This is now 10 years old.
Never had an issue with it, but seriously should I replace it?
You have backups? Why worry until it fails.
Yes I have hard drive back ups
So why are you worrying?
Because it is 10 years old!
I don’t think I have ever had a bit of tech (laptop etc) that has lasted that long.
Well, the only point of changing it proactively is if you’re at risk of losing valuable data. As I said, if you have backups (and this isn’t it) then I’d just deal with it when it happens.
A NAS isn’t really a backup device anyway, more to make stuff available on the network. I use a USB drive for backups so that it doesn’t sit there spinning.
Mine started playing up recently - alerts that the fan had stopped then restarted.
I opened it up and blasted it with skooshy air (can stolen from my first employer in the 90s) to no avail.
Then I blew into the fan while it was running and a bloody great dust bunny came out. Problem solved.
After your post a couple of years ago I took the casing apart and cleaned out the mass of dust in there and everything has been working fine.
@coco I have USB back ups for the 3TB drive. The NAS is single bay so only for networking, I don’t delude myself that twin bay NAS are a back up.
To be honest it doesn’t get used as much as it used to as I really only use it when I want to access stuff that is not on streaming services, which is less often these days.
However I still have stuff on CD or downloads that are not available elsewhere,
Just ‘audiophile nervosa’ I suppose, if I had say a CD player that was 10 years old I wouldn’t even be thinking about it.
1 Like
My Qnap TS-269L is also about ten years old, but it’s doing amazing work as not only a basic NAS, but also its coping (just about) as a full blown roon server and media server for the telly.
I’ve upgraded it as far as it can possibly go (ssd on the e-sata port for roon database and maximum ram), and it runs two 4tb drives that came out of massive data servers at my old
Job.
I have multi backups of it all, so if / when it dies I’ll get something else. Just not sure what yet. I quite like the qnap suite of tools, and it makes it easy to push / pull backups from devices.
These things ain’t cheap though!
I’d keep running yours till it dies if it still serves you well.
1 Like
I am in the same boat. I installed my synology nas in 2013. It is backed up on a laptop and a USB hdd.
I think about replacing it but always revert to Coco’s take on it.
If it aint broke dont fix it.
1 Like
Well mine is broke, again. I seem to be a bit of a Jonah for these things.
DS124 arriving today and I am proposing to do a live heart transplant on it so pray for me lads.
I keep two backups, one done much less frequently than the other, onto some WD USB drives. I notice that one is now from approx 13 years ago so
- I am starting not to trust it
- The form factor is pretty clunky. I have to dig out a wall wart and crawl around under the desk and fiddle about with some very odd cables
Soooo I’m starting to think about a teeny SSD backup disk that would take power off the USB. Any suggestions?
edit: 2Tb. The main disk is 4Tb but frankly I have 1.4Tb of data and the growth rate is very slow
What about using a 2.5 external drive for the back up. These are relatively cheap - £100 for 4GB at Scan. In comparison a 4TB SSD is £220. The 2.5HDD takes the power from the USB. As to manufacturer, I am not sure it makes much difference - all will fail at some point. I understand that when an SSD fails it just stops whereas with a HDD there might be some warning such as erratic behaviour before it goes bang.
Good luck with the transplant.
1 Like
Never been a fan of Synology, QNAP is much better but I use this for moving data around at home/work:
and it’s just failed when I went to take a secondary pre-surgery backup 
Flashing lights and the NAS refuses to mount it.
This is why you take multiple backups kids.
I guess I’ve had my hand forced on buying another device.
1 Like
Well that seemed to work. The migration process got wedged at the very last step, updating the Hyper Backup package but I eventually gave up and tried logging in and it all seems fine. All accounts and permissions restored, even AssetUPNP still works which surprised me greatly.
I will definitely be buying another natty little WD Elements backup drive.
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8239842
They’re so much less clunky than what I’ve been using until now - which I guess is the technology of 15 years ago.
2 Likes