recovery.
After that, I thought it’d be safer to split things into smaller volumes, so if one got corrupted, the others might stay intact.

What’s your take on that strategy?

I’m still torn because, aside from the system/packages limitation on Volume 1, I don’t really see a major downside to having multiple volumes.

For example, if I use a structure like this:

• Volume 1: System and packages
• Volume 2: Random data (Games, Softwares, ...)
• Volume 3: Documents
• Volume 4: Media (films, TV shows, etc.)

…then my media would be isolated and potentially resilient to corruption in the other volumes.
And since I rarely write to that media volume, the odds of it being affected by a power outage or crash seem lower, especially since Volume 1 will likely be handling the most read/write operations.

Side note: The power outage scenario is just an example, my NAS is, of course, protected by an inline UPS.
But I think the core reasoning still holds, right?
The more you separate data across volumes, the more you reduce the blast radius in case something goes wrong.
So in theory, more volumes = better protection against corruption?

... Remember once an App is loaded, it is running from RAM not the disk. ...

TIL and that's awesome!
That was the exact argument I needed to realize I don’t actually need SSDs at this point ❤️

... You might consider moving away from Synology Apps ...

Yeah, I know this is a common recommendation.
I’m just still pretty tied to Synology Drive and Photos for now, and the alternatives haven’t fully convinced me yet.

Out of curiosity, what do you use instead?

... NVME drives as a volume would be helpful is if you are running applications that have a lot of write IO. ...

Got it.
So if I understand correctly, NVMe drives mainly help reduce wear on the spinning disks by absorbing frequent write IO, which also improves energy efficiency, reduces noise, and allows HDDs to hibernate more often.
Makes perfect sense.

Side question:
I use Log Center on my NAS as a logging server for my other NASes and infrastructure devices (UniFi router, Home Assistant Pi, etc.).
Would that count as a “write-intensive” application?
Do you think it might be better to disable that feature for the sake of drive longevity?

Once again, thank you so much for your time and insights.
This discussion has been incredibly helpful, and I really appreciate it! 🙏

[jgvicke]

What’s your take on that strategy?

I think the mentality of splitting volumes to protect against physical damage caused by power loss / lightning / etc is flawed. In the case of catastrophic failures, you are more likely to lose the entire raid than a single small volume in a pool of drives.

What you should be looking at it physical redundancy, IE a second NAS unit offsite or cloud backup. If all your data is only in your house (even if on multiple devices like computer + NAS), it can all be wiped out by a single lightning strike, burglary, or fire. You really need physical separation for at least 1 copy of your data.

And of course all of your things that write data need to be on a UPS. That is NAS, computers, etc.

I had been using the cloud backup option which works pretty well as long as you don't have a ton of huge data, because they all throttle your connection speed. So if you are adding large digitized movies to your collection on a regular basis for instance, you are going to feel the squeeze of that.

I am almost finished with my process of upgrading my main NAS, converting my old NAS to a HyperBackup vault, and moving it offsite. It is going to end up in my parents house halfway across the country so will be immune to pretty much anything except targeted attacks.

For example, if I use a structure like this:

For your structure, just convert in your brain volumes to shares. Think of your pool/volume as a single entity, then create shares to organize your data in.

Out of curiosity, what do you use instead?

On apps, I do use Drive as well (forgot to mention it before). I use containers for the following:

I use Tailscale as a free way to access my network remotely. It is a free VPN, but not for anonymizing data. It is purely for managing your network. That plus Caddy and you can get fully signed HTTPS for your applications which is sometimes needed.

Vaultwarden is a password / code generator. This is one that requires HTTPS for the website to load.

PiHole is for blocking adverts on the web for your entire network. When you setup Tailscale to use your PiHole server as it's DNS, then every device you put Tailscale on will automatically use PiHole without additional config which is nice.

Portainer for managing all my containers.

HomeAssistant for my home automation brain. I also have an ISY994i device to act as the bridge to my ZWave and Insteon devices integrated with HA.

ESPHome is another container that HA uses to talk to IOT devices in my home.

I use a IotaWatt for a power meter for my home. This uploads data into a Influx DB container, and uses Grafana for the Home Energy Dashboard.

For media I am using Plex and JellyFin to serve movies and TV. NaviDrome to serve music.

Arr suite containers for media management (Lidarr, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, SABnzdb)

And the latest additions I am still working on are for security cameras. Scrypted / go2rtc / Frigate.

I am also about to be setting up Immich for my image application. It has all the AI features as well and is generally accepted as one of the best image platforms currently available.

NVMe drives mainly help reduce wear on the spinning disks

As for drive longevity, with NAS drives you don't need to worry about that. They are meant to run in a server environment 24/7 for 5 years+ under heavy load.

What I was trying to get away from is the noise of drives jumping around looking for data. My NAS is about 3 feet from my head because I didn't want to stick it in my basement where dust would be an issue.

There is also read/write efficiencies. For instance if you are streaming a 4K movie on Plex to your TV, you don't want the HD having to retask to go write a log file somewhere. If you have all of the regular IO tasks on your NVME drives, it lets the mechanical drives single task on what they are there for.... Large Data Storage.

I have been using only my mechanical drives in NAS units for close to 15 years now and have never had an issue. I have been running my home automation stuff for most of that time with no issues, I just heard the drives working ALL the time. Now it is much quieter.

My main drive to get the NVME though is my plan to set up security cameras which would work the HDDs a lot more in continuously writing and I didn't want that to bog down my media servers for entertainment.

I use Log Center on my NAS as a logging server

As for logging, I personally let each device maintain it's own logs. I don't see a benefit of trying to bring all logging to a central location. That location will be writing to disk often, so NVME would be helpful there, but it isn't high volume writes so not that big of deal. That one you will just have to decide your preference!

John Vickers

[007revad]

@pfiorentino DSM is installed in a hidden RAID 1 partition that is mirrored across all HDD and 2.5 inch SATA SSDs in the NAS.

Note: DSM is not installed on or mirrored to drives in an expansion unit or NVMe drives.

My DS925+ is just used for testing so it only has 2 HDDs and 1 NVMe drive (and 1 of the HDDs does not have a storage pool).

[pfiorentino]

Hey @jgvicke ,

First of all, sorry for the very late reply, I actually had a baby 👶 in the meantime so life has been pretty hectic!
I still wanted to thank you properly for the time you spent writing such a detailed answer. It's been incredibly useful. 🙏

After thinking it through I finally went with this setup:

• bought 3 Synology drives
• reinstalled DSM from scratch on them
• kept a multiple volumes approach (even though I 100 % understand it makes little sense and brings no extra security, I just feel more comfortable with it)
• no SSD for now

On the apps side, thank you so much for all the details you shared.
Your container list and the reasoning behind it were gold.

I especially found your point about logging interesting: I still like centralising logs in Log Center because it helps me track external connections and warnings from all my devices (including the ones outside my home) in a single place instead of jumping between 4–5 different machines.
For me it's been a good convenience feature.

My next step is to test some Synology Photos alternatives, I've finally hit one of its limitations: it can't index folders outside of home/Photo… so time to experiment a bit.

Thanks again for your time and for sharing your experience, it’' been a huge help!

Cheers! 🙏

[pfiorentino]

Hey @007revad ,

As I already mentioned to John, sorry for the delay in my answer, we've just welcomed a baby 😅 so I'm only now catching up on this thread.
But I really wanted to thank you properly for your message.

Thanks a lot for clarifying how DSM is actually installed, I didn't realise it was sitting in a hidden RAID 1 partition mirrored across all the main drives.
That definitely explains why you can't really "choose" where DSM itself lives.

Also good to know about the limitation with expansion units and NVMe drives.
I had assumed DSM might mirror there too, but clearly not.