Category Archives: Storage

Computers, English, Storage, Uncategorized, Windows

How to manually rebuild your Windows BCD Store

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I recently had a mishap where on a system that I had just upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 the Windows BCD Store (Boot Configuration Data Store) was suddenly messed up, presumably by a patch update I had taken earlier:

Blue screen showing “Wiederherstellung: Der PC muss repariert werden.” (German for: “Recovery: The PC must be repaired.”), hinting to a problem with the Windows BCD Store.

Many people will recommend in that situation to boot to a Windows Recovery Environment (RE) and execute the following:

>bootrec /rebuildbcd

But what if the scan for all Windows installation turns out not to identify yours?! Like in the below photo?

Photo of a Windows RE session, failing to automatically rebuild the Windows BCD Store

Are you SOL then?

Don’t despair.

The solution is actually quite simple. Other than the above which is supposed to be fully automatic, it involves some manual tasks, but it should be quite easy if you are at least a bit tech-savvy.

Continue reading How to manually rebuild your Windows BCD Store →
Computers, English, Storage

Hard drive slot does not matter in Synology

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You can read all over the internet that it’s important to put your hard drives into their original slots, e. g. when you migrate to a new Synology device, or when you need to remove the drives to add memory.

This is simply not true.

As expected DSM, which is a flavor of “Linux,” will automatically discover your physical partitions based on the GUIDs each partition has, and then reassemble your volumes. I just tested this (i. e. intentionally put the drives into the device in the wrong order) with a JBOD volume, and I had no issues whatsoever. I cannot see why this should be different with SHR or RAID-5, for example.

If you have also tested this, please let me know how it went for you.

Datenschutz, English, Storage

Securely erase Drives on Synology NAS

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I had to erase an external hard drive, a WD My Book, because I had to return it due to defects. So I searched on the web how to do that on a Synology DS916+ NAS, but I could not easily find the solution. Therefore I did a more generic search how to do it under Linux, and came across the tool “shred” which I had used years ago for the last time.

I checked on my NAS, and the tool was readily available. So I ran the following command to securely erase the (external) hard drive:

 shred /dev/sdq1

Hope this helps people who need to accomplish the same.

deutsch, Storage

Nie wieder Synology!

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Ich muss mir heute mal meinen Frust über die schlechte Qualität der Synology-Disk Station Manager (DSM)-Software vom Leib schreiben.

Seit ich Synology-Produkte einsetze — immerhin seit mehr als fünfeinhalb Jahren (DS212+, DS414, DS415+, DS916+, wir reden hier über insgesamt mehr als 1.800 EUR, die nur die “nackten” Geräte gekostet haben!) — ärgere ich mich immer wieder über geradezu stümperhafte Implementierungen von bestimmten Funktionen. Und was dem Ganzen dann die Krone aufsetzt ist der geradezu unverschämt reagierende Synology-Support, der Bugs einfach nicht als Bugs akzeptiert, sondern “gerne in meinem Namen einen Change Request einreicht, aber ob und wann der implementiert wird können wir nicht sagen”. Oder teilweise geradezu dämliche Workarounds als “Lösung” vorschlägt, statt das Problem richtig zu lösen. 🙁

Damit wir uns nicht falsch verstehen: Die absoluten Grundfunktionen (Dateiserver über SMB, CIFS, AFP) funktionieren selbstredend problemlos. Aber dabei ist ja auch nichts falsch zu machen. Synology übernimmt einfach die bekannten und bewährten Open Source-Dienste, wie z. B. Samba. Aber bei fast allem anderen, was Synology “oben drauf gesetzt” hat, gibt es Probleme. Die unten beispielhaft geschilderten Probleme lassen sich allesamt im Netz wieder finden. Unzählige Kunden leider unter diesen Problemen, aber Synology lässt ihre Kunden “im Regen stehen”!

Einige Beispiele von Problemen der letzten Jahre, die ich gegenüber Synology reklamiert habe, die aber bis heute nicht beseitigt sind: Continue reading Nie wieder Synology! →

English, Storage

Migrating from Synology DS415+ to DS916+

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Today I migrated from a Synology DS415+ (upgraded to 8 GB myself) to a brand-new, unused Synology DS916+ (8 GB factory equipped.)

I followed the instructions given by Synology, but as my actual experience was considerably different (actually easier!) from what supposedly should have happened, I’m documenting them here for reference.

I started by upgrading the old unit to the latest DSM version, and then shutting it down. I moved all four hard drives to the new unit, making sure the same order of the drives in the drive bays was maintained.

I then switched on the new unit and launched the web UI in a browser. This is what I got:

synology-migration-01 Continue reading Migrating from Synology DS415+ to DS916+ →

Computers, English, Storage, Uncategorized, WTF

Synology refuses to admit annoying “Cloud Sync” Bug

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Since about half a year I’m struggling with a very annoying bug in Synology’s “Cloud Sync” package I’m running on my expensive Synology DiskStation DS415+ NAS. It is still present as of today’s DSM 6.0.2-8451 Update 2.

I would like to backup my photos to my Amazon Drive/CloudDrive. As an Amazon Prime customer I can store an unlimited number of images, and only images — other files, like *.xmp sidecar files, will count against my general 5 GB limit.

The problem is that Synology’s Cloud Sync will upload the sidecar files, even though I explicitly only select “Images” to be backed up (and *.xmp is not part of Images, as I will show you!). Continue reading Synology refuses to admit annoying “Cloud Sync” Bug →

Datenschutz, Security, Storage

Remove sensitive files from Synology debug.dat

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Sometimes Synology support ask that you support a debug log. This can be done by launching the Support Center application. Then go to Support Services > Log Generation > push button “Generate logs”.

If you are concerned that you might give them sensitive information you can clean up the debug.dat file and remove the sensitive files from it.

I wrote a quick shell script that should runs under Mac OS X, but should also run under Linux. Here it is:

#!/bin/bash

DEBUG_FILE="$1"
NEW_FILE="$2"
if [ -z "${DEBUG_FILE}" -o -z "${NEW_FILE}" ]; then
    echo "You must specify the path to the debug AND to the new file, quitting..."
    exit 1
fi

if [ -z "$TMPDIR" ]; then
    TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
fi

PROG="`basename $0`"

if [ ! -r "${DEBUG_FILE}" ]; then
    echo "Debug file ${DEBUG_FILE} is unreadable, quitting..."
    exit 1
fi

if [ -f "${NEW_FILE}" ]; then
    echo "New file ${NEW_FILE} already exists, quitting..."
    exit 1
fi

EXCLUDE_PAT="`mktemp -t ${PROG}`" || exit 1

cat >"${EXCLUDE_PAT}" <<EOF
volume1/@tmp/SupportFormAttach28229/dsm/etc/application_key.conf
volume1/@tmp/SupportFormAttach28229/dsm/etc/shadow*
volume1/@tmp/SupportFormAttach28229/dsm/etc/ssl/*
EOF

tar cfz "${NEW_FILE}" -X "${EXCLUDE_PAT}" @"${DEBUG_FILE}"

rm -f ${EXCLUDE_PAT}

If this is helpful for anybody, please let me know by commenting on this article.

Storage, TV

Terratec Cinergy Hybrid XE not working on Synology

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Even on the latest 5.1-5021 version of Synology‘s DSM I couldn’t get my Terratec Cinergy Hybrid XE working on my Synology NAS — the corresponding kernel module tm6000 would always generate a general protection fault on my DS414.

Today I upgraded to a DS415+ (with a completely different CPU), and the module still crashes.

So it seems it’s a real bug in the driver, not just a defect on a single platform (which can happen e. g. due to compiler bugs).

Update 2015-06-19:

Unfortunately Synology seem not very interested in this kind of problems. I repeatedly reported this issue, but all they replied is “Thanks for your report, we’re looking into this.” Even in the latest DSM release 5.2 the issue is still present.

Storage, TV

MSI Mega Sky 580 DVB-T Stick Support dropped by Synology

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MSI Mega Sky 580 DVB-T stick users beware:

With DSM 5.0-4493 Update 4 for my DS414 Synology suddenly deliberately disabled support for my MSI Mega Sky 580 DVB-T stick.

I did not immediately notice this, since Synology do not warn you that you device has been disabled. So I missed a couple of programmes I wanted to record for my kid — thank you so much, Synology! 🙁

I downgraded to DSM 5.0-4493 and then installed Update 3 again, and my stick is still working.

Let’s see how Synology react to my complaint. If they will not enable my stick again I will complain to Amazon where I bought the device from — let’s see how they will respond…

Computers, Storage

Synology’s speed lie

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Since a while I own a new Synology NAS, a DiskStation DS414. Synology advertizes this model with speeds of

Over 207.07MB/s Reading, 135.63MB/s Writing

However I never came even close to those speeds in my daily use of the DiskStation, so I tried to set up an ideal scenario in which I would get the fastest speed the NAS could deliver.

I did so by using a very fast client (a MacBook Pro Retina with a 2.5 GHz Core i7 CPU and SSD drive), and connected that directly “back-to-back” (i. e. without any network device in-between that could potentially slow the network traffic down) to one of the networking ports of the NAS.

The NAS contains three hard drives, a Western Digital WD30EURS (3 TB, max. speed according to benchmarking >130 MByte/s both reading and writing), a Seagate ST32000542AS (2 TB, max. speed at least 109 MByte/s), and a Western Digital WD40EFRX (4 TB, max. speed 146 MByte/s), in a SHR compound (technically a form of RAID5, so due to the striping involved speed should increase compared to a single drive configuration).

I then copied about 25 GB of large files (movies) between the Mac and the NAS.

The fastest speeds I could get was a meager 79.5 MByte/s on reads, and 39.4 MByte/s on writes. That was extremely disappointing, but it confirmed my subjective feeling that the NAS is slow.

To confirm the read data rates I executed the following command directly on the NAS, to have a means of a “plausibility check:”

nas1> hdparm -t /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 328 MB in  3.01 seconds = 109.09 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 332 MB in  3.00 seconds = 110.66 MB/sec

/dev/sdc:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 392 MB in  3.00 seconds = 130.66 MB/sec

This shows that the NAS is capable of reading at a higher speed than it could deliver to the client via the network — possibly an issue with the CPU being too weak to deliver the full speed Synology promise?

Anyway, I find these disappointing results inacceptable, and it makes Synology’s statement a “lie.” Also, I found severe instability and defects with respect to the VideoStation package and recording from a DVB-T stick. Plus the massive issues Synology have with the power-saving “Hibernation” feature that never worked for me (neither on this box, nor on its predecessor DS212+.) And I’m not alone, a lot of people have the same issue, but Synology seem unable to solve it.

Considering the high price of the NAS (almost 400 EUR!), my strong opinion is that the device simply is not worth its money. It would have been better to buy a HP ProLiant MicroServer and get more power for less money. 🙁