Synology DX517 5 Bay Desktop Network Attached Storage Expansion Enclosure, Black

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In two year's time, the format distribution of my video collection had changed to 44% DVDs, 51% Blu-rays, and 5% 4K Blu-rays. This redistribution was due largely to replacing DVD titles with their Blu-ray versions and replacing Blu-ray titles with their 4K Blu-ray versions, rather than acquisitions of new releases. Over the past two years, many of my favorite DVD titles have been re-released in Blu-ray format with high quality remastering and some of my favorite Blu-ray titles have been re-released in 4K format. SSD cache can be enabled by using 2.5" SATA SSD drives in standard drive bays or without occupying drive bays by installing Synology SNV3400 Series M.2 NVMe SSD drives through the built-in M.2 slots. SNV3400 Series M.2 NVMe SSD drives can also be used to create SSD storage pools. Drives are sold separately. Usable capacity for each volume will be lower than the maximum volume size and is dependent on the filesystem and the amount of system metadata stored.

In two years time, the NAS's 45% storage vacancy had dwindled to 19%. I thought it would be wise to proactively increase storage space. My first thought was to replace the DS918+ with a Synology eight-bay DS1819+ equipped with 10 TB Western Digital Red drives. Synology SNV3400 series M.2 NVMe SSD drives can be installed through the built-in M.2 slots to enable SSD caching or create SSD storage pools. Drives are sold separately.

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I have not noticed any speed or performance differences when loading files into the expansion unit or when streaming video from the expansion unit.

Sequential write throughput in MB/s when using a 10GbE SMB connection. Tested on an all-flash volume with Synology SAT5200 flash drives. Figure 5. I am still fascinated by the fact that my entire video collection can fit in a little box, and that all content is streamable to any computing device in my home.

Store, share, and protect

I am currently using only two of the DX517's five bays, for a total storage of 46 TB across six 8 TB drives, and a total occupancy of 25 TB (54%). Each 8 TB drive has 7.676 TB storage available. The NAS's operating system reserves 0.324 TB of space on each drive. Filling the remaining three bays with 8 TB drives would provide 69 TB total storage with a currant occupancy rate of 36%. My Synology DS918+ NAS was set up in February of 2018 with four 8 TB Western Digital Red drives. My video collection took up 17 TB (55%) of the available 30.7 TB of storage. I assumed the 13.7 TB of free space would last a long time (years) since I only buy a few titles per year. At the time of initial installation, my video collection was 71% DVDs, 29% Blu-rays, and 0% 4K Blu-rays. Creating M.2 storage pools requires the use of Synology-verified SSDs, which are rigorously tested under extreme temperature conditions. Thermal parameters for SSDs and NAS units are fine-tuned to ensure optimal management of thermal conditions under I/O-intensive environments. ( Learn more)