Synology DS411SLIM manual What is Volume and Disk Group?, Volume Creation Methods

	C h a p t e r
Chapter 4: Manage Storage Space	4

Before sharing Synology DiskStation services with your users, you need to set up storage spaces first. This chapter explains how to use Storage Manager to set up storage space (including volumes, Disk Groups, iSCSI Targets, iSCSI LUNs), access external disks connected to DiskStation, and check hard drive's status.

What is Volume and Disk Group?

With the hard drives installed on your DiskStation, you can create volumes for storing and sharing your files.

Note: For more information about setting up file sharing on your DiskStation, see "Chapter 7: Set Up File Sharing" on Page 67.

Volume Creation Methods

For Synology DiskStation with 2 or more bays, you can create a volume with the following methods:

Combine several hard disks into a volume: This method allows you to create a volume with data protection. See "Create a Volume Using the Quick Mode" on Page 45 and "Create a Volume by Combining Several Hard Disks" on Page 46 for more information.

Combine several hard disks into a Disk Group, and then create multiple volumes on the Disk Group: This method not only allows you to create a volume with data protection, but you can also specify volume capacity according to your needs. See "Create a Volume by Allocating Partial Space on a Disk Group" on Page 46 and "Create a Disk Group" on Page 47 for more information.

Synology DiskStation Supported RAID Types

For Synology DiskStation with 1 bay, you can create a Basic volume. For Synology DiskStation with 2 or more bays, you can choose between several RAID types during volume or Disk Group creation. Some of the RAID types can provide data protection, which means data integrity is protected when one or two of the hard drives fail.

RAID Type	HDD #	Allowed	Description	Capacity
		Failed HDD #
	1	0	Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) can optimize the	1 x (HDD size)
			storage capacity when combining hard drives with
	2 - 3	1
			different sizes. If a SHR storage space is
SHR1			composed of two or three hard drives, data	Optimized by the
			integrity is protected when one of the hard drives
	≧ 4	1 - 2	fail. If a SHR storage space is composed of four or	system
			more hard drives, data integrity is protected when
			one or two of the hard drives fail.
			A Basic volume is created with one hard drive as
Basic	1	0	an independent unit. When creating a Basic	1 x (HDD size)
			volume, you can select only one hard drive at a
			time.
JBOD	≧2	0	JBOD is a collection of hard drives.	Sum of all HDD
				sizes
			Combining multiple disks to build a storage space,	(HDD #) x
RAID 0		0	RAID 0 offers Striping, a process of dividing data
	≧2			(Smallest HDD
			into blocks and spreading the data blocks across
				size)
			several hard drives, but without safety measures.
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1RAID types except for Basic are supported on specific models only. See "Appendix A: Synology DiskStation Specifications" on Page 219 for more information.

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