It’s easy to keep track of what space you have available on a Synology NAS. The quickest method is to use the Storage Manager through the Synology web UI. This guide will run you through how to check free space, as well as perform some handy tasks.
- How to see how much space you have
- How to view currently installed drives
- Choosing the best NAS drives
How to see how much space you have
Checking on how much free space you have available couldn’t be easier. Not only can you use the desktop widget to glance at a quick usage statistic, but Storage Manager is a powerful tool to manage all your storage needs.
- Open Storage Manager.
That’s it! You can now view in detail your current drive setup, which bays are used in the Synology NAS, how much space is taken up in the storage volume, and if you’ve any expansion units connected.
How to view currently installed drives
Want to see what drives you have installed on the Synology NAS? Here’s how:
- Open Storage Manager.
- Go to SSD/HDD.
Here you can see all the drives installed, including 3.5-inch hard drives, 2.5-inch SSDs, and M.2 SSDs. Various actions can be performed for each drive here, including running a health check, locating drives, benchmarking, configuring cache, and deactivation.
Any drive or storage-related logs can also be viewed from this section of Storage Manager. A few settings can be configured, most are set by default, for alerting to the detection of bad sectors and other drive-related issues.
Choosing the best NAS drives
It’s incredibly important to choose the correct NAS drives for your enclosure. These are what will be used to store your all-important data and as such it’s paramount we used drives that are capable of running continuously.
I’ve compiled a collection of the best NAS drives you can buy for enclosures to help you make the right decision.
Seagate IronWolf
I’m a big fan of Seagate’s IronWolf series of NAS hard drives. If you’re serious about storage, the Pro range offers a few advanced extras.
