Setup custom Synology NAS on a real hardware

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Sorry, was quite busy lately. Before that, I explained in a separate post on how to install Synology Disk Station on virtual machine. So it was only just on a virtual machine that installed under Windows 7 operating system. So which means there are 2 main concerns if we try to do that.

1. Virtual machine hard disk may easily corrupted
   The real problem here is virtual machine hard disks are much more difficult to backup and restore if there is virtual hard disk corrupted
2. Performance issue
   You won’t get a real performance if you run everything on a virtual machine, no matter how it still run under Windows 7 operating system.
3. High Power Consumption
   The old NAS is running with first generation of Intel I7 Processor. And then the motherboard is an old powerful model Asus P7P55D. Both are very high power consumption. And the motherboard don’t have embedded graphic card chipset. So I have to buy an extra fanless graphic card which is expect to be low power consumption.

So it was OK if you plan to do quick testing on Synology Disk Station, then you can use virtual machine for that purposes. Before I am writing this post, I actually already setup the DSM 5.1 version on an old machine. I tried to install DSM 5.2 but it can’t detect the XPEnology bootable disk. So I suspect because the motherboard are too old to install DSM 5.2. Below are my old PC specification.

The major reasons why I start to buy some new hardware because the old PC that runs DSM 5.1, will auto reboot itself every couple of days. I tested on DSM 5.2 before on another new PC (Asus Z97-M plus motherboard), and it is looking stable and good. so I decide to pick some new hardware. Because Asus Z97M-Plus motherboard is out of stock at the moment, so I think that it was OK if i pick Asus H97M-E. Slightly lower spec than the Asus Z97M-Plus but I believe that it should runs DSM 5.2 pretty well.

So below is my custom Synology NAS hardware.

Basically the Intel Pentium G3260 comes with 2 cores (2 threads). which is super low power compare to I3 or I5 processor. And the motherboard is Asus H97M-E, can support up to 4 x 6.0 gb/s SATA. 2 GB ram is very good enough for DSM 5.2, So I am using back the old kingston 120GB SSD as my main storage, and you can add additional HDD if you want.

Power Consumption

This motherboard has already comes with embedded graphic card chip-set. So the total power consumption is around < 25W (Without HDD) for the new NAS. The old one was 50Watt (Without any HDD)! So there is a 50% improvement on power consumption.

Casing, Power Supply

I am using existing power supply and Lian Li Casing for this new NAS.

Things we need this round

XPEnoboot_DS3615xs_5.2-5592.1.img

Win32DiskImager-0.9.5-install.exe

DSM_DS3615xs_5592.pat

Create the XPEnology bootable pen drive

After assemble all the hardware, now the first step is to create the bootable pen drive. You can create a bootable CD drive, but I never tried before. I used an old kingston 8GB pen drive as my bootable device. So install the Win32 Disk Imager on ur PC, then you would see something like below.

Change BIOS Settings

You should have change your BIOS setting to run then bootable pen drive as highest priority

System tuning and power consumption

Adjust your system to lowest possible eco mode, it will save a lot of power consumption

Boot for the first time

https://youtu.be/iUzeGgo_6KA

You should see this screen if you are running XPEnoboot 5.2-5592.1 on your system. Choose the install/upgrade (But actually it doesn’t really matter so far from what I noticed). And then the system will be loaded. And when you see “DiskStation Login:”, you can use http://find.synology.com/ to search for this Disk Station.

Installing your Disk Station Manager

Once you found your disk station, you should see the screen like below, choose a manual installation and select your DSM_DS3615xs_5592.pat file locally. The installation should takes around 5 minutes depending on your system performance.

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Setting up your credential

Once the installation completed, you should see a welcome page. Proceed to setup your administrator credential. If you lost your connection to Disk Station, you can access it again by getting the IP address from your router DHCP list and then use username=”admin” and password =”” to re-login again.

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Done!

Feel free to comment below if you have any question or better suggestion.

 

 

 

Improve your WIFI signal by diagnosing your networks

It is quite often I received complains from friends and relatives regarding internet problem. What they normally unsatisfied are wifi is slow, having difficulty to connect to certain web page, and even face similar problem when loading Facebook videos. There could be a few reasons behind all these. It can be an Internet Provider issue, router problem, wifi weak, or channels clashing with neighbors.

We will never know the solution if we don’t understand the root causes of the problem that we are facing with. It could be 1 or more causes that I listed above. So the first step is to diagnose the networking problem, and narrow down all the possible angle, so when we know the root cause of it, then we can fix our networks.

Diagnose the WIFI signals

It is always important to diagnose the problem first. So below are a few things we have to try an error before we decide what to fix.

So if you have a router at home, it will be good if it is connected with at least 2 devices. The first one go with a desktop / laptop that connected via a LAN cable (wired), and the second one it is going to be your phone or your tablet device.

Most of the standard cheap router is able to handle less than 5 wireless devices, when you have more than 5 devices,  then you will encounter networking problem.

Slow router processing speed OR too many WIFI access around

If the internet access works good with a wired LAN cable, but do badly with WIFI, then there are only 2 reason why this happened. The first major reason is too many wifi access around. Second reason is because the router processing speed no longer can catch up with all the devices that connected with it. Normally this happened when you have more than 5 to 10 wireless devices that connected to your router simultaneously. The budget way is to disconnect all your wireless devices, and keep only 1 or 2. If the problem is solved, then please consider change your router that can handle more wireless devices.

You still probably can stick with new 2.4GHZ router, but comes with a better processing power. But if after you removed all the devices, and those 2 that you kept earlier are still having internet connection problem, then it must be too many Wifi access around your area, that directly affecting your wifi channel.

If down to this, there is only one solution, is to change to a new AC router (5.0 GHZ).

The different between 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz. Source from [http://www.gofetchcomputers.com/blog/]

Could it be Internet Provider Issue?

Yes, potentially it can be an Internet Provider Issue, or broken international cables. If you only use a PC/laptop connected to your router using LAN cable, if the internet is still not met your expectation, then it is most likely an Internet Provider problem.

So I added a flowchart into this post. It will helps you on how to diagnose the slow network problem.

Pick your PC hardware parts virtually before you buy them

10 years ago, when you were decided to buy a new desktop PC, you probably will stick with online review or refer back to anyone who had already bought them at the first place,

The steps are important in our old days, because we want to make sure all the PC hardware parts that chosen by you are compatible with each other.

But now with PC Part Picker, you can do it virtually before you decide to buy them. This is an example of PC parts,

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2GVVkL

You can customize your desktop PC for all the categories include processor, motherboard, ram, hard disk & any form of accessory.

The site will displayed if all your parts are actually compatible with each other, showing the total power assumption, comparing models, and most importantly is the total pricing.

Beside, you can share your PC build, or refer to other expert’s PC build before you finalize your preferred items.