Setup Raid 5 or SHR?

Synology
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Hello,

I’m having Synology DS923+ and I’m struggling to decide if to set up my system to SHR or RAID 5. I am aware of the differences but not sure of the MAIN reasons to choose one over the other.

I am using all 4x drives as Seagate IronWolf Pro 22TB. What would your best advice be? What would be the main cons of SHR beside the lower performance compared to RAID 5? Will I be able to expand my storage system with another machine in the future?

I’m looking for the best option for the long run without any issues. And what would be the performance difference in terms or read/white between the 2 options?

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I have the same question, particularly if I’m planning to use my Synology NAS for Time Machine for several computers

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Someone smarter than me will doubtless chime in, however I can give you some insight from this objective.

SHR-2. Self protected, extremely well supported by Synology, probably internally faster than most networks it’s attached to using this NAS, etc. I have a couple of the older model of these (DS920+) and got some bad drives in one. The Syno service & support were excellent, recovery was pretty fast and painless — except the shock and surprise factor of having new drives die in < 90-days!

If you truly want, "…the long run without any issues, you should rethink the drives and pick off the compatibility list > change log. They seem to be playing games again as the compatibility list is only showing Synology branded drive, but if you go to the change log you’ll get a full list of tested-compatible drives. You might also check in at NAS Compares.

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Check this out. Choose RAID type.

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I posted this comment about the ease of upgrading 2 x 1TB drives in an SHR to 2 x 4 TB and the ease with which it was done. The same would also apply in the case of a drive in the SHR failing and needing to be replaced size wise like-for-like.
As Will’s post shows, SHR should be first choice for most users.

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Personally for me I tell people:

If all of your drives are over 16TB, then go with RAID5. Otherwise SHR1

Thats because if you have 4TB drives SHR can be awesome! But if you already have large drives, then you probably will never use the features of SHR and it does have some performance implications

High performance businesses I always go RAID5

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In that case I will have to reformat my system to RAID 5 from SHR1. I don’t have anything in the drives yet but I guess will take a long while for it set up since it took with SHR1.

Any suggestions when reformatting and setting to RAID5 that’s I need to be aware of and avoid?