Photography Accessories

How I Left Drobo for the Synology DS1522+

Chris Gampat
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04/11/2023
4 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Synology DS1522+ review product images 21-50s3200

Photographers for years have used and relied on Drobo to make backups easy for them. Their BeyondRaid system made it reliable until it created a massive problem. Drobo hadn’t been doing too well over the past few years. And last year, they filed for bankruptcy. They even went as far as sending out a message to customers using Apple devices. It went something along the lines of not guaranteeing support in future operating systems. This lead me to stick way too long with an older Apple OS until I finally switched. But trust me, the switch to the Synology DS1522+ was a painful and annoying process. Once it was all set up though, it was pretty smooth sailing.

The Problem

So if you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking about doing the exact same thing. You’ve read a lot of pieces about photographers who use Synology and never went back. But unfortunately, there’s a lot of tech heads who tout it and not enough photographers that don’t care about all the major tech. Instead, we just want our images protected and backed up. And the idea here is that something like the Synology DS1522+ is probably the best bet.

Here’s a list of things you need to know:

  • The Synology DS1522+ doesn’t work like a Drobo. Where Drobo lets you input drives and set them up while mixing and matching, Synology requires you to micro-manage things unless you properly set up the system the first time around so you can forget about it later.
  • With Synology, it’s recommended that you fully saturate the disk station with drives before you go about adding more in later on.
  • This is a NAS. A NAS is basically a hard drive system connected to a home network. So to connect it to your computer, you’ll need to do that through your router. It’s best to have the router, your computer, and the disk station in the same room. In my case, it’s all in my office. My router is hooked up to my iMac for 1GB of up and down speeds. The router is also hooked up to my Synology DS1522+. It isn’t hard connected to my computer the way that my Drobo was.
  • The Synology DS1522+ has USB 3.0 and eSATA connections. It won’t do USB-C to the iMac. To recap, it’s all going to go through your router.
  • You can secure the device with passwords.
  • You’ll interface with your Synology device through your web browser, and eventually, when it’s fully set up, you’ll be able to access it accordingly through Finder.
  • No, this isn’t a sponsored post by Synology. I indeed tried to work with them when they messaged us asking about switching over from Drobo. But we couldn’t agree on a good idea. Instead, I worked with the folks at Adorama who provided us with a discount on this and drives. The Phoblographer has a long-standing relationship with Adorama and we’ve got a big amount of trust in them. Their ethics are also better than B&H Photo’s in our eyes.

Moving From Drobo to the Synology DS1522+

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We’ve previously reviewed Synology devices, but from a very techy standpoint. Most of us photographers aren’t amazingly techy. And beyond cameras, lenses, and lights, I really just want stuff to work without much fuss or maintenance.

This was a headache for sure. First off, I had to buy the Synology DS1522+ and all the drives. After this, I proceeded to huddle into the corner of my office and cry at all the money I just spent but that needed to be done. Once I stopped my tantrum, I hooked the disk station up to the same iMac that my Drobo is hooked up to. Then I went online, typed in my model number, etc. It told me that the station wasn’t connected to my internet, so I manually connected it via an ethernet cable. There is a way to do 10GB ethernet with this, but I didn’t.

Then I inserted the drives into the Synology deck and set it to Raid 5. This was based off recommendations from friends and internet research. It allows you to add more drives later on. But in some cases, the understanding I gathered is that the station might want to format everything you have. That’s why I fully saturated it in the first place with the five drives that it can store. Specifically, I set all the drives into one volume; but that works for my needs.

Once that was done, it needed to format and initialize the drives. This process alone took a few days because of a few things going on.

Next, I started the process of moving the contents of my Drobo over to the Synology DS1522+. This took another few days because I’ve got around 14 TB of data on there. Once that was done, I ensured that all the data could be easily accessed without the Drobo. So I safely powered off the Drobo, disconnected it, and tried to access everything from the Synology DS1522+. It worked! There are a few things that I need to get used to like boot times. But overall, it’s a very painless experience.

Once I made sure that everything worked, I formatted all the drives in my Drobo, disconnected it, and continued on with my photography operations.

Make no mistake, this is. grueling process. But in the end, it’s all worth it. When this was done, I was finally able to update my iMac to Ventura. And everything works pretty seamlessly as it did before.

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apple drobo hard drive hard drives imac moving over from drobo NAS network raid 5 Synology Synology DS1522+
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.