Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Very Happy with the DS216+II. Its a Two bay model for my use case plenty has I only needed RAID1 Mirror. I am using it to -Back up my Mac via both Time machine -Back up my Mac via Synology Cloud Station Back up. -DS Photo Back up across 4 iPhones -Synology Surveillance Station to record from an IP Camera Synology is the well regarded and the most well rounded just works from NAS software perspective and you can use them for many different purposes. When choosing a model: Consider your use cases for the NAS. -Data Set Sizes, -Budget range for NAS and Drives Another popular choice is Steaming… Whether your going to do most of your transcoding on your computer/s or on the NAS. Many models of NAS Synology and otherwise have hardware capable of transcoding, but realistically most NAS are much less CPU/GPU/RAM powerful then most peoples PC/MACS etc. bought in the last 1-4 years or longer and so these often do that part of the job better. NAS excel at many tasks, but media wise they do better at serving up transcoded data than transcoding the data. And in fact many devices can handle that task anyway. For example Newer Samsung TVs and Apple TV4, and other streaming boxes have "real" Plex Clients that can transcode NAS served files instead of just playing files that are already transcoded. NAS tend to be used primarily with RAID for redundancy for important data. At the moment, the sweet spot on drive size/price/known reliability is 4TB NAS drives around $130-$160. They make all the way up to 10TB drives. To be more percise I think I would avoid 3TB drives which reports have shown to be less reliable over all. 6, 8s and 10s are semi new and range more like $250-$450. Do buy NAS drives they do not cost much more then desktop ones but their meant to be spinning 24/7 and also excel and power savings as well. This link will also let you check for compatibility and firmware version for every vendor or drive and other things you might want to add to a system. https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility A two bay system is likely to be set up as a mirror/RAID 1/SRF. I prefer Raid 1 for a two bay over SRF. The + Model Synology tend be better configured and support new more reliable BTRFS file system. The more you spend the more RAM, CPU horse power (Intel dual and quad core are better at transcoding) and of course more drive bays. As the systems are Linux based the configurations do not need to have as much horsepower for most functions. Some systems come with as little as 256MB/512MB of RAM. I would not recommend less than a 1GB RAM and Intel CPU for you use cases. In two bays DS216+II is a sweet spot to start for most people. Most choose synology for the more refined environment that mostly just works where other systems may require more effort. In particular for IOS and MAC use as well. I read a lot of reviews both customer and professional before buying of so many brands and models. Note the 416play 4 Bay model supports BTRFS despite not being a + model. It is similar two 216+II hut comes with more USB3 ports and a second Ethernet port. it is around $100 more, and a better value than the 916 model for many people Synology or not I would recommend buying a diskless system and filling it was NAS drives from WD, Seagate, or Hitachi (now owned by WD anyway). I filled my 216+II with Segate NAS not the wolf ones and they work great. All drive companies have failure rates so your going to hear bad about all brands at various points. Buy from some where reputable for returns. This raid calculator below can help you decide your needs, especially if you’re going beyond two bays. https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator Media Players that can play the files your serving are vast in number not just Plex. Lastly, about bays. While you can never go wrong spending more for 4 or more Bays.. Most do not on have unlimited funds. I would choose based on your data size needs now, with some eye on predicted growth, but would not buy bigger just in case. If your current to future data set needs are significantly under 10TB than a 2 Bay Model is a good choice. Drive capacities will keep increasing as well. Naturally raid5 u only loose 1/3 space versus 1/2 for raid 1 so some combinations of drives needs and a 4 or more bay system could be a wash price wise than one with less. Good Luck