Hands-on: Synology's new compact 6-drive DS620Slim NAS

EdisonW. I think @Hellstrom said a second disk as backup so that would be 2 copies

You would still absolutely need a backup for this Synology to be minimally protected. Another (3rd) copy that you keep off-line to truly have peace of mind.

Redundancy here only means protection for disk/controller i.e. hardware fault. What if you delete some files by mistake or the Synology got infected by malware that deletes/encrypts files stored on it?

My PC was infected by ransomware once. All my local documents (pdf, docx, family photos etc.) *AND* files on Microsoft OneDrive too!! Luckily I always kept an off-line copy and was able to recover from it. It's a pain but if you really value your stuffs then it's a must.

Although I do not think I would go to a such high capacity in the present technology I also prefer simple dockstations and bare disks. My personal experience is such convenient data box are less reliable than the disks. Personally I had two of similar box with problems in the past and also two defective HDs.... but I had only three of such boxes and tens, probable around one hundred, HDs in the last 30 years.

@ewelch
Are there any 2.5" 5TB drives then?

That's not the only size drive it accepts, It also can use 3.5 HDD which you can get in a number of flavors, disappointingly only allowing up to 5T. I also don't like it's Read & Write speeds. Pretty slow, and a 2.5Ghtz Processor ?

"And yes, 5TB is the maximum size currently available in a 2.5" form"
- That's interesting ... Technically, two 5TB 2.5" drives are much smaller than one 10TB 3.5" drive. But I wouldn't put then into a NAS anyways :).

gskolenda: Nope, this model only accepts 2.5 inch drives. The array is physically too small for 3.5 inch drives to fit.

I have 1 5TB 2.5" drive and I am very happy with it, not the fastest to write to (but it is a storage drive) and read performance is quite satisfactory

@Godiwa
What are the actual read and write speeds of that drive?

it wrote pretty fast in the start, went down to like 100MB/s as I got further in, read I never really checked but plenty fast

If you want a 10G connection, plan to spend well North of $1,000 for the NAS.

Edit: nevermind, we'll just go around in circles.

It seems to be getting extremely mixed/mediocre reviews on reseller's website, users are not pleased

3pgrey, it would NOT be for BACKUP... I need fast storage in the field and fairly redundant to mitigate accidental equipment failures.

I'll agree with Duncan M. I hear you, that DAS is Sooo much faster, but it is also Sooo less convenient - you're stuck with a box tethered to your [laptop] (if you have a desktop, why not just use a larger case holding more internal drives?).

Being able to "super share' (instant sharing without having the source computer turned on); FTP/SFTP/dedicated remote access (cloud apps) from anyplace in the world; automatic background tasks like cloud backup sync, again without your computer turned on; free on-network roaming of mobile devices with automatic access to the shares...all this and more with NAS.

@Dinosnake - That's what I say - A NAS makes it all so much more convenient. Many devices can connect to them and having the option to use your files on all of them whenever and wherever you are is a blessing that outweights the speed advantage of a direct connection to a single device.

I am using NAS devices now for many years and I wouldn't want to go back to anything that needs a direct connection. Next to that the OS on the Synology devices work like a charm.

Can these devices (or their competitors) do both concurrently? e.g. direct connect to a primary photo processing PC (for speed), and enable network access for other devices like iPads, laptops, etc (for convenience)?

10Gb/s requires a move to more expensive switches, and Cat6/Cat7/fiber to utilize the full bandwidth. Most don't have that. 10Gb/s is useless if you're accessing it over the Internet.

Many do not have access to the Internet while doing their shoots. I don't. I do the work on my laptop and when back at home/office just load to my TB array and do the final polishing there. While RAID will cover incidents of drive failures to a point, keeping all one's photos/data exclusively on it is a recipe for disaster. I sync my data to Dropbox as I want offsite, redundant copies away from my drive's physical location in the event my house gets robbed, burned down or have a complete unit failure.

If your NAS is the sole container of your crucial data, then good for you. Pat yourself on the back and keep rolling that dice. I myself could would not sleep at night if that were the case.

Gmon - your DAS array wouldn't be accessible at all over the internet, or limited to the same uplink speed of your home connection.

For $200, you can get switches that have 2 10G ports, 8 1G ports. Add $80-100 for the 10G nic on the workstation, and you can get full speed for it, and the rest of the network gets the usual 1G.

Go up to 3--600 and can have 5-8 10G ports.

@kelpdiver - I don't need my disk array exposed to the Internet. My photos are backed up to my dropbox account (offsite & redundant). Since my array is only used by me on my one workstation, I have zero need to invest in 10G switches and 10G NIC adapter, etc.

Redundancy is key here. A RAID disk array is not a backup solution. If it fails for whatever reason (or house robbed/burned down) one is SOOL.

@Gmon750

The point is that, as a smart device, a NAS can do your Dropbox imaging backup automatically, without user intervention, without your computer being turned on and without taking up your computer resources. Modern NAS drives can automatically back up to Amazon S3, Dropbox, Azure and many other cloud storage systems while not involving your main computer at all.

Gmon- responding to this comment: "10Gb/s is useless if you're accessing it over the Internet." DAS is even more useless - doesn't work at all. I can appreciate that as a single user, you don't need shared connectivity, even within the house, the fact remains that the 10G answers will match on performance.

As Dino notes, offline backups are far easier to do, far less intrusive, from the NAS boxes. I sent up a teraybte over 3 weeks that way.

5TB is not a factor form, it is the maximum size.
You try to have a car in a bycicle parking...

•6 bays w/ 30TB max storage (5TB per port)
The hardware - after all it is a computer inside - can't handle more !

Speed is always needed but comes at a cost. It will be a waste of money getting SSD drives as this thing will be a bottleneck. Basically made to be used with mechanical drives. You are buying this for a smallish footprint not for speed.

As this site is frequented by photo/video crowd this device is weird. Not fast enough for Lightroom and the like, not fast enough for video crowd, too small and expensive for backup solution, too large to carry around.

Weird.

That would be pretty soon. Enclosures 0% future-proof like this seem pretty silly since enclosures typically should outlast the drives.

lotzi, exactly... which is pretty dumb, given how many people confuse "current largest drive" with "largest it can handle".

Well, I think you're kind of missing the point. (1) there are really no such limits with modern HDDs, and (2) the thing with phones is having SDXC-capable slots, but referring to (for example) 256GB limit, because they're the biggest commonly-available cards at the time, when they can take whatever SDXC cards are available.

"There are sometimes indeed limitations which limit further extension, like technology changes between SDHC and SDXC for SD cards. "
Yes exactly.
"(1) there are really no such limits with modern HDDs"
Yes there is, a 3.5" enclosure of mine that previously held a 1TB drive won't recognize a 5TB drive, OTOH it did recognize a 4TB drive, with luck.
So I assume that the statement means what it says.

RPJG: There were a couple of limits with enclosures, due to different issues in the USB bridge and firmware at 2TB and 4TB. I run onto something like this when the enclosure I used did not take a 5TB drive but continued to work with the 4TB ones. Frankly this is ancient history now, as the current enclosures are so cheap that it is not worth one's time to debug the old ones.

@lotzi Sounds about right, mine was a Porsche Design from Lacie (came with the 1TB drive inside of course) so I wasn't so keen on immediately phasing it out, but I will have to on my next upgrade.

That's probably max. speed when used regular 2.5"HDD. If you use SSD, it will triple.

@panther and yes as said business storage for storing data is NAS, but you will rarely have any DB or application running from NAS...

Alejandrol: Okay, clearly I'm not the one here who doesn't "understand what NAS is about". Many people and businesses use fast NAS setups for all of the case scenarios that you say NAS isn't for. Not to mention, many NAS devices are available with blazing fast 10Gbe and TB3 speeds.
Here's my question to you: What is the point of loading up one of these smaller, slower units with SSD drives? What case scenario is that perfect for?

People are mixing things up a bit here. This Synology thing is meant to be a simple and reasonably inexpensive consumer device that leverages NAS storage protocol. No matter how many fast disks it has, everything will ultimately be squeezed thru 1 (or 2) 1GB network connection in a typical home use situation.
It's a different story when NAS is in a datacenter with hi-speed network and/or fibre channel adapters
@Alejandrol yes DB & Enterprise apps can and do run on NAS which typically have multiple 10Gb cards in it

We are talking here about NAS for the consumer, not NAS with 10Gbe and TB3 speeds..... so let me rephrase my comments before the internet police comes by, yes you can run app and DB from a NAS with 10Gbe and TB3 speeds, but i dont think any of the consumers here will have the network to manage those speeds... and yes i will rather run my apps through a DAS or SAN then through a nas ;)

I do agree that, what will be the point for this NAS? Perhaps a on location shoot, just to backup all the work? Still i think if you are shooting on location you will like something fast and reliable with less moving parts as a ssd...and without the high speed connections not sure how they can be useful.

I'd happily have a small, relatively silent NAS sitting under my desk for large file storage and automated backups of my computers. For storage-limited people (like me) a smaller unit is always a boon. I can pay more for more silent and smaller disks under my desk rather than a full-size NAS buzzing over my space-constrained desk.