Lifespan of Synology NAS

[lyapounov]

(16-05-2020 17:40)Mike48 Wrote:  Hello all,

I am wondering about the expected lifespan of my Synology DS414 and what people's experiences have been this regard.

Specifically, I wonder about--

1. Usual lifespan
2. Warning signs of failure
3. Practicality of repair
4. Ability to move discs to a new Synology
5. Preference for a new one (Plus series, Value series, j series?)
   

It is used for audio and shared file storage.

As everyone mentioned, the big issue is the HD itself.

In an ideal world, you should always be in RAID mode (easy), and never buy the two (or more) HD from the same provider at the same time.

Here is a common disaster:
1) a HD starts having failure.
2) of course, you buy a new HD, and let the RAID populate the new HD (something around a few days, depends upon the size of the HD, but also upon your processor)
3) which means you put your remaining HD under huge stress, as it does a lot of read at low level continously for a few days.
4) catastrophy: as both old HD came from same batch, the remaining old HD is also failing while transferring, meaning you loss your data

So: either buy from two different providers, like amazon or...; or alternatively, buy a new one every 2-3 years or so, and replace the oldest hD in the array; meaning you always have a new HD in the RAID array

How long does a HD last ?
A very interesting link, which gives stats on brand failure (Backblaze is a hoster - professional look at this website):
Backblaze Hard drive Stats

Apart from the HD: I realized I had a very old DS207+ in my garage (DS207+ was the top 2 bays in 2007); so I thought "great, I will use it as a backup / sync server". Well, unfortunatly, the latest DSM is DSM 3.2, while we are at DSM6, soon DSM 7 hopefully...

Don't forget that the DSM won't up update after a while :-)