My Synology is a DS918+ and actually has installed three WD Red with each 6 TB of space. The problem is that two of them have a “power-on time” of >40’000 hours. That means, that they have been running since over 4.5 years.

The normal estimated lifespan of NAS HDs is about 3-5 years (it depends on the amount of data written and other factors like temperature). In any case the probability that this two HDs will fail is high.

The new disks

After some research I decided to get the Seagate IronWolf with 8 TB of space. It seems that they are performing better and they are cheaper (~10%) as the WD Red. One negative point could be, that the fail rate is higher. There are many people reporting, that a lot of Seagate are failing already after 3 years. We will see

Requirements

Requirement for the disk replacement is that you have a storage pool on a RAID. In my case I have a Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) with 1-drive fault tolerance:

Another requirement is that the new disk has at least the same space as the old one or more. Pay attention that there could be some differences between manufacturer. For example 6 TB WD Red or 6 TB Seagate could have some differencies that would fail the replacement.

Replacement

The replacement is the easiest part. Take one HD out and put the new one back in the Synology.

Now go to your Storage Pool and start the repair process as show below:

Depending on the HD size it takes some hours. In my case about 20 hours / disk. During the repair process the most things are working as usual. I found only one problem with the Video Station: all the videos could not be played because of insufficient disk volume size.

Speed test

I did also a simple speed test copying and pasting a video file (~2 GB size) locally. The WD RED 6TB was reading and writing with a speed of aboud 113 MB/s

The Seagate IronWolf 8 TB was about 20% faster than the WD:

This is probably because the Seagate has 7200 rpm instead of 5400 rpm of the WD disk.

Disk temperature

One point in favour of the WD is the temperature. It is ~7-8 degrees colder than Seagate: 42° (WD) vs. 49° (Seagate).

Wipe data on old disks

Bevor we sell or trash the old disk I reccomend to wipe the data. I used the Delock Docking- and Clone-Station:

There are 2 possible solution to solve this problem. I have tested both on my Synolgy 916+ with DSM 6.1.3-15152 Update 4. They are both working but I suggest to use the first solution.

Install the FFmpeg package from the Synology community (reccomended)

Go to the “Package Center -> Settings -> Package Sources” and then click “add” to add a new source with the following details:

• Name: SynoCommunity
• Location: http://packages.synocommunity.com/

Click “OK” to save the settings and go to the “General” Tab to enable the installation of packages from any publisher:

Now go to the “Community” Tab, find the “ffmpeg” package and install it:

After the installation, click on it and check if it is running:

Done!

Install manually the FFpackage

This solution is just in case, that the first one is not working.

First of all you need to find out which Synology modell that you have (in my case 916+). You find it in the “System Settings -> Info-Center“:

Now, you need to find out which architecture that you need for the FFmpeg package. Go to “Architecture per Synology model” and search your model. In my case I have to use the braswell Architecture:

• DS916+ – synology_braswell_916+

Now that we know the architecure we can download the FFmpeg package from this site:

• https://mega.nz/#F!bF4TiIjK!O9AQKJiVoSrXpyBqrKCNRw
• Update 16.01.2018: this site has updated packages: https://guillaume.smaha.net/syno/
• Update 9.5.2019: official repository:  https://synocommunity.com/package/ffmpeg

In my case: “FFmpegWithDTS-braswell-1.0-0005.spk”

Now go to the “Package Center“, click on “Manual Installation” and select the previously downloaded FFmpeg package:

Select “next” and “apply“.

Congratulations! Now you should be able to run DTS videos 

Preparation

First of all you need to stop all the applications manually (open the application manager in the DSM). After this connect to your synology over SSH (enable it if not done yet).

Migration

Now we move all the applications from Volume 1 to the new Volume (in my case Volume 2):

mv /volume1/@appstore/* /volume2/@appstore/

Then we need to find out which applications have a link to the old volume:

find /var/packages/ -type l -ls | grep volume1

The output, depending on which applications you have installed, should look like this:

4480 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Nov 4 18:39 /var/packages/DownloadStation/target -> /volume1/@appstore/DownloadStation

18333 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 4 18:39 /var/packages/VPNCenter/target -> /volume1/@appstore/VPNCenter

23299 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 4 18:40 /var/packages/DNSServer/target -> /volume1/@appstore/DNSServer

7021 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Nov 4 18:39 /var/packages/VideoStation/target -> /volume1/@appstore/VideoStation

18325 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Nov 4 18:40 /var/packages/MediaServer/target -> /volume1/@appstore/MediaServer

23973 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Nov 4 18:41 /var/packages/CloudStation/target -> /volume1/@appstore/CloudStation

19596 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 4 18:41 /var/packages/AntiVirus/target -> /volume1/@appstore/AntiVirus

23175 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Nov 4 18:38 /var/packages/StorageAnalyzer/target -> /volume1/@appstore/StorageAnalyzer

For each application you need to create a new simbolic link replacing the old one:

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/DownloadStation /var/packages/DownloadStation/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/VPNCenter /var/packages/VPNCenter/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/DNSServer /var/packages/DNSServer/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/VideoStation /var/packages/VideoStation/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/MediaServer /var/packages/MediaServer/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/CloudStation /var/packages/CloudStation/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/AntiVirus /var/packages/AntiVirus/target

ln -sfn /volume2/@appstore/StorageAnalyzer /var/packages/StorageAnalyzer/target

To be sure check that now the symbolic links are pointing to the new volume:

find /var/packages/ -type l -ls | grep volume2

4480 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Nov 5 13:59 /var/packages/DownloadStation/target -> /volume2/@appstore/DownloadStation

6171 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/VPNCenter/target -> /volume2/@appstore/VPNCenter

17675 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/DNSServer/target -> /volume2/@appstore/DNSServer

7021 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/VideoStation/target -> /volume2/@appstore/VideoStation

17850 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 30 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/MediaServer/target -> /volume2/@appstore/MediaServer

17857 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/CloudStation/target -> /volume2/@appstore/CloudStation

17986 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/AntiVirus/target -> /volume2/@appstore/AntiVirus

18102 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Nov 5 14:01 /var/packages/StorageAnalyzer/target -> /volume2/@appstore/StorageAnalyzer

Conclusion

The migration is done and you can start the applications again. They should work as normal

I have configured the sensor, that it turns the lights on and off automatically after 3 minutes.

The problem

The problem is, that during the day the sensor, after no motion for 3 minutes is detected, turns the lights off. That means, that in the evening when my lights are turned on and I go to the bedroom to take something, after 3 minutes all the lights (not only in the bedroom) are automatically turned off.

Unfortunately, with the hue app, there is no option to activate/deactivate the sensor during the day (for example between 7 am – 11 pm).

The solution

The hue lights in combination with the hue bridge offers RESTful API for automation with scripts. All what you need is a server (like Synology or another linux/windows server) that is running permanently to execute your scripts.

The code

The first thing to do is to follow these instructions to get access to your hue bridge: Getting started with hue API (login required to see all the documentation)

After this, we can scan the hue network to get all sensors (with a GET command):

/api/<username>/sensors

Now you need to search through the sensor list and find the sensor that match your label (in my case it is the sensor id 10).

To automate it you need to create a script. For example a bash script to turn the sensor off (power_off_motion_sensor.sh):

#!/bin/bash

curl –header “Content-Type: application/json” –request PUT –data ‘{“on”: false}’  http://<bridge_ip>/api/<username>/sensors/10/config

Or turn it on (power_on_motion_sensor.sh):

#!/bin/bash

curl –header “Content-Type: application/json” –request PUT –data ‘{“on”: true}’  http://<bridge_ip>/api/<username>/sensors/10/config

After this you need only to automate it with a scheduled task. With synology you can create it under the control panel -> job tasks. Here you can define when the scripts should run.

Conclusion

I use it since some weeks without problems. The philips hue lights are really a good product for people, who like to automate their houses! In combination with IFTTT there are also some intresting automations, for example turn the lights on at the sunset.

My Environment

Actually I’m using the following components:

• MacBook Pro 15″
• Windows 10 PC with two 4K Monitors
• Synology Diskstation DS214 play

Set up the Synology Cloud Station

The first thing to do is to set up the Synology Diskstation as a Cloud Station. This is really simple because on the Synology you only need to install the package “Cloud Station” and enable it. A full tutorial with the instructions how to do it is here to find: Synology PC/MAC Cloud Station.

If you have another NAS you need to check in Google how to set it up correctly. Also for Dropbox, OneDrive you will find a guide. The process is quite the same. (N. B. for online clouds the disk space is limited (for example Dropbox has 2 GB). If you need more space (probably you will) you need to buy a subscription (normally about 100$/year). In this case you need to check if it is better to buy a NAS (like Synology, QNAP, etc.) solution with more space and without recurring costs.

Move the Lightroom Library

After the synchonisation between Mac <=> Synology <=> PC is working the last step is to move the Lightroom Library to the Synology synchronisation folder. In my setup I have synchronised the Synology Cloud Client with the following local folders:

• Windows: C:\Users\<Username>\Synology
• Mac: /users/<Username>/Synology

So, all the files contained in the Synology folder are synchronized. In the Synology folder I have created a new folder “Lightroom” where I put the Lightroom catalog and the pictures data.

The last step is to start Lightroom and under “File -> Open Catalog” select the Lightroom Catalog from the “Synology -> Lighroom” folder. You might also need to update the folder containing the pictures data. To do this mark the Folder and then select “Update folder location…”, like this:

Et voilà, the two computers are syncing the data.

Conclusion

I’m working with the synchronisation between Mac and PC since some days and it seems to be all fine. If you don’t have the possibility to have a central storage like the Synology you can also synchronize the data directly between the computers with BitTorrent. I haven’t testet it so far but it should also work fine. If you are intrested search in Google, there are many tutorials how to do it.