If you’re using a hot swap external hard drive like the one I loan from my friend — you may find yourself stuck and wonder why you can’t seem to access the drive directly from Synology NAS.

Apparently, Synology has the same issue for a very long time. I found a user thread on Synology forum stretch back to 2013.

I think Synology view this as a non issue because you can make adjustment of the user permission setting. Meaning you need to do a bit more work on the setting right out of the box. For a tech savvy person this is not an issue, but I think normal user (like me) would find it troublesome and feeling the NAS is broken because it “seem” you can’t connect external HDD to the NAS.

Synology DSM (DiskStation Manager) made possible with a Linux OS. The way you use Synology NAS — you need to think like a Linux geeks and you will find certain things make sense (or not).

Example; why is there a Home and Homes in the Files Station? (Think like Linux geeks — because in Linux that’s how it work 🤣🤣🤣) It’s basically a Symlink.

This is the reason why I like iOS and MacOS. I really don’t have time for the little nitty gritty that was working under the hood. I just want to use the bloody DS218 and back up my shit.

It would be very helpful if Synology makes a small but important note about the user permission on the box so that people who (most people) use external hot swap drive would be aware and don’t need to spend time on the forum — thinking the NAS is broken.

I still love this little NAS. Kinda incredible and yesterday I spent at least 5 hours playing with it.