Add 2 HDD connected via USB to Synology DS211j using Raid 1

Question

I have a Synology DS211j and 2 old 2TB S-ATA HDD. What I plan to do is to buy two cases for these two hard disk drives that allow for connecting the hard disks to my Synology using the USB port. I then want to build a Raid 1 with the two hard disks. I studied the manual and tried to google, but I can't figure out if that's possible at all, and if, how I can achieve that. Any hint?

Solution

Nope can't be done as yet. The drives would have to be internal. The DSM software doesn't allow any of these configurations via USB as these are shown as external devices and no options around RAID are shown:

USB options screen

I assume as someone said above because of poor performance and USB controllers being slower.

If there isn't any space to put these into the SATA controllers internally then maybe buy a bigger box? Synology offer all sorts of hardware configs and a 4 drive bay that I have works wonders.

You can even get a small 2 drive bay second hand on ebay to do what you need.

I guess this is for a backup situation? You can then link the 2 synology boxes to sync across and use as a backup.

Or if going for a bigger Synology box create separate RAID configs, although best practice DR you would have something offsite too just in case.

Anyhow let me know if you need more help.

Comments

[ganesh]

Just checking, but are you aware that this is going to be slow? Multiple drives on a single USB2 controller is going to give you about 30MB/sec for one drive and about twice 15MB/sec if you use two drives. With RAID 1 that means 30MB/sec read and 15MB/sec write (since the data is written to both drives). To give you a rough idea, that means 37 hours to fill the 2TB disk with data.

[RoflcoptrException]

Yes that should be ok. 100 GB should be written in two hours. I plan to use it to backup data that is written/accessed only rarely.

[ganesh]

Apparently you can enable ssh. Then you can log in and get busybox as a shell. Can you check if you can do that and if mdadm is installed by default (or if you can add it)?

[HankCa]

Why was this voted down? I wish downvoters would add comments to say so. Especially when it isn't obvious.

[TheNerdyNerd]

Not sure either why it was, always looking to improve so if someone could help understand why voted down.