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I'm researching into buying a Synology NAS solution with 4 bay hdd for a small office (2 users, sharing files, backup) and I can't find if is possible to have two of the hard drives in RAID 1 and the other two also in RAID 1 and function as a backup storage. So I would write my data on the first two hard drives and schedule a backup once a day/week/etc on the other two. Or have just two hdds in RAID and the other two be separate back-up hdds. Also I know that the Synology NAS devices have the function to backup on the same device (different volume). Are there any limitations for this function?

Other solutions would be 2 devices, each with 2 bays, but I would prefer a single device. Or a 2 bay NAS with external backup (external harddrive).

Also, I read about QNAP devices, but I didn't tested their QTS operating system. From screenshots I saw that it's similar with the Synology DSM. Is it comparable?

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  • you can't create two separate volumes? Commented Aug 28, 2016 at 19:28

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Yes you can create the set up as you desire. I would recommend creating 2 separate disk groups each with their own RAID configuration.

Disk Group Disk groups are composed of one or more hard drives combined into a single data partition. You can think of disk groups as the foundation on which one or more volumes or iSCSI LUN can be built. Disk groups provide greater flexibility, allowing you to do the following: Choose from various RAID types, depending on the number of hard drives installed. Create a single, large volume, or create several volumes with customizable storage capacity.

TO do this: Add your disks to the machine Install DSM Open storage manager and navigate to DiskGroup On there create the disk group by adding 2 drives and adding the level of RAID you require.

Then rinse and repeat for the other 2 drives.

On mine I have created 2 disk groups and added them as 2 separate SHR configurations check out the photo:

Separate RAID configs

This allows the setup as you have described. DSM is very powerful and would allow all sorts of configs.

HOWEVER -

I would recommend looking at something that Synology use called SHR-2/SHR. These are more efficient for space vs redundancy and easier to manage.

A handy calculator for RAID spaces etc: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calculator

I think your DR solution needs more thought though, if it's redundancy and backup you're looking for best practice dictates that you need a proper backup solution, look up bullet proof backups. So first local & then offsite (cloud, physical USB that is taken away etc)

Questions to answer are: What happens if the synology box is stolen? Backups would go with it. What if the site the synology box is destroyed / inaccessible?

Anyhow, let me know if this helps and if you need help setting this up more than happy to help offline too.

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  • Thanks for the answer. For the off-site backup I want to use the cloud sync feature of Synology and sync all data into a Google Drive / Dropbox account. Also I'm thinking of using two external drives that I would use to backup and take off premises alternatively. Hanselman is describing this best: hanselman.com/blog/TheComputerBackupRuleOfThree.aspx
    – Catalin
    Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 13:09
  • No worries. Yep that's exactly it with the backup solution just to make it 'as redundant as can be'... Good luck! Commented Nov 11, 2016 at 13:26

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