Advantages/Disadvantages of Synology Hybrid Raid?

[eventhough]

Hi,

I just installed a 2nd HDD into my DS209 and I reformatted and reset my entire device. I'm currently setting up a new volume with Synology Hybrid Raid..which takes a very long time, but I'm wondering...should I have used Raid 1 instead? Both my drives are exactly the same size...is there some kind of disadvantage to using Synology Hybrid Raid?

It seems like Hybrid Raid was designed for disks of different sizes. Should I reformat again to Raid 1 and wait another night?

Thanks!

[maxxfi]

If you have already the 1st disk set up, I don't think it's worth the effort to change everything
to RAID1. Although SHR is more useful when there are disks of different sizes, it doesn't really
harm if you have equal sized disks.
The reason why it took so long to add the 2nd disk is likely due to bad block check and mirroring.
Both operations are done for RAID1 and SHR (SHR is RAID1 pluse some extra).

[eventhough]

Thanks for your response. Actually I backed up the 1st HDD and I totally reformatted everything. I just read in another forum that SHR is actually slower than Raid 1. Is that true? If so I would rather start over with Raid 1 and get this right from the start.

Thanks

[maxxfi]

I just read in another forum that SHR is actually slower than Raid 1. Is that true?

IIRC just a couple of weeks ago somewhere here on Synology forums said that they did not notice any
performance penalty from SHR.
Thing is the conditions related to the original statement of 'slowness' (that came from a Synology engineer)
are not known: what NAS model was? (newer models are faster) What disks configuration was? (just two disks mirrored
or several disks of different sizes?).

[digo21]

Just got my new ds211j and my 2x 2tb samsung hd203wi.

Just started the setup, and not sure what raid volume to choose. I was thinking either the Synology Hybrid Raid or Raid 1 which would be mirroring of the two drives. Any suggestions which is better or the advantages/disadvantages of them?

[Admin]

Had same question myself. Did some digging in this forum and found that "SHR is RAID1 pluse some extra". I've kicked it off. Nighty night!

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=30305

[awchan23]

Also found this interesting post on Synology Hybrid Raid that talks about storage management.

http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.ph ... id_RAID%3F

[neltek]

I have a new 411j

2 x 2TB disks

which to use - SHR or RAID 1

It seems SHR uses a mix of RAID style options
So effectively will use RAID 5 when enough disks present
I have heard some bad things about RAID 5 crashing controllers

if I am not worried about wasted disk space
is RAID 1 safer than SHR?

Ian

[maxxfi]

With two disks array, RAID1 and SHR are exactly the same
(SHR will configure the disks internally as RAID1).

[neltek]

went for RAID 1

will add 2 more later and hopefully copy the mirroring across or just create a 2nd RAID 1 volume

[maxxfi]

If in future you are going to add two more disks of the same size,
you can try to migrate to a single volume in RAID 10

[neltek]

RAID 10 ? or RAID 1?

[Zenophobe]

when i did my initial setup with my DS410 i chose the SHR setup as when i did complete setup and chose RAID 5 the end size was the same... is it fair to assume that the SHR is using RAID 5 i have the following:

4 Seagate 1.5TB drives all identical.

[maxxfi]

RAID 10 (or RAID 1+0) is the combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0,
so if you have four disks A, B, C, D, think about first making a RAID 1 mirror
of A//C and B//D. Then make a RAID 0 of the two sub-assemblies: A//C + B//D.

That way basically you have one copy of your data in A and B,
and another full copy in C and D: you have the striping advantage of RAID 0
and the full protection of RAID 1.

[Note: you can also make first the striping A+B and C+D and then the mirroring,
and it should be called RAID 0+1. It seems more natural and it has same results,
but it offers less protection than RAID 10 if more than one disk dies]

[HarryPotter]

when i did my initial setup with my DS410 i chose the SHR setup as when i did complete setup and chose RAID 5 the end size was the same... is it fair to assume that the SHR is using RAID 5 i have the following:

4 Seagate 1.5TB drives all identical.

Yes. SHR has only advantages if you are using HD with different sizes.