Synology DS224+ NAS

[DragonRocketry]

Anyone running a NAS unit? I have an old WD cloud storage drive that is slowly dying. I am looking at the Synology DS224+ to replace the old cloud storage drive. From all the reviews I read the Synology unit seem to be a good unit at a budget (if you consider $600+ a budget) Anyone use their products?

 

[CalebJ]

I've got one (DS220+ as I recall, I'll check later). It's run flawlessly for a while now - maybe 18 months to 2 years. If it has any effect on you, I think the newer models went to a different chipset that won't affect most use cases, but significantly hamstrings them for decoding video for things like Plex.

Edit - correction. I'm running a DS920+.

 

[DragonRocketry]

This will only be used for data storage/sharing. Will not be used for video streaming.

 

[CalebJ]

Then it ought to work great for you. I've been very happy with mine.

 

[John Kemker]

Buddy of mine uses a Synology. He likes it a lot.

I tend to DIY most of my storage servers. I'm a geek.

 

[bjphoenix]

I had a low end Synology and it was easy to set up and use. My drive developed an error in the middle of one file, I couldn't copy that file, delete it, write over it, etc. I had to just leave it and rename the corresponding file in the source drive. The list of Linux commands (I hate Linux*) to try to fix the problem was more than I want to tackle.

If you are just using one for data storage you can sometimes get by with a low priced model depending on how many drives you want to run and how fast you want it to be. To get something that is pretty fast you have to spend some significant money.

I've read about a lot of security problems with Synology so I would be careful if you want to run it all the time. I don't doubt that you could adequately lock down one but this seems to be beyond the ability of the average user.

*I served my time as administrator of a Unix system so I don't want to put up with any more of it. About 10 years ago we had some unused computers at work so I experimented with installing Linux on one. I could install Linux and get it to run but non matter what I did, and I tried with various versions of Linux, I couldn't get it to mount a second drive for data storage.

 

[Tractionengines]

I have a DS218+ thats running 24/7/365, with 2 phones, 4 tablets, and 4 computers backing up to it, live. Works good. Seagate IronWolf NAS drives, in Synology RAID.

I don't like how often they change up or modify the system or program's to the point I have to go thru and verify settings... but I just turned off auto update. This way I know when updates are performed, and I have the time to check they go in without issue.

 

[DragonRocketry]

Well, everything should be here next Wednesday. I went with the DS224+ and two Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS drives.

 

[jadebox]

I bought our first Synology NAS more than 10 years ago and it is still up and running as a backup backup device even though I think it is terribly redundant. Over the years I have never had any real issues with it. I did have to replace drives but it warned me when one was failing and I was able to replace it without losing data.

We now have a DS920+ with 36.7TB of storage. I upgraded from the less capable Synology NAS a few years ago because it wasn't very good as a video server.

I have the Plex Media server running on the DS920+ and it is working extremely well. But, I find that we don't use it very much. Most of the things we watch are through the online streaming sources.

And four 14TB drives was a bit of an overkill. Several years later and we have only filled about 12% of the storage space.

I highly recommend Synology if you want a NAS. The main reason is the software. The interface is very well designed. It is user-friendly but powerful. It is very easy to install and configure applications like the Plex Media server.

 

[manixFan]

Well, everything should be here next Wednesday. I went with the DS224+ and two Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS drives.

I just bought and setup exactly the same system (last week). I found it to be a fairly complex setup, but this video was extremely helpful:



He goes pretty fast in a few places, so I had to stop a rewind a few times. Even then I still ended up redoing the setup a couple of times until I had things setup exactly the way I wanted. I use both Mac as my main computer so the ability to use it as a TimeMachine backup destination was crucial for me. That same youtube author has a great video on how to set one up for that if needed.

It's well worth mapping out what you want before you start setting it up. If you just want simple, you can configure it as one big server. For me, it made sense to create two separate volumes, one for TimeMachine backups, and one for regular storage. I have several folders setup with storage limits to keep things under control. I have 3 Windows computers and 3 Macs in my household, so it made sense to have the machine backups on a different volume than regular folders.

So far I'm really pleased with the system. I have the fans set to quiet mode since it's right under my desk in my home office. I also like that I can back it up to an external drive very easily. (Even though it is a RAID 1, I still believe in having a backup on a completely separate device. Asked me how I learned that lesson.) You can program the Copy button on the front of the enclosure to either copy from or to external storage.

I bought mine from B&H Photo Video using their Payboo card, which saved me from paying 8.25% sales tax (Texas). Better than Amazon and was shipped FEDEX at no extra charge.

Congrats on the purchase,


Tony

 

[Tractionengines]

One thing I just thought of with my power going out this morning.

Connect it to a battery backup. It doesn't like having the power pulled and not shutting down. (True for any RAID syncing device.)

Though having a connection to the UPS, that will work to cause it to shut down is limited. Being able to ride thru a couple hour outage is best.

 

[ghostfather]

I have a DS723+ running mirrored disks for basic backups, some website experiments, and storage for my front door security camera. It has a couple of Western Digital 12 TB Red+ NAS drives.

I like the extra processing power of the 700 series, and the faster 2.5 Gb ethernet port. The Synology software and interface is great, after years of self-built NAS boxes running FreeBSD.