Homeusers, how do you use your Synology NAS?

[oRBIT]

Would be interesting how you've configured your Synology NAS and how you're using it, as inspiration for others.

I primary use my DS212 for storage of photos and movies. I use photostation for sharing photos with friends and family.
I've configured WebDAV so I can access my files anywhere without any additional software. I'm also using DownloadStation quite frequently for downloading torrents which works fine.
I've got two drives, one 2TB 3.5" drive and one 500GB 2.5" drive. The smaller drive I use when downloading torrents (=smaller drive, less noise).
I have a schedule which powers off the NAS at night/early hours to save some power (since I don't use the NAS at night anyway). This was impossible with one competitor to Synology since those units had annoying beeps during power on/off which couldn't be disabled (so it woke me up!)
I have an external 1TB USB3 drive connected for backing up my most important stuff in a regular interval.

I'm extremly happy with my DS212 and can't wait for DSM 4.0 final.

[gd11_be]

Good idea ! so here is my description

I use my DS211 as media server for streaming music to my Apple TV2, 2 x 1.5 TB. That is the main purpose. I also store my main data on the DS211 has. I don't watch video to often, but I have a couple of concert video's that I stream via my Xbox 360. Of course my DS211 is also my TimeMachine backup. A second 'cheap' DS209 is used with some old 2 x 1TB hard disks are used as a backup for my main data. Listening to music, I do with SquuezePad and Logitech Media Server 7.7 running on my NAS. I do the same: during the night 1 AM till 6 AM my NAS is switched off by schedule. The same during working days when both my wife and myself are the office. So another schedule switches it off from 9 AM till 4PM Enjoying my Synology every day.

[Rau]

I have 2 x Synology NAS.

DS410 (4x2TB drives) is used as a repository for video, including recorded TV, Home Movies etc. I view these over DLNA using a PS3 as the media adaptor to TV. The DS410 employs SHR (one disk redundancy) and enterprise class drives. The large size of this data makes backup a bit impractical.

The DS212 (2x2TB drives) holds Photos, Raw Videocam footage, Music and Documents. We have a couple of PCs in the house which typically access Photos and Docs. The Videocam footage is accessed for editing (Vegas) and the Music is accessed by a Sonos system. This array is also SHR (ie. mirrored disk/RAID 1) and runs desktop class drives. The video is in the standard "video" folder, but Pictures and Music are in folders I created (to avoid invoking the related Synology Apps).

I backup subsets of the shared folders on the DS212, at various scheduled times, to an attached USB3.0 local drive. [The USB3.0 drive is formatted EXT4, as backups runs much faster than if it's NTFS] For data such as Docs, I do a full backup every night. For the videos and photos, I TRY to do incremental backups Mon to Sat, and then a Full on Sunday. This is proving a problem however, as even the incremental backups appear to comprise a backup of all the files (and take several hours)despite me not actually changing the files! I have no idea what is causing this. May have to try out Synology Support!

[evilradish]

I got a 212+
I use photostation to host my family's photos, S station for my home camera security system, and use it to keep all my home videos safe.

Occasionally I may ftp onto the box from work to copy code that I have written there (for safe keeping)

[polandj]

I have a DS209 with two 2TB disks in a mirror. I use almost everything on it:

• Time Machine backs up two laptops
• Audio Station streams my music to devices over wifi or directly to my receiver via USB sound card on the Synology (and I can control it from my phone)
• Occasionally, Download Station comes in handy
• Important documents are centralized and backed up to S3
• Store movies/tv and stream to PS3
• Photo Station for all my photos
• Plus I hack on it

I'm a software engineer and extremely impressed with the DiskStation hardware and software. I've convinced two of my friends to buy Synology and both are equally satisfied. I really want CloudStation to support the Mac so my wife will stop confusing the DiskStation and DropBox. I'm hoping once that happens, I can get another DiskStation.

[killervette]

I have a DS1511+ with 5 3TB Hitachis. I use it for blurays/dvds/tv streaming to Windows Media Centers. Media center stores its recorded tv on it. I have my photos/music/docs backed up on it. I use it to store my home surveillance cam footage. Everything is backed up to Amazon S3 (minus the movies). I would love to use it for the surveillance station, but logitech alert cams are not supported.

[fliquid]

I've recently got a DS212J and plan to use it to store movies on so I can share them with my media player (Popcorn Hour) downstairs. Will also probably look into using the PhotoStation app at some point.

[niewiesznic]

1. Logitech Media Server (Squeezebox)
2. Time Machine
3. Transmission SPK & DL Station
4. Streaming movies to macs.

I would love to use PLEX, but it is intel DS's only, and I own ARM based.

[Nuke288]

I have a DS1812+ with 4 x Seagate 3 TB drives in SHR - around 8.8 TB in total.

I just installed the DS a few days ago, so I haven't set up everything yet - but its key roles so far are:
1. TimeMachine target disk for 3 Macs (2.5 TB allocated for TM)
2. File server over AFP (for the same Macs)
3. Media respository for Plex

#3 is really the primary reason for buying this NAS, and as I rip a lot of Blu-rays I need a lot of space. A Blu-ray ripped using MakeMKV (i.e. no compression) typically consumes around 20-30GB of disk space for a movie, or 40-50 GB for a disc containing 4-6 TV episodes. It all adds up pretty quickly, and I have around 3 TB of video in my library - a mix of M4V and MKV.

I also needed a fast NAS, as this video is potentially streamed to a bunch of sources simultaneously - and I still need the NAS to be responsive as a file server while all this is going on, so that I can copy files from/to it without interrupting the video streams. The 1812+ served my needs perfectly in this regard - this thing is fast..

In regards to the previous poster, I don't run the Plex server add-in on this NAS - instead I run Plex on a Mac mini with volumes mapped to the NAS. This is mainly for performance reasons, as streaming and transcodes can consume a lot of CPU and RAM, and even though the 1812+ is fast it can't really compete with a bonafide Mac that has a faster CPU and 8 GB of RAM.

TBH I've found DS1812 + Mac mini + Plex to be the perfect combination for a home media server setup. It's costly, but imo worth every penny

[Amokka]

DS209 w 2x2TB
1 x 1,3TB USB for movies and like
1x 2 TB USB for TV series
1 x 350 GB USB for DownloadStation

DS Samba mod to act as WINS server

DNSMASQ for DNS and DHCP (Performs way better than Linksys E4200) and also removed the need to know the IP of various gadgets on my LAN

Audiostation used remotely when I work at my various customer site.

CloudStation in use by internal and external users.

DownloadStation in heavy use by my wife

Filestation links with time and password limit used frequently so customers easily can access what I have prepared for them.

Squeezebox server handles my 4 squeezebox players.

TV connected WDTV LiveHD plays video from network share on DS

.still trying to make nClone work with DNSMASQ

PhotoStation used by wife (mostly)