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Thanks so much for the tip. I didn't even consider that my single eSATA port could be the culprit. It was! I disabled the eSATA port and all my drives are properly numbered 1-8. Thanks so much. This was done on a Dell Optiplex 780 which has four onboard SATA ports and one eSATA port on the back.

Hey everybody, I just treated myself to a compatible 4-port SATA card and was amazed at how effortless it was to add four more drives. When I opened Storage Manager I noticed though that my first four drives are listed as 1-4 (motherboard attached) and my next four are listed 8-11 (SATA card). They're reporting in the correct order as far as SATA port numbering goes, but the disk numbering starting at 8 is messing with my OCD. Is there any way to have the SATA card drives start numbering at 5 instead of 8? What happens if I get another SATA card? Very confused. Thanks for any ideas!

So, for this setup, if you don't mind me asking: When you set up ESXi what did you do for a primary data store? I've got ESXi 6 installed on a USB flash drive currently and I don't see how you can proceed with configuring a VM for XPEnology without a data store. I'm probably overlooking something simple, but ideally, I'd like ESXi to use the XPEnology volume for VM storage if possible. Is that even possible?

So, for this setup, if you don't mind me asking: When you set up ESXi what did you do for a primary data store? I've got ESXi 6 installed on a USB flash drive currently and I don't see how you can proceed with configuring a VM for XPEnology without a data store. I'm probably overlooking something simple, but ideally, I'd like ESXi to use the XPEnology volume for VM storage if possible. Is that even possible?

Oh wow, I like this option a lot. Thanks so much for all the detail!

Thank you all for your replies. Would it be safe to assume that the main difference and/or benefit to going the ESXi route is that you are able to multi-purpose your computer instead of single-purposing it by solely running XPE?

Hi everybody, I've got a hopefully quick question that I've been looking for an answer to. I've been using XPEnology from a USB drive on countless desktops for a few years now and I absolutely love it. I've only recently begun looking into XPEnology running on ESXi and I'm curious...how are the hard drives managed for RAID type and failures? Specifically, how does it compare to running XPEnology from a USB and having the OS manage the hard drives? Do you use hardware RAID instead and manage drive failure, replacement, etc at a lower level instead of through the OS? I'm really not sure how different the experience is and specifically curious about how the drives are seen by XPEnology and handled.

Is there a list in this forum of verified compatible hardware (i.e. USB 3 card, SATA card, WiFi card, USB WiFi adapters, etc)? I've seen several topics started regarding specific hardware but is there a topic created already that is a maintained, verified list of supported hardware? If there's not, then I'd like to ask if anyone out that has successfully added a PCI/PCI Express SATA adapter. I've got an old Dell tower that has four SATA III connections and I'd like to add at least four more. Thank you!

More examples and (soon) a real-world test of this type of drive transfer are being discussed at: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5508&p=43997#p43997

Great, then we're on the same page with the same understanding but no proven example to point to. Thank you for your willingness to demonstrate the scenario. I know I won't be the only one here to benefit from gaining a definite answer. Theoretical answers are not so reassuring when you're talking about mass amounts of data and performing a procedure that may or may not destroy that data. Thank you, I'm eager to hear what you find.

Ok, I understand the restrictions of quantity of drives in migration, but for clarification are you saying if you're using a DS3615xs XPEnology that only has 4 drives it IS or IS NOT possible to migrate them to a DS415 4-bay (for example)?

Thank you, XPEH. That's very helpful.

This is generally when the drive loses power and has to spin up again and reconnect. It can be due to a bad SATA/Power connection physically or it could be the board on the hard drive failing. I've seen other users who have had this issue and re-seating the cables fixed most users' reconnect issues...the rest had to replace their drives.

Hi Trantor, thanks so much for the reply. That's actually the same link I posted which caused me to question the 12-bay vs 4-bay issue. If I do attempt to move the disks from Xpenology to a Synology and the migrate function throws a model error where would I go in Xpenology to change the model number to something like the DS415?

I've found many topics covering migration from real to fake and it looks like that's mostly always successful by using the "Migrate" option when Xpenology first boots. I also found a Synology article that makes me wonder if the migrate option will not be possible for real Synology hardware due to Xpenology being configured as a DS3612xs (12-bay) and it would be migrating to a 4-bay. Does anyone know if the Xpenology model information is stored in the hard drives at all? My fear is that the real Synology box would detect it as a 12-bay model and will prevent migration from showing as an available option. Link: https://originwww.synology.com/en-us/kn ... orials/484

@Therion3 Did you ever test this? I'm in a similar situation and can't find any posts on if someone has successfully migrated by physically moving hard drives from an Xpenology box to a real Synology.

I know I've seen a post somewhere either here or on another Xpenology forum but I could not find it... Is there a way to take the hard drives from an Xpenology setup and put them into a real Synology without any data loss? I know you can export/import Syno DSM settings...but can you physically move the drives into a real Syno box without losing data? If this is possible and there's a walkthrough or related topic would you please provide a link? Thank you!

I can't find any information on the xpenology.me site regarding surveillance station. I'm interested in this patch but this thread is all I can find with regard to a patch and that website. Looks like the packages page is password protected too even after creating an account on the site. Does anyone have more info on how to obtain and use this patch?

@XPEH, thank you. I didn't even catch that I downloaded the wrong files. Long day. Thanks.

I am eager to try this upgrade for my off-site box. Would someone please tell me if I have the upgrade process correct? -Download the latest "NB_x64_5024_DSM_50-4493_Xpenology_nl.iso" and block copy it over to a usb drive. -Boot up the new drive and choose update option? -Open web browser (or use Synology Assistant?) and upload the new 4493 firmware? -Use clean install instead of upgrade Am I close? My Xpenology box is one that went from Trantor's to Gnoboot's and now I'm excited to try Nanoboot.

@Jayesh, what steps did you take to "delete the power options for shutdown\powerup"? I'm having the same issues on one of my towers and don't have a write-protect option in my BIOS. Really hoping to find a way to stop DSM from attempting to write to the BIOS.

Does Nanoboot alleviate the write-to-bios corruption issue on reboot as seen in all other variations of this? For those unfamiliar with the issue, I have an old Dell tower for off-site replication and every time I restart the NAS it corrupts the BIOS and sets everything back to defaults. Unfortunately, in my case, when this happens the tower doesn't boot to the correct drive since boot order is reset. There's no BIOS lock feature on this model either. I'm curious if Nanoboot successfully stops whatever Synology process is attempting to write to the BIOS at reboot. **Edit** I'm going to try the suggestions found at the post linked below, but still curious if Nanoboot has taken any measures to stop from writing to the BIOS. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3073

I finally got to try out gnoBoot 4458 and it upgraded flawlessly from 4418. When the update was finished, however, I was prompted that there was a new update available. This "Update 1" from Synology will download but will not install. I've tried three times and the message states, "Update failed. The file is probably corrupt." Is there a step I need to complete before I am able to run this update?

What a great application. Have you tested this with DSM 5.0-4418 Beta? I'm currently running that build and would love to run your application to simplify the serial/MAC customizing process.

Thank you all for your replies. That does help clear it up for me. Looks like I'll be experimenting with some VM builds!