Synology NAS set up - Macbook Air M1

[Gad-Westy]

Hoping for some help.

I'm dipping my toe into the world of NAS drives.

The driver for doing this was that our 'main' computer is a macbook air and it's used a lot for photos via Lightroom and video editing with imovie etc. Lots of large files so we were using an external hard drive. The problem with that is to use the macbook anywhere else in the house either required carrying a drive with it or leaving the drive unplugged which was starting to cause some issues if software was still open and could not find reference files.

So I decided the answer was a NAS. Last week I bought a used Synology DS218J with 2x 8tb drives and have set it up as raid1 for the time being.

Our home network set up is a 4g huawei router with EE sim. That feeds a POE switch that has 3x Unifi AP's plugged into to give us wifi around the house.

I have plugged the NAS into the same POE switch.

Setup has gone smoothly. I've set up a general 'storage' volume on the drive via the synology software/portal and have successfully mapped the drive on my other laptop which is a Dell. That is working nicely. I can restart the laptop and it will bring the mapped drive up each time.

On my Macbook Air M1 (2020), which is the computer I really want this to work with, I have a problem. I have mapped the drive fine and it works. I can copy stuff to it, open things etc.

I cannot get it to reconnect after a restart.

In login items, I have added the 'storage' volume on the NAS drive but when I restart the computer I get an error message along the lines of 'there was a problem connecting to the server "xxxxNAS". The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address."

If I just then manually map the drive again (connect to server in mac speak I think) it connects absolutely fine.

Any ideas of stuff I can try?

[dxg]

I have the same setup.

Have you tried command-K from the desktop and mounting the server that way?

[Gad-Westy]

dxg said:

I have the same setup.

Have you tried command-K from the desktop and mounting the server that way?

Interesting, no I have not tried that. I'm busy copying some stuff over to the drive at present from the macbook but once that's done, I'll give it a try.

Presumably I still use the SMB path I have used so far within the connect to server wizard?

Can I ask what the difference is with doing it the manual way?

[dxg]

I also recall macos being fussy about which version of SMB was running on the Synology. Can't remember if I wound up with 2 or 3.

Or you could run apple filesharing on the synology, but I kept everything smb for simplicity.

[Gad-Westy]

Thanks DXG. I cannot see a way to change SMB version but I'll take a proper look later. This is one of those rare instances where the PC has just worked and the mac is fighting me!

[somouk]

I usually don't bother having it map automatically and use the Cmd+K route to map the drive.

I also use it on SMB and not bother with apple file sharing.

You won't need to worry about a mapped drive for the tiemmachine backup if you are using that, it will establish the connection when the backup kicks off.

[Gad-Westy]

somouk said:

I usually don't bother having it map automatically and use the Cmd+K route to map the drive.

I also use it on SMB and not bother with apple file sharing.

You won't need to worry about a mapped drive for the tiemmachine backup if you are using that, it will establish the connection when the backup kicks off.

Cheers. Can you just expand in this for me? Are you saying that you just manually reconnect the nas if you ever have to restart? I am on SMB too rather than apple file sharing. I didn't want to go down the apple route as I wanted to be able to access that volume from a PC as well.

Timemachine not on the cards at the moment though I did think that if I get this set up ticking along okay, I may end buying another dedicated NAS for time machine as well. But for now, it's just an external disk.

Should have mentioned the reasons I want to auto-reconnect. 2 main reasons. 1. my daughter quite regularly lets the battery run down to zero so it does get a 'forced' restart from time to time. The other thing is, that as you move around the house, it will hand over from one access point to another and it will not auto reconnect after. I'm hoping I can get this set up where I can just forget about it and the NAS is always just sat there as if it were a drive. When connected to our network at least. I'll worry about working from other networks another day!

Edited by Gad-Westy on Tuesday 17th October 11:00

[eeLee]

Map the Synology drive and then open system settings and search for Login Items. Click the + and add your Synology drive mapping.

Setting up TM on the Synology is a breeze; as mentioned before, do not use AFS but rather SMB.

[Gad-Westy]

eeLee said:

Map the Synology drive and then open system settings and search for Login Items. Click the + and add your Synology drive mapping.

Setting up TM on the Synology is a breeze; as mentioned before, do not use AFS but rather SMB.

Hi. Thanks. I have added the volume as a login item as per OP. Unfortunately that is not working. It is set up as SMB though this drive is not intended to be used as a time machine drive. I will revisit that once I'm comfortable with how NAS works.

[Gad-Westy]

Anyone have any thoughts on using something like this?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automounter/id116043...

I will try the other free suggestions first but it occurred to me that even if I get the auto login stuff sorted I might still have a problem with handover from one AP to another as I move around the house. Seems like automounter might handle all of that at a relatively low cost.

[somouk]

Gad-Westy said:

Cheers. Can you just expand in this for me?

Edited by Gad-Westy on Tuesday 17th October 11:00

I just use the Cmd+K when I login to map the drive, I keep it as a history item so it's always there.

The moving around networks shouldn't cause an issue, even with a couple of network drops it should re-establish the connection and auto login won't matter about that anyway unless you log out/log in every itme your laptop changes networks.

[Gad-Westy]

somouk said:

I just use the Cmd+K when I login to map the drive, I keep it as a history item so it's always there.

The moving around networks shouldn't cause an issue, even with a couple of network drops it should re-establish the connection and auto login won't matter about that anyway unless you log out/log in every itme your laptop changes networks.

Thanks. Was keen to get it to mount automatically and remount if connection ever failed. To that end I bought automounter for a tenner on the app store and that has got it all singing along nicely.

Maybe as good a place as any to ask though... back up strategy has now gone out the window so I need a new plan.

2 problems. Firstly we use backblaze as a cloud backup and that will not back up a nas drive unless I pay for a dedicated version which is an option but wanted to explore other options first.

Other problem which I hadn't anticipated is that the NAS drive cannot be backed up via time machine either. So I don't know what the best strategy for having an onsite backup of the NAS drive is. Thoughts welcome....

I do have it set up as raid1 so can see that if I have a disk failure I have some protection but I'm probably more concerned about accidental deletion of stuff etc which was where time machine and back blaze were ideal.

[somouk]

For onsite I plug in a USB drive to the NAS and have the built in Synology Backup app run a backup every night.

For offsite I pay for Synology C2 which backs up overnight off site.

[Gad-Westy]

somouk said:

For onsite I plug in a USB drive to the NAS and have the built in Synology Backup app run a backup every night.

For offsite I pay for Synology C2 which backs up overnight off site.

Many thanks. Both sound like good options.

[Haltamer]

For accidental deletions, you can also use the inbuilt synology recycle bin functionality.

Have a separate admin account (You are doing that already I hope? ) with access to the recycle bin, then create your "Normal users" for mapping that don't have access.

If you mistakenly nuke something you can just login as an admin and put it back without having to sift through backups.

[Gad-Westy]

Haltamer said:

For accidental deletions, you can also use the inbuilt synology recycle bin functionality.

Have a separate admin account (You are doing that already I hope? ) with access to the recycle bin, then create your "Normal users" for mapping that don't have access.

If you mistakenly nuke something you can just login as an admin and put it back without having to sift through backups.

Very good point actually and I do indeed have that set up. Thank you.

[Craikeybaby]

I have my Synology NAS split up in to various drives, some are just back ups of the various Macs in the house, so do not need backing up again, but the sections where the NAS is the main copy are backed up by cloning to an external harddrive - the Synology USB back up app starts this whenever the drive is connected. I also have got the NAS set up to copy any new files to the cloud overnight, as it is always on and connected.

FWIW I have issues with the Synology drives not connecting if the Mac is woken up from sleep or left the house etc. Usually, I only notice when the import to Lightroom has failed.

[Gad-Westy]

Craikeybaby said:

I have my Synology NAS split up in to various drives, some are just back ups of the various Macs in the house, so do not need backing up again, but the sections where the NAS is the main copy are backed up by cloning to an external harddrive - the Synology USB back up app starts this whenever the drive is connected. I also have got the NAS set up to copy any new files to the cloud overnight, as it is always on and connected.

FWIW I have issues with the Synology drives not connecting if the Mac is woken up from sleep or left the house etc. Usually, I only notice when the import to Lightroom has failed.

Many thanks for this. Sounds like a fairly straight forward option I could copy.

I'm thinking.

Set aside a 'volume' on the NAS for time machine for the Mac. Plug a USB Hard drive into the NAS and have it running a periodic or on the fly back up to it (I presume this is done using synology software?). Have Synology cloud backup in place. Synology C2 backup is 300 euros per year though. Ouch! Am I missing a more cost effective option somewhere?

I then need a separate strategy for my PC Laptop but I'll give that some thought.

On your latter point, it might be worth you trying Automounter. It seems very slick in terms of reconnecting drives immediately. £10 well spent in my case.

[Craikeybaby]

I’m using AWS Glacier for the cloud storage - it is one of the Synology apps, but needs a bit of set up on the AWS side - I use AWS in my day job. It only costs me a few dollars a month. Synology seems to be pushing their own service more though, and haven’t been keeping up with the even cheaper options from AWS.

I also have a volume on the NAS for an old PC laptop, I think that backs up with the standard Windows backup client.

The back up to USB is the Synology USB client, It recognises multiple drives and backs up the relevant folders to the drive (or imports from the drive to the NAS), beeping at the start and end.

Edited by Craikeybaby on Saturday 21st October 15:02

[Gad-Westy]

Craikeybaby said:

I’m using AWS Glacier for the cloud storage - it is one of the Synology apps, but needs a bit of set up on the AWS side - I use AWS in my day job. It only costs me a few dollars a month. Synology seems to be pushing their own service more though, and haven’t been keeping up with the even cheaper options from AWS.

I also have a volume on the NAS for an old PC laptop, I think that backs up with the standard Windows backup client.

The back up to USB is the Synology USB client, It recognises multiple drives and backs up the relevant folders to the drive (or imports from the drive to the NAS), beeping at the start and end.

Edited by Craikeybaby on Saturday 21st October 15:02

Much appreciated, thanks.