I finally bit the bullet on my Synology DS918+ and swapped out my trusty 5-year-old 4x 6TB Toshiba N300 NAS drives for 4x 18TB WD Red Pro drives on volume 1 (RAID 5).
While volume optimization is humming along nicely, my parallel decision to upgrade from DSM 6.x to DSM 7.1 has been … a choice. It’s not terrible, but, frankly, reconfiguration just sucks. I have a lot of containers, which makes it easier, but it’s still having to remember or re-import the customizations I’ve made over the years.
For backups and cold storage, I’ve got a DX517 expansion unit with 5x 8TB Seagate ST8000 SMR drives in RAID 5, slated for semi-cold storage duties. I also have a Cenmate USB 3.0 enclosure filled with my leftover 6TB drives (3 reformatted Toshibas and a newer WD Red Plus) running without RAID for ad-hoc local copy and mid-term non-critical hot-swappable storage when needed.
My super-cold backup solution is a vintage 2015 Seagate business NAS with 4x 8TB WD consumer-grade SMRs in two RAID 0 volumes, network-connected over gigabit Ethernet. It’s going to my neighbor when new backups are complete.
Anyways, I guess I’m not looking for advice per se, but I wouldn’t mind if you’d like to share experience, pain or guidance if you’d like. It’s been a weekend of “fun” rebuilding and optimizing volumes, switching out drives and vacuuming old dust bunnies from behind the desk.