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title: Migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 with...
description: A personal account of migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 using Robocopy over SMB, covering Alternate Data Stream copy failures, why /Z (restartable...
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og:description: A personal account of migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 using Robocopy over SMB, covering Alternate Data Stream copy failures, why /Z (restartable...
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# Migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 with Robocopy, SMB Multichannel, and Surprising Performance Traps

**[Scott Hanselman](https://daily.dev/sources/hanselman)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A personal account of migrating a Synology NAS to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8 using Robocopy over SMB, covering Alternate Data Stream copy failures, why /Z (restartable mode) tanked throughput, how /MT threading and /J unbuffered I/O interacted unpredictably with NAS-to-NAS transfers, and how SMB Multichannel let an old Synology's four 1GbE ports outperform expectations. The final recommended Robocopy command uses /E /MT:4 /R:2 /W:2 /COPY:DATX /DCOPY:DATX /XJ /NP /NFL /NDL, achieving about 187 MB/sec, versus roughly 67 MB/sec with rsync via UniFi Drive.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <http://feeds.hanselman.com/~/968151545/0/scotthanselman~Migrating-a-Synology-NAS-to-a-UniFi-UNAS-Pro-with-Robocopy-SMB-Multichannel-and-Surprising-Performance-Traps>

## Questions this post answers

### Why does robocopy fail with error 665 'file system limitation' when copying files to a UniFi UNAS Pro 8?

The failure usually happens because the source file has an NTFS Alternate Data Stream (ADS), such as embedded album art stored as a separate stream like 01APIC_03.jpg, that the destination filesystem rejects. Running robocopy with /COPY:DATX and /DCOPY:DATX skips alternate data streams while still copying file data, attributes, and timestamps, resolving the error.

_daily.dev surfaces practical fixes like this for developers debugging odd filesystem errors during NAS migrations._

### Does the robocopy /Z restartable mode slow down large file transfers?

Yes, /Z can significantly reduce copy performance because it adds extra logging overhead needed to make transfers resumable after interruption. In one Synology-to-UNAS Pro 8 migration over a stable 10 gigabit LAN, removing /Z alongside /COPY:DATX raised throughput to about 187 MB/sec for a 48 GB run with zero failures, so /Z is best reserved for unreliable connections rather than used by default on stable networks.

_engineers tuning file transfer scripts can compare switch-by-switch performance notes like this on daily.dev._

### Why would robocopy be slower when copying large files between two SMB network shares with the /J unbuffered I/O flag enabled?

Unbuffered I/O via /J can dramatically slow NAS-to-NAS transfers when a Windows machine is simultaneously reading from one SMB server and writing to another, even though /J is generally recommended for large files on local disk-to-disk copies. Removing /J restored throughput to roughly 250 MB/sec in one Synology-to-UNAS Pro 8 test, showing buffered I/O worked better for that specific network path.

_daily.dev helps developers dig into these buffering and I/O trade-offs before committing to a large-scale migration._

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---

Tags: [#windows](https://daily.dev/tags/windows), [#networking](https://daily.dev/tags/networking)

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