Storage Manager

Storage Manager is an essential application with which you will have to get familiar since it is used to configure installed disks and check on their health. Volumes are, briefly, a NAS' storage units, so you have to create a volume before anything else. This can easily be done via Synology's Storage Manager, and you may also create more than one volume through the Volume Setup wizard. Synology offers two options here, one for an SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) volume and a custom option that supports different RAID levels.


You have to pick the disks you want to use for your new volume before picking the RAID level. Be aware of the fact that all data on them will be erased. If you don't want to create a RAID array, you can also configure your disks in JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) or simply install a single HDD. Synology thankfully gives you the valuable option to skip checking the disks during RAID initialization, which dramatically reduces the time it takes to set disks up in RAID. However, make sure your disks have no bad sectors or your RAID will fail, which would endanger the data on them.


If you install a DX513 unit, its disks will appear in Synology's Storage Manager, and you'll be able to configure them along with the disks that are already installed.


Storage Manager will allow you to restore and the save the data on a degraded volume so long as you initially picked a RAID level that allows for a restore.

External Devices

The External Devices menu shows you all connected storage and printing devices and allows you to configure various settings related to them.

Package Center

Use Package Center to easily install and update many applications that will dramatically boost your NAS' usability. You only have to browse through Synology's available applications to pick those you want to install. You can also manually upload and install an application. Synology offers a rich variety of applications it grouped into the following categories: Backup, Multimedia, Business, Security, and Utilities.


Here is a quick look at the Package Center's settings. These allow you to change the trust level if you want to install applications from any publisher, and you can tick the beta box to see the beta versions as well.

Hardware & Power Options

Power recovery, Wake on LAN, beep control, fan speed, and memory compression options—all are available in this menu. You can also set the system to start up or shut down automatically at a specified time, enable hard-drive hibernation, or connect a backup power device. You can even pick an advanced HDD-hibernation mode Synology says to minimize the DS1515+'s power consumption.