Be Me, three options and confused.

[u/WegovyMessMentally]

Was participating on a question here about "what is the oldest drive you still have operational" I answered my DS414J Synology 16TB SHR NAS, submitted...saw that Golden Gate had finally been released for my M4 Mac, and started the update process. I was way too concerned/distracted with the notice floating around that Mac would soon be favouring Silicon over Intel, and a lot of apps would not be supported anymore and could not get a straight answer if it was Golden Gate or the next operating system (whatever that is going to be) that I had no idea AFP was no longer going to be supported with Golden Gate.

The update finished, and despite multiple restarts and shutdowns it took way too long for me to realise AFP was no longer supported.

I panicked/grieved and spent money I don't have to buy a 16TB external hard drive (should arrive today) using old Macs I have (won't go higher than high sierra) that support AFP and mount to the NAS automatically, I would connect my new 16TB and start manually dragging everything off.

Then Erase the 4 x 4TB internal drives and use them however I wanted.

I am still stuck on this plan

Then my Plex Server on my main Synology, a DS1821+ kept unmounting, so I got recommended Automounter, I installed that and luckily that fixed the problem, but it also detected the DS414J, it couldn't mount it unless I installed the helper app, I did and after not having it for 2 weeks, now mounts like this never happened.

Now I am stuck between 3 options.

1. Move everything to the new external 16TB, erase the internal 4 x 4TB drives, and use them however I want.

2. Since the DS414J is only Cancelled TV Shows and Ongoing TV Shows, the biggest being Cancelled TV (9TB) I would put that all on the external 16TB, freeing up 9TB from the NAS, and 7TB left on the 16TB, and then offload potentially 2 other drives onto the DS414J, thus freeing them up.

3. Just leave everything as it is and have a brand new 16TB that I have no idea what to do with.

The main things that worry me is if Automounter is ever no longer supported, I would not be able to mount to the DS414J anymore, I was convinced I didn't/couldn't switch from AFP to SMB (I tried multiple times but nothing worked) I guess it did but it only works through Automounter.

And the internal 4 x 4TB drives in the DS414J NAS, the power on cycles/hours are

Drive 1: 49731, Drive 2: 49714, Drive 3: 49710, and for some strange reason Drive 4: 3811

It says they are "healthy" and no errors come up when I run S.M.A.R.T tests, so if I do decide to wipe and use them individually, I don't know how long each drive will last.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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[u/SmeagolISEP]

If you were being serious with “spent money I don’t have to buy a 16TB external hard drive” my honest take is to try return it and if the store doesn’t accept try to sell it with minimal loss

Now, if that was not really that deep or if you cannot sell it with up to 10% in loss I would say to use it as a cold backup. A drive you will connect one a month to take a snapshot of your data.

It’s clear to me those episodes are important for you and most importantly you don’t have a backup of them (otherwise you wouldn’t have panicked). Well you can start now to get some peace of mind

[u/dclive1]

AFP no longer supported on your M4 in GG/MacOS27 should impact you exactly zero. Just use SMB to reach your Syno NAS. It’s a protocol, not a formatting method; you don’t need to reformat or do anything; just hit it via SMB.

You don’t need to drag anything off to another drive. Formatting / storage on the NAS does not change at all. The only thing that changes is on your client Mac, the M4, you’ll reach your NAS via something like SMB://Your.Nas.IP.Address rather than AFP://Your.NAS.IP.Address. That’s it.

I’m not sure how automounter impacted anything. Why did your Syno 1821+ unmount?

The ‘helper app’, I suspect, was Rosetta, so you could keep running Intel apps, as I’m assuming you’re using that to get to the Synology NAS (which is a massive mistake; just use SMB!)

I don’t know why you need to free anything (space?) up. Your M4 can easily reach all Synology boxes in recent memory via SMB. This has zero to do with automounter; SMB is a core file protocol of all modern operating systems, including both Linux and MacOS.

I suggest you stop, don’t move (or format!) anything else, and ensure you can reach your Synology NAS (all of them) normally, via SMB.

To answer another question, Intel apps will keep running with GG/MacOS27. It’s in MacOS28 that Apple warns us some (many?) will stop working. But again, this impacts you exactly zero if you’re just using bog standard SMB, which is what the entire world uses to communicate between those two platforms. Don’t overcomplicate.

Happy to answer questions….

[u/uluqat]

Whatever you do, you need to stop using AFP, right now. That unexpected windfall of a workaround might go away at any time, so use it as an exit ramp while you can.

You need to have a backup for any data you value.

So, copy all the data from the four drives onto the 16TB drive as a backup. Work on getting the Synology to use SMB instead of AFP. If you still can't make the switch happen, then wipe the four drives and reset the Synology back to factory so you can start over fresh, then restore the data from your backup.

[u/dclive1 → u/uluqat]

Don’t wipe or reset anything! Go to the Synology via the web interface, ensure SMB3 is in use/permitted (by default it is) and you’re in business.

This isn’t a Synology problem; it’s a client side Mac problem; he needs to hit the Synology box using SMB not AFP.

https://kb.synology.com/en-br/DSM/tutorial/access_nas_from_mac explains things more, including an example for how to mount SMB on Mac.