Mastering NAS Storage: Unveiling Hidden Challenges and Solutions

Today, I'm diving into a little adventure I recently had with our trusty 6-drive Synology NAS, boasting a whopping 73TB of storage space. Now, who wouldn't be excited about that, right? But there are some challenges.

I couldn't help but notice that our storage space was getting full. Curious, I delved deeper into the matter. One of the primary functions of our NAS is serving as storage for our Plex DVR. However, despite our occasional recordings, the storage was filling up faster than I expected.

So, I decided to do some spring cleaning, starting with deleting some recordings. But here's the kicker - the space wasn't budging. I decided to peek into the file system, and there it was: a bunch of files in the #recycle folder within our shares.

Turns out, there wasn't a default schedule for emptying the recycle bin on our Synology NAS. This meant all those recordings, along with any other files, were being kept indefinitely.

There were a few things that I could do to fix this. First up, I reconfigured the share designated for Plex DVR recordings to bid not to have a recycle bin. Now, when I hit delete on a DVR recording, they get deleted immediately! Who needs to dwell on restoring recordings when you can easily capture the content again, right?

Next on the agenda? Implementing scheduled tasks for the remaining shares that still have recycle bins. This nifty tweak ensures that space is liberated after a set number of days post-deletion on the NAS.

Wouldn't it be grand if Synology introduced a wizard to set default schedules for cleaning recycle bins? Alternatively, a notification system could alert users when a recycle bin hits a certain size, prompting action if no scheduled cleanup task is in place.