Synology 5-bay DiskStation DS1522+ (Diskless),Black

The Synology DS224+ is a powerful and reliable 2-bay NAS. Easy to set up, energy-efficient, and packed with great features like fast data transfer and robust security. Highly recommend for seamless storage and backup!

I have 4 Synology DS Series NAS Servers for both home and work purposes. I use them for standard file servers, VPN servers, Plex Media Servers, and backup servers. The suite of tools for Synology DSM is impressive and covers all I need without having to purchase 3rd party software. Knowing all my data is safe with the raid array allowing for disc failures is worth the price alone. I have had to rebuild/restore several computers and have not lost a single byte of data. Speed of transfer has been great, even while the DS is under a heavy load. Streaming 4k video has not been a problem to multiple displays simultaneously. I keep these in dedicated spaces so noise is not a consideration for me. I will say that these are very quiet even under load. The build quality is very good and I love the way the discs can be hot swapped without issue. I did have a disc failure on one of my servers. I provided another disc of the same capacity, clicked replace and the system rebuilt the RAID with the new disc. Very easy and did not require any downtime. For me, the price, ease of use, DSM operating system and suite of tools provided puts Synology above all other NAS servers I have used.

Came to the 923+ after talking with a few coworkers and poking around at an older 411 for a while. No it’s not the most powerful NAS, but it’s more than powerful enough to store files, receive and sync backups, serve up media to my TVs, and run a few small dockers. I run some more resource intensive dockers on another pc I have setup for virtual machines, docker and home surveillance and automation. Biggest win for me is going from an older Dell rack mount server that sucks down 200+ watts, to this unit that comparatively sips power at 20-50 watts depending on load. I calculated that I’ll pay for this unit in less than 2 years from the power savings alone!The unit is easy to manage, runs quiet and is every bit as quick if not quicker than my old server hardware. By far my favorite thing is that the software is incredibly stable. I rarely have downtime for this NAS with it being on a UPS. I really only have “downtime” when I reboot for updates or need to move the unit or make a power change. All this without having to log in some what regularly to make sure nothing was hung or needed to be updated and babysat.I run two 512gb Samsung NVMe drives as mirrored cache disks and they made a very noticeable difference in the read/write performance as file metadata are stored there and is retrieved much faster than a spinning disk and makes browsing data on the hard disks feel much faster than if accessing directly from the spinning disks. I believe that writes are improved by writing first to the cache drive, but do not have the ability to max out my 2gb link aggregate listed below to get to the max write speeds of the disks that are limited to 100MB/s of the ethernet link.Lastly I do run the network ports in link aggregation to my UniFi switch without issue. I do wish the built-in Ethernet ports were 2.5gb, but having the option for 10gb in the future is nice.Overall incredibly happy with this unit. Will stick with Synology NAS units in the future for all of the reasons I listed above, and recommend them to anyone looking for a NAS.

I needed to replace my aging WD NAS, which was struggling to keep up with my needs. After quite a bit of research and product comparisons, I decided to go with the market leader, and bought a NAS that seemed likely to be able to support my needs for several years, and offered some options for expanding the ways I use a NAS.For context, I mainly use my NAS as "network-attached storage": I back up files, and I share files for use on our multiple home computers. I don't use it for remote access (security concern: I'd rather use cloud storage services for that), and I don't use it as a repository for a media server, or anything else like that.I decided to use WD "Red" drives for this unit: based on specs and user and professional reviews, they seemed most likely to run reliably for as long as I needed. My previous experience with WD black, blue, and red drives has been consistently positive, whereas other vendors have let me down.Installation and setup was very easy: I had the unit up and running within a few minutes. Copying files over from my old NAS took some time, but the performance of this Synology unit exceeded my expectations. I was also pleased with how much faster my backup jobs were. I was especially pleased when apps that use network files began running much faster: so clearly both read and write performance were much improved in comparion with the old system.I also set up a USB backup. It took a little bit of reading in the Synology KB to learn how to do it right, but after that it was a breeze. I plugged in a USB hard drive in the back port (the front port can be configured for use with the USB Copy button), opened up the Hyper Backup app, and ran the initial backup to copy the entire NAS contents to the USB drive. Then I scheduled it to run incremental jobs every day, so now my paranoid backup demon is happy. (I save backup drives in a secure location to provide "disaster recovery"; overkill perhaps, but it buys peace of mind.)One criticism: the unit came with only 2GB memory, which seems cheesy. And what makes is super-cheesy is the way they price their branded "compatible memory" at ridiculous multiples of the market price. I was able to buy a 4GB Samsung memory card for under $15, and it worked just fine. You can do a web search and see that others have upgraded using larger memory cards.The Synology KB website is very good: it's well written and comprehensive. There's also an active user community, so there is a ton of information easily available. Overall I'm very happy with my Synology purchase, and would buy their NAS products again without hesitation.