After testing five new two-bay network-attached storage (NAS) devices and comparing them against our previous picks, we found that the is the best home NAS for most people. The fastest NAS we tested, it offers powerful hardware for the price, includes AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration for added security, has upgradable RAM, and comes with software that’s easy to use. Last updated: November 8, 2017 After testing five new NAS devices and comparing them against our previous picks, we think the is the best home NAS for most people.

It’s the fastest model we’ve tested, it supports data-encryption acceleration to keep your stuff safe, and it has powerful and flexible software with tons of features. If you primarily use your NAS to store and play video or music, you may prefer our runner-up pick, the. It’s nearly as fast, and it’s equipped with an HDMI port so you can connect it directly to a monitor or TV. If you need more storage space, the uses the same CPU, hardware encryption engine, and hardware transcoding engine as the DS218+, but adds two more drive bays. It has one fewer USB port, but it adds another Gigabit Ethernet port for link aggregation, which can increase performance if you have a compatible router and multiple people use your NAS at once. You have access to all the same mobile apps for streaming, backup, and everything else the DS218+ offers. Since this model has two more bays than our top pick, you can use different storage configurations that offer better data protection and performance.

Synology DiskStation DS218+ Best NAS for most home users. Easy to set up and manage, this two-bay NAS features hardware encryption, media. May 23, 2017. FirebirdSS-2.5.7-27050-x86; Downloads for previous ReadyNAS devices: RAIDiator 5.3 (version 5.3.12) for DuoV2 / NV+V2. MySQL Native Driver for PHP. Transcoding Support (Single Client)Search Links. PMS Installable on NASAudio.

This NAS is best suited for professionals or anyone who wants to expand their NAS system with more storage down the line. Thorin Klosowski wrote about consumer electronics for over six years at Lifehacker and has extensive experience with Linux and DIY NAS devices. He has set up more backup systems, from NAS to cloud storage, for family members and friends than he cares to count.

Samara Lynn has worked with networked storage since the 1990s, spending almost 20 years in IT. She has tested most of the major home and small-business NAS devices over the past seven years for a variety of tech magazines and websites, including PCMag, CRN, and CRN Tech. Who this is for. A network-attached storage device, or NAS, is a small always-on computer generally used for backing up computers and serving files to devices on your local network. It includes at least one but usually two (or more) hard-drive bays, a (usually) Linux-based operating system optimized for network storage, and enough CPU power and RAM to do everything it needs to do while using far less power than a repurposed old computer. Unlike a USB drive or an external hard drive, a NAS with two or more hard drives can provide data redundancy, copying the contents of one drive over to the other automatically.

A NAS is great if you have a large media library, because you can store your files in one place and stream them locally to computers, phones, tablets, speakers, or media centers throughout your house (or even outside it). The same goes for photographers storing photos, music producers archiving music files, designers stockpiling massive Photoshop files, and anyone else who needs needs to access large amounts of data from multiple computers. Most people don’t need to store thousands of raw photo files, terabytes of raw video, gigabytes of lossless digital music, or backups of their Blu-ray collection, but a NAS is a useful tool for the people who do. You should consider a NAS if you have more than one computer at home, since you can back them all up to the NAS rather than connect an external backup drive to each computer. And if you want to protect your data and backups from theft and natural disasters, a good NAS is capable of uploading files directly to a, too. A NAS is also useful if you have too much data to store in Dropbox or Google Drive, or if you don’t trust your data to cloud storage providers.

When you use a NAS, your data remains in your home and does not go to the cloud unless you tell it to do so. Many NAS devices have even added photo-management tools and file-syncing services that attempt to replicate various cloud storage offerings. While those NAS tools aren’t as feature-rich as commercial services from Google, Apple, and others, they can at least provide an adequate alternative to pricey subscriptions. Pull Quote You should consider a NAS if you have more than one computer at home, since you can back them all up to the NAS rather than connect an external drive to each computer. Most NAS devices can also act as email, database, and virtual private network (VPN) servers.

You can use them for BitTorrent, to host,, and e-commerce software, or as DVRs for. A NAS is a computer, so it can do almost anything a Linux computer can do. While that flexibility is great, it can also make some NAS devices confusing to use. Each NAS has its own manufacturer-specific version of Linux, and some are more usable than others. If you want to share and store data on your network, you may not need a NAS. Many have a USB port for connecting an external drive, but because routers have slower processors than our NAS picks and because their software isn’t purpose-built for file sharing, this setup will be slow, and suitable only for the most basic file sharing and backups. It will also lack data redundancy because you’re backing up to only one drive, so you’re taking your chances in case of a drive failure.

Windows, macOS, and Linux also have built-in file-sharing features that make it easy to use your computer as a file server. But that approach takes up disk space on your computer and is more difficult to manage securely, and your computer has to be on all the time, which consumes more power than a NAS and might make the data inaccessible when your computer goes to sleep.

If you’re an IT professional looking for a business-level NAS, this guide is not for you. Nor does this guide cover more advanced uses of NAS such as iSCSI targeting, SANs (storage area networks), or RAID configurations such as RAID 5, 6, or 10 for multidrive NAS devices. Websites focused on enterprise network storage, such as and, can help you in those cases. This guide also won’t cover people who want a NAS that can support 1080p on-the-fly video transcoding via. Every NAS we recommend supports Plex, which works great if your box is connected directly to your display via HDMI or your videos don’t need transcoding to stream to your devices. Many NAS devices can also manage decent on-the-fly transcoding with their own apps, but Plex transcoding currently requires a lot of CPU power, and none of the models we tested were able to handle transcoding in Plex reliably.

NAS boxes that can manage 1080p on-the-fly transcoding through Plex are too expensive for most people—you’re better off running Plex Media Server on a computer or on an and using the NAS for media storage. You could make your own NAS with old computer hardware and free software such as or, but a dedicated NAS device uses far less power (usually about as much as a couple of LED light bulbs), has a better interface and more apps, and comes with a manufacturer warranty and technical support. The benefit of a DIY NAS is customization; you can choose where you spend money and upgrade things basically forever. You can even keep the price pretty low with something like a for around $200, though even with a Raspberry Pi 3, a NAS like that won’t be very quick.

If you’re curious about installing FreeNAS, walks you through the process, and includes a list of hardware recommendations. How we picked. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald Since this guide’s original publication in 2011, we’ve assembled a list of every two-bay NAS from a reputable vendor. Right now, that includes models from Asustor, Drobo, Netgear, Noontec, QNAP, Seagate, Synology, Thecus, WD, and Zyxel. We’ve read professional NAS reviews on,,, and, and we’ve also looked at customer reviews on Amazon and Newegg. Back in 2015, we surveyed 1,094 Wirecutter readers on what they wanted in a home NAS, and most of those requirements still hold true. When deciding which models to test, we paid attention to a number of key features that most home users needed: • Two drive bays: Hundreds of NAS devices are available, and you can find models with one, two, four, eight, or more drive bays.

For most home users, a two-drive NAS is just right, because it protects your data by mirroring the contents of one drive to the other (a configuration known as RAID 1, or a mirrored array). This setup gives you half the NAS’s actual amount of storage for files. For example, a NAS with two 8 TB drives in RAID 1 still has 8 TB of total space available (), not 16 TB. As a result, your data remains safe and accessible even if a drive fails. Single-drive NAS devices don’t provide this data protection, and NAS boxes with more bays introduce more complex RAID configurations, such as RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, that require more planning and. • Price: Home users don’t need to pay more than around $250 to $350 for a two-bay NAS (not including the price of the hard drives, unfortunately).

More than that, and you’re entering more complex and powerful business-class territory. If you opt for a cheaper model, you usually sacrifice read and write speeds or end up with a less-polished operating system. • CPU and RAM: We preferred a reasonably powerful dual-core Intel Celeron processor, but we didn’t rule out ARM-based configurations as long as their processing speeds were similar. Most NAS devices released within the past year have at least 2 GB of RAM, so we stuck with that as our minimum. • Hardware-level encryption acceleration: File encryption is good to use even if you access your NAS exclusively inside your home network, because it protects your data if someone breaks into your house and steals your NAS or your disks. (It can also protect sensitive data on a NAS that’s on a larger network, or one that attackers could target.) Some NAS boxes can also encrypt data before backing it up to a cloud service, providing an extra level of protection in case the cloud service is hacked.

A NAS that includes hardware encryption acceleration offers read and write speeds that are much faster than those of a model that relies solely on software encryption. • Easy-to-use software: Each NAS manufacturer has its own operating system. NAS software tends to take a kitchen-sink approach that often makes it confusing to use, but some operating systems, like those from QNAP and Synology, are better than others. • Wide support for backups: A NAS should support computer backups via File History or system-image tools on Windows, Time Machine on Mac, and rsync for Linux. It should also allow you to back up easily to a like Amazon Glacier or Backblaze.

And a NAS should offer a Dropbox-like file-syncing service so you can sync files across computers. • Media streaming capabilities: Most NAS boxes can stream videos and music to various devices in your home. You can do this using software from the manufacturer or third-party programs like Plex. Music streaming should work via DLNA and iTunes without a complicated setup process.

• Drive-failure notifications: A NAS should at the very least notify you with beeps and status lights if a drive fails. It’s better if the device can also send you an email or text message. • At least two USB ports: Between backups, dongles, and other accessories, it’s nice to have at least two USB ports on a NAS. You should have two copies of every backup. If you plan on doing that on your own instead of with a cloud service, you’ll want to have a USB port on your NAS so you can back everything up to an external drive. It’s also nice to have a USB port on the front of the NAS with a quick-copy function so you can copy the contents of a USB drive to or from your NAS without fussing around with software.

• Third-party application support: If you want to add features or services to your NAS, you need to do so with third-party software, so support from third parties is key. This includes media center software, Web-server software, analytics, and more. • Hot-swappable drive bays: Hot-swappable drive bays are necessary so you don’t have to shut down the NAS to replace a failed drive or increase capacity. • Warranty and support: Lack of customer support is one of the most common complaints in Amazon customer reviews of NAS devices.

Most of the models we tested come with two-year warranties. Most also offer some form of tech support, largely through online knowledge bases and forums. Some have email and phone support, and a few vendors also provide detailed, accessible tutorials and videos on their websites.

We also found a few features that were nice to have but weren’t dealbreakers for most people if they were missing: • USB Wi-Fi dongle support: You should connect your NAS to your router with an Ethernet cable if you want the best speeds, but if that’s not possible, you’ll need to be able to install a USB Wi-Fi dongle. • IP-camera DVR support: If you have a do-it-yourself home-security camera system, you’ll need somewhere to store all that video. A NAS is handy for this purpose, but the setup and management can be a bit much for an average person, not to mention the confusing licensing schemes () that determine the number of cameras a NAS supports. A NAS won’t work with popular like the Nest Cam Outdoor or the Netgear Arlo, as those models save their footage to a cloud service instead. • Uninterrupted power supply (UPS) support over USB: Your NAS should be smart enough not to lose everything if the power cuts out, but UPS support will communicate to the NAS to shut down properly before it loses power, which should help secure your data.

• VPN services: It should be easy to set up VPN services so you can access your home network securely from a public Wi-Fi network, but this isn’t something everyone needs, and it’s also a service that a can already provide. How we tested. First we set up each NAS following its included install guide, if it had one. Next we looked at the Web interface’s organization and features. We tested ease of use by configuring user and group accounts, as well as file and folder access permissions. We checked to see if the NAS offered a secure cloud service for remote access so you don’t have to mess with port forwarding and static IP addresses.

We also looked at Android and iOS mobile apps for accessing and administering the NAS. The easiest way to measure real-world NAS performance, at least for what you’re going to be doing with a home NAS, is to copy files to and from the NAS and calculate the data rate. Since 2015, we’ve run read and write tests the simplest way we can: by copying files over Gigabit Ethernet and measuring the elapsed time.

For this latest update we looked at four new NAS devices alongside our previous pick, the. We installed 8 TB WD Red drives in each NAS, connected each model via Gigabit Ethernet to a Netgear Orbi router, and connected a desktop PC with Gigabit Ethernet to another port.

We used Windows 10’s built-in Robocopy file-copying tool to read and write three datasets to each NAS: a 32 GB music folder with 6,154 MP3 files, and a folder with two large files, an 8.1 GB MKV file and a 7.07 GB Linux ISO file. We ran each test nine times in each direction: three times with encryption turned off, three times with disk or folder encryption turned on, and three times with in-flight SMB encryption turned on. To simulate drive failure, we pulled a drive from the NAS while it was running. A NAS should beep or flash an LED to alert you that something is wrong, and the interface should show a drive-failure notification. If the NAS allows you to set up SMS or email alerts, that’s even better.

If a drive fails and the NAS doesn’t produce a notification, you’re at risk of data loss if the second drive also fails. Next we replaced the pulled drive with one of equal or greater capacity. A NAS should detect a new drive and automatically re-create the mirrored array. With each device, as it rebuilt the RAID 1 mirror, we confirmed that all data stored on the NAS was intact and accessible. This process also allowed us to test the quality of each NAS device’s drive bays. A good NAS has drive trays or slots that make the drives easy to remove but are sturdy enough to ensure that the drives fit tightly and securely, with no chance of getting disconnected by a random bump.

We also connected a flash drive to one of the USB ports. A NAS interface should recognize a connected drive and display its make, model, and file system. It should allow transfers between the USB drive and the NAS. All our NAS picks have some sort of energy-saving feature. We used a to test the power consumption on each NAS when it was performing a task (such as a file copy), when it was idle, and with its energy-saving options enabled.

Our pick: Synology DiskStation DS218+. The is the best two-bay home NAS for most people. It typically sells for less than $350 (diskless) at this writing, its read and write speeds are the fastest of any NAS we tested, and it includes a modern Intel Celeron processor, hardware-level encryption, and a flexible and easy-to-understand interface with a wide variety of third-party apps. The DS218+ supports media playback through its own apps or Plex Media Server, supports RAID 1 drive mirroring, alerts you to drive failure, has three USB ports including one on the front, and supports all the features Wirecutter readers have asked about, such as the FTP protocol, VPN server capabilities, IP cameras, UPS compatibility, and SSDs.

Pull Quote The DS218+ had the best performance of the six NAS units we tested in 2017, with unencrypted write speeds between 102 MB/s and 109 MB/s. Most NAS devices in this price range use slower ARM-based processors from Realtek, Alpine, or Marvell, or older-generation Celeron processors. Some still ship with 1 GB of RAM or less. The DS218+ has a modern dual-core 2.0 GHz Intel Celeron processor and 2 GB of RAM, which you can expand to 6 GB.

The DS218+’s CPU is faster than the processor in the and nearly every other NAS currently available in this price range, and you’ll notice that speed difference when copying lots of files or performing multiple backups simultaneously. The Linux-based DiskStation Manager (DSM) software isn’t complicated; if you’ve used a Windows or Mac computer, you’ll be able to find your way around DSM and figure out how it works pretty quickly.

The DS218+ had the best performance of the six NAS units we tested in 2017, with unencrypted write speeds between 102 MB/s and 109 MB/s. (You won’t see much higher speeds from another NAS unless you’re using 10 Gigabit Ethernet or link aggregation, because these speeds are right at the limit of Gigabit Ethernet when you take encoding into account.) This isn’t surprising considering the DS218+ is the newest NAS of the models we tested and has the most powerful processor of the bunch. The QNAP TS-251 uses a slower Intel Celeron J1800 and 1 GB of RAM, and the TS-251A uses an Intel Celeron N3060 and 2 GB of RAM. The DS218+ also outperformed the QNAP TS-231P2, which has an Alpine processor and 2 GB of RAM. In our tests, the DS218+ handily beat the TS-251, TS-251A, and TS-231P2, the WD My Cloud Home Duo, and the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo in small-file write speeds. The playing field was much more level when we tested using our folder containing two large files: The DS218+ traded spots with the TS-251A in our large-file write tests, and the differences between most models we tested aside from the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo were minimal.

Once you remove the front panel from the DS218+, you can easily pop out and replace the drives. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald Aside from the beefier processor in this model, the DS218+ (as well as all other current Synology NAS devices) uses a different default file system than others, called (most other NAS models, including offerings from QNAP, use the file system). The file system shouldn’t have a huge effect on the file-transfer speeds, but it does introduce some features to Synology NAS units that other models don’t have, such as snapshots, which can protect folders from accidental deletion by making copies of shared folders periodically.

Btrfs also features near-instant server-side copying, data integrity checks, and metadata mirroring, which supposedly helps with data recovery in the case of hard-drive damage. Most NAS owners won’t notice the differences between the two. If you do prefer ext4 for any reason, you can set up the DS218+ to use that file system instead of Btrfs when you create a volume. The DS218+ doesn’t support volume encryption to securely lock your entire drive, unlike the QNAP TS-251A, but you can encrypt individual shared folders. Even with the DS218+’s hardware encryption acceleration, you’ll still see a ding to read and write performance with encryption turned on.

In our tests, file transfer in encrypted folders was around 60 percent of the speed of transfer in nonencrypted folders. That hardware encryption acceleration also didn’t help with at all, which slowed the file-transfer process to around 50 percent of the speed of unencrypted transfers. In-flight encryption protects your files during the transfer process, so it’s not something you need to worry about if you’re on your home network the whole time. The DS218+’s interface, DiskStation Manager (DSM), is one of the most user-friendly operating systems on any NAS device.

DSM has a toolbar on the top where you can access the main menu, notifications, and login options, search for files, and check on system health. Below that toolbar, you have a desktop where you can access Package Center (a store of sorts filled with add-on software), the file browser, the control panel (which includes all your settings), and a support area offering video tutorials, FAQs, and more. Synology has a of the operating system available online; it’s worth checking out before you make your purchase.

Like most of the NAS operating systems we tested, the DSM interface includes a pop-out dashboard widget that gives an overview of the NAS’s drive health, as well as its processor and memory usage. You can also customize the dashboard to include storage, connected users, and more. DSM has an optional cloud service called Cloud Station Server that allows you to access your files remotely. If you don’t want to connect to any cloud service, you can still access your NAS remotely through a virtual private network (VPN) hosted on the NAS itself or Dynamic DNS with port forwarding, but for most people Cloud Station Server is much simpler. DSM also includes Cloud Station ShareSync, which allows you to use your NAS to sync files across devices, similar to a service like Dropbox.

There’s also the confusingly named Cloud Sync package, which allows you to sync or back up specific folders or your entire NAS to, such as Backblaze, Google Drive, Amazon, and Dropbox, which makes creating redundant off-site backups very easy. You can set those backups to happen on a schedule and optionally encrypt them before you upload them to another service. DSM packs in a number security measures. In the main menu you’ll find a security advisor that alerts you to malware, improper network configurations, out-of-date applications, weak passwords, and any systemwide configuration issues, though you will have to log in to the DSM interface regularly to see its advice. It supports HTTPS for remote access, TLS or SSL secure connections, and two-factor authentication.

For better or worse, instead of having one big app with tons of features, Synology takes a piecemeal approach to its mobile apps. DS Audio, DS File, DS Photo, DS Cloud, and DS Video are for accessing media.

DS Finder is for monitoring the stats on your NAS, DS Get is for managing downloads, and DS Cam is for managing IP cameras. There’s also VPNPlus if you’re using the VPN server functions, DS Note if you use Synology’s notes app, and MailPlus if you use your NAS as an email server. All of are available for Android and iOS, and they’re on a par with those of Synology’s biggest competitor, QNAP.

Both companies’ mobile apps are best-in-class among NAS devices—no other NAS provider comes close. Like most NAS boxes, the DS218+ supports multimedia streaming through DLNA/UPnP and iTunes. It also has its own audio and video packages to stream content to Synology’s various apps. In our tests, the DS218+ didn’t take long to scan a music and video library and make the files available across a Wi-Fi network on various computers, TVs, game consoles, and phones.

The DS218+ has a Gigabit Ethernet port alongside two USB 3.0 ports in the back. It also includes an eSATA port if you ever want to add more drives. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald The DS218+ supports on-the-fly hardware transcoding, supposedly all the way to 4K video. It does this using its own Video Station and DS File apps. If you prefer to use Plex, you will not have access to the hardware transcoding features, since Plex’s transcoding is CPU-bound and NAS devices in this price range just don’t have the horsepower to do that. With Synology’s apps, we were able to play several 1080p MKV files on various devices over 802.11ac Wi-Fi without issue, but when we tried the same with three different 4K movie trailers, they were all unwatchable due to stuttering. We also had issues with any 4K video using the DTS audio codec, in which no sound would play.

Some formats, such as M4V, wouldn’t play at all. Files that didn’t require any transcoding, like MP4 files, played flawlessly on all devices. On-the-fly transcoding is dependent on the file format, the various codecs, and the device you’re watching the transcoding file on, so your mileage will vary here. Still, even though Synology advertises the DS218+ as being capable of all kinds of transcoding, you’ll want to use a more powerful computer than the DS218+ (or any other NAS in this price range) if you’re serious about on-the-fly media transcoding.

We recommend transcoding your video files ahead of time if you plan on using your NAS as a media server. You can do this with the, though unfortunately you need to manually choose individual videos to convert. If you’re looking for an automated option, QNAP’s software allows you to set up a specific folder that the NAS monitors; the NAS then transcodes any files you drop in. Pull Quote Power-saving features won’t work if you enable any media server functions, because the NAS needs to be available all the time.

In our tests, the DS218+’s data-protection features worked as advertised. With the DS218+ running, we pulled the drive out of the second bay and the NAS beeped at us until we acknowledged a drive-failure notification. We also received an email notification at the address we’d set up previously. Logging in to DSM, we found another notification as well as instructions for how to rebuild the drive array in the Storage Manager once we replaced it.

The front of the DS218+ features a removable plate that hides away the drive bays, as well as LED indicators for general status, network connectivity, and the status of each drive. If you’re not a fan of bright blinking lights, you can adjust the LED brightness or set it up on a schedule so the lights dim at night. The DS218+ has three USB 3.0 ports, including one on the front for copying data to and from a USB thumb drive. It also has an eSATA port so you can expand the NAS with external drives using one of. Like every NAS we considered for this guide, the DS218+ has two drive bays. Unlike other options, the drive bays are tool-less, so you don’t need a screwdriver to install a drive. A USB Copy button sits on the front of the DS218+, but before you can use it you need to tell the NAS what the button should do when you press it.

For example, you can set it up so that when you connect a thumb drive you’ve stored photos on, pressing the button will copy the entire contents of that drive over to a specific folder. Or you can set it to export, say, only video files from a specific folder. It takes a little effort to get the button working how you want, but should help you configure the feature. While QNAP models often have a front USB port, most other NAS boxes do not, so it’s nice to see on this Synology unit. When it came to power consumption, the DS218+ performed similarly to the QNAP TS-251A and TS-231P2, consuming between 19 and 23 watts during file copy, slightly better than the QNAP models.

This Synology NAS used about 6 watts while in power-saving mode, compared with the QNAP models’ 10 watts. Power-saving features won’t work if you enable any media server functions, because the NAS needs to be available all the time; you have to manually turn off media servers and a, such as cloud access and the mail server, if you want the power-saving mode to work. You can also turn the DS218+ on and off according to a schedule, and it supports Wake-on-LAN and multiple fan-speed modes, the latter of which can help reduce the overall noise of the DS218+. No NAS is completely quiet, but to our ears the DS218+ was less noticeable than the QNAP TS-251A or TS-231P2. You can add wireless capabilities to the DS218+ with a Wi-Fi dongle. This unit also supports more than, has for uninterruptible power supplies, and. The DS218+ comes with a two-year warranty, and Synology offers various support options, including,, and browser-based text chat.

Flaws but not dealbreakers. The DS218+ is brand-new, so at the moment it doesn’t have a ton of owner reviews or a big enough install base for us to root out any potential problems with the device.

It is a successor to the well-reviewed and well-received DS216+II, though, and Synology has made reliable and well-liked NAS devices for years, so we don’t expect to run into any significant problems. Because of its newness, the DS218+ is still waiting on some app compatibility. The most notable missing app is Plex, which doesn’t show up in DSM when you search for it. The good news is that you can install Plex manually.

We and had Plex up and running within a few minutes with no issues. Make sure to download the version made for Synology devices with 64-bit Intel processors. Runner-up: QNAP TS-251A. If the DS218+ sells out or goes up in price, or if you plan on using your NAS primarily for media playback directly to your TV, the is a great alternative. Its operating system,, is as powerful and feature-rich as DSM. And while the TS-251A wasn’t a match for the DS218+ in write performance, it still performed well in our tests compared with other options in this price range. Unlike our main pick, the TS-251A can encrypt whole volumes, not just folders.

This feature isn’t necessary for most home users, but if you’re buying a NAS for a small office, the TS-251A could be a better choice. Like the DS218+, the TS-251A has an Intel Celeron processor, but this chip is an older model that’s a little slower than our top pick’s processor. The TS-251A also comes with 2 GB of RAM, hot-swappable drive bays, and three USB 3.0 ports, including one on the front like the DS218+. More important for media playback, the TS-251A adds an HDMI port and audio ports alongside a remote to control playback on the device. With the HDMI port you can skip over much of the headache of transcoding and plug the NAS directly into your TV.

The audio ports include a mic input, which means you can. The TS-251A also has a second Gigabit Ethernet port for, which doubles the network bandwidth available to your NAS, but most home routers still don’t support that feature. Although the TS-251A’s processor is a bit older, the dips in performance were similar to what we saw from every other NAS we tested in this price range, with write speeds that fluctuated from 88 MB/s to 104 MB/s (compared with our top pick’s more consistent 103 MB/s to 109 MB/s). Unlike the DS218+, the TS-251A uses the more common ext4 file system. Most people won’t notice the difference, and you can still read and write files from Windows, macOS, and Linux without issues.

The TS-251A has AES-NI hardware encryption acceleration, and this model slows down about as much as the DS218+ when writing to encrypted folders. The TS-251A also supports volume encryption, which encrypts the entire drive; writing to a fully encrypted disk instead of to an encrypted folder is nearly as fast as writing to an unencrypted drive. The only caveat with volume encryption is that you’ll need to unlock your NAS manually with a password anytime it reboots. The TS-251A doesn’t hide away its drive bays like the DS218+ does. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald QNAP’s excellent user interface, called QTS, is similar to Synology’s DSM and offers the same features, including media streaming capabilities, a file manager, photo and video apps, video-surveillance functions, backup options, and the App Center, from which you can install many more apps such as Plex Media Server. Design-wise, QTS takes at least some of its inspiration from iOS, loading up all your add-on packages as icons on a desktop. As with DSM, it’s a good idea to check out the before you buy so you can see how it works.

Even though QNAP bills the TS-251A as a multimedia NAS, we had the same transcoding issues with it as we did with Synology’s DS218+. In our tests, 4K video never worked properly, and we had mixed results with various 1080p formats, including MKV videos; one MKV file created from a DVD with the transcoding software played just fine, but a movie trailer that used the DTS codec for audio wouldn’t play at all. The good news is that by placing files in a specific folder, so as long as you prepare ahead of time, you can retain the original file format and create a copy that’s playable on other devices without fussing about with on-the-fly transcoding. Like the DS218+, the two-bay TS-251A uses RAID 1 to mirror data across disks, and in our tests it adequately reported drive failure by beeping several times and sending a notification to the email address we’d set up ahead of time. When we pulled out a drive and inserted a fresh one to simulate replacing a failed drive, it rebuilt its array without trouble.

Although the TS-251A and DS218+ are about the same size, the Synology model has a cleaner look since it hides the drives behind a removable door. The TS-251A also requires you to use tools to screw the drives into the drive bays, in contrast to Synology’s tool-less design. QNAP provides a two-year warranty and excellent support both over the phone and via an online forum, plus a knowledge base and tutorials. The TS-251A has been around since 2016, so it has more reviews than the DS218+.,, and all like it, though the reviewers say they had transcoding issues similar to ours. Upgrade pick: Synology DiskStation DS418play.

A two-bay NAS is the best option for most people who want to use theirs for home backup, but if you need more capacity or data protection, get the. This model has the same CPU and memory specs as the DS218+, but with two more drive bays. The DS418play has one fewer USB 3.0 port on the back but offers dual Gigabit Ethernet for link aggregation; this feature doubles the network bandwidth available to your NAS, though not many home routers support that function. A NAS with four or more bays gives you more storage options than a two-bay NAS does. For starters, you can opt for RAID 5, 6, or 10; those require three or more disks but provide better data protection and (depending on which RAID configuration you choose) can offer better performance. A four-bay NAS also lets you expand your storage capacity more easily since you can start with two drives and add more as needed, whereas the only way to expand the storage space on a two-bay NAS is to replace first one drive and then the other with higher-capacity drives. Four-drive NAS devices are typically more suited to professional settings—and if you want to use one, having a.

But if you have the extra dollars, want additional data redundancy and space, and don’t mind learning more about RAID, the DS418play is a good bet. NAS care and maintenance.

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald When you first set up a NAS, it prompts you to log in to its interface via a browser, typically with the “admin” account and no password. Very few NAS devices prompt you to change or reset the admin password—doing so, however, is a crucial security step, because the NAS connects to the Internet and is thus a ripe target for threats.

So the first thing to do with any new NAS is to change the password on the admin account (both Synology and QNAP prompt you to do this during the initial setup). Creating a unique user account for each person who accesses your NAS is a good idea. You can do so on any of the NAS devices we tested by going into the user settings in the interface. Be sure to give each user the appropriate permissions—you don’t want everyone to have god-level admin access to your NAS! If you want to give someone the ability to upload files to the NAS, give that user write permissions as well as read permissions. If someone should only download files, make them a read-only user. Maintaining a NAS doesn’t take much effort, but you should keep a few things in mind.

Because a NAS is almost always on, place it in a location that doesn’t get too hot, and ensure that it gets sufficient airflow—confirm that the back panel has a few inches of clearance so as not to obstruct the exhaust fan. When something goes wrong with a NAS, the culprit is usually drive failure, and according to, temperature extremes are one of the top five causes of hard-drive failure. Data corruption is another big issue with hard drives. Because most NAS devices ship diskless, you’ll have to provide and install your own drives. Be sure to check the compatibility list of hard drives on the NAS vendor’s website so that you install supported drives.

Otherwise, if something goes wrong with the NAS, you may have problems getting customer support—or worse, you may discover that you voided the warranty. The same rule applies to memory: If you buy a NAS that allows you to add RAM, check with the vendor to make sure that you purchase supported memory. Every NAS device in this guide supports WD Red hard drives, which are specifically built for NAS use. WD engineers designed these drives to tolerate heat and vibration better than typical hard drives (though not as much as enterprise-server drives), so these drives are ideal for multidrive NAS setups. They’ve received accolades from both professional reviewers and NAS owners because they provide good performance and large storage capacity at a decent price., “The WD Red 6TB performs excellently, offers a gargantuan amount of storage and is a more affordable proposition than enterprise 6TB hard disks.” Seagate, another favored hard-drive manufacturer for NAS, has specifically for this purpose. What to look forward to. After releasing the DS218+, Synology introduced the and.

The DS218play ramps up the multimedia features of the DS218+ but ditches the front USB port and Btrfs support; it also has only 1 GB of memory and lacks an eSATA port. We don’t think it’ll compete with the DS218+, but we may look at it for a future update.

The DS218j is the budget option, with a much slower AMD-based processor and less memory, so it will almost certainly not match the performance of the DS218+. Synology’s DSM 6.2 update is currently in beta and will be released to the public soon. We don’t recommend running beta software on your NAS because doing so is too risky for something that’s storing all your data, but the beta does provide some insight into what the new version will add.

Among other things, it will offer an improved storage dashboard, bit-rot prevention to help you avoid data corruption, and a new virtual machine manager that will allow you to host virtual machines on your NAS—this is one feature QNAP currently offers in its NAS devices that Synology doesn’t. QNAP hasn’t announced anything upcoming, but since the TS-251A was released in 2016, we’d expect an update within the next year or so. Other NAS makers have been playing catch-up to QNAP and Synology on the operating system front, and while those other competitors are still nowhere near the usability of either—and most still have terrible customer support—they’re at least getting closer with their operating systems. If you’re curious, nearly every NAS maker offers a live demo of its operating system on its website that’s worth checking out, including,, and.

The competition. As we mentioned above, both Synology and QNAP sell many, many NAS devices, all of which run the same software but vary in processor type and speed, RAM, number of drive bays, and features.

Our picks offer the best combination of performance, features, and price for most home users, and Synology and QNAP’s respective software offerings are more powerful and polished than those of other NAS makers. Our testing over the years has reinforced this conclusion, as has AnandTech’s two-part dive into NAS and.

Since 2015, we’ve tested a lot of NAS devices, including many that are now discontinued, such as the,,,,, and. Some are still available but use older CPUs, are priced too high, or fail to meet our memory requirements, such as the,, and. Our previous pick, the, is still great, and if you’re happy with yours, you have no reason to upgrade.

It’s also still available for $250 currently, about $50 cheaper than our current pick, the Synology DiskStation DS218+. But we think the updated CPU and the bump in memory, as well as the addition of hardware encryption, are worth the extra $50 if you’re buying a new NAS. The is WD’s take on a beginner NAS, but the simplified design of the operating system introduces more problems than it solves. The My Cloud Home Duo needs to be connected to the Internet if you want to use all its features, even within your home network.

You’re also required to use the software to mount a user directory on the My Cloud Home Duo, and it needs an Internet connection to do so, for some reason. You can mount the Public folder directly to skip over WD’s software, but in that case you lose access to any files stored in the user directory, which for most people is everything. And in our tests, reading and writing to a user folder was far slower than using the Public one: When we mounted the Public folder on the My Cloud Home Duo, we saw write speeds at a little less than 80 MB/s, but when we ran the same write tests on the user folder—the method most people will use—the speeds dropped to 15.62 MB/s. Doesn’t offer any explanations or solutions.

Our previous runner-up, the, is being discontinued in favor of the DS218+. It’s still a very good NAS, so if you can find one at a heavy discount, it’s worth picking up if you don’t mind the dip from 2 GB of memory to 1 GB and an older Intel Celeron processor. For this update, we also tested the, which is part of QNAP’s budget line. The TS-231P2, which traded places with the TS-251A on our read and write tests, includes hot-swappable drives and hardware encryption, but the TS-251A won out because of its additional ports.

The TS-231P2 is a solid NAS, and if it drops in price, if you have no need for an HDMI port, or if you hate even just the possibility of a karaoke party breaking out anywhere near you, it’s worth a look. We also looked at the. Like the WD My Cloud Home Duo, the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo is a simplified NAS and comes packed with hard drives already installed. Unfortunately, it lacks basic features and third-party app support, including stuff like Plex, which even the WD model has. Its read and write tests were also extremely slow compared with the results from other NAS boxes we tested. When we reached out to Apollo for clarification on these results, representatives replied that the Cloud 2 Duo uses in-flight encryption by default and the user cannot disable it. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since the WD My Cloud Home Duo doesn’t support encryption of any kind, it is unfortunate that you can’t adjust those settings in exchange for a speed boost when you’re in a secure environment.

I bit the bullet and bought a DS411j and put 4 2TB Samsung drives in it. I configred it in RAID 5, which gives me ~5.5TB of storage. RAID 5 isn’t a true data redundacy configuration, but still provides backup via parity without sacrificing as much storage as a mirror configuration. The web interface is great, and I appreciate the ability to connect other external drives via USB to make file transfers easy. I just bough the ASUS NT-56RU router, and I’m considering reloacting the 411j close to my router so I can connect it via gigabit! As with anything, if I had unlimited funds, I would purchase a 412 (non-j, when they come to market) to make use of the SD slot on the front to quickly and easily transfer photos. I wonder if I could connect a card reader to my 411j?

I just purchased this drive off Amazon for $199 and put a 2TB HD in it. The setup is really easy, if time consuming (the enclosed software took about 6 hours to index the drive). The UI is simple and powerful, allowing users to customize their drive, set up multiple users with specific access, web hosting and access, the whole nine yards. I’m using it to replace a 2TB time capsule whose HD failed. It’s not quite as easy as the TC in a Mac only environment, but it’s certainly not in any way difficult. The option for a RAID system is what drove me to the purchase.

The NAS and the 2TB drive cost me as much as the 2TB TC. This is clearly a better, more secure data storage system (once I get the second HD installed).

Does anybody have any experience with this drive, a MacBook Air, and Time Machine? I’ve tried (and failed) with two different cheaper NAS drives (Buffalo LinkStation and MyBookLive), and don’t know if I should go with something like this or the Apple Time Capsule? I just want something to reliably work for seamless backups behind the scenes, that’s all. I should probably mention that my router doesn’t have a USB port, which likely means the TC would be cheaper since to use this I think I’d need a new router too. Colin, I wanted to update my experience. I did eventually get the same message you did with this drive. I’ve done some sluthing on the Apple boards and, while I’ve not found any solution, it appears to happen to a number of users over a number of different NAS.

This link contains a solution that others who have experienced this same problem have used to some success. It also appears that other Mac users have had the same issue with their Time Capsule, so it sounds more like an OS issue than a NAS/TC issue. I’m using Synology’s DS1513+ attached to an Airport Extreme. It backs up my Mac Mini, a MacBook Air and two MacBook Pros. Right now I’m using an external drive attached to the NAS for Time Machine backups, but initially I was using a “native” Synology File Share.

I haven’t done a restore yet but TM seems happy. Synology’s secret sauce is really their DSM software: it’s freaking awesome. Very responsive. A clean/simple UI (it looks like a typical desktop OS but rendered in a browser.

It’s very extensible: not only does Synology provide some *great* free software, but there’s an active community of devs who make additional packages. I use mine as a Plex server, backup for my iTunes library, plus the TM backups, I mirror my Dropbox folder etc. Choose your disks wisely though. NAS devices do all their own error-checking, consistency checks etc. So you should read the manufacturer’s recommendations carefully. I’m using Western Digital 3TB “Red” drives. I bought 7 in Apr 2014 and one has already failed.

The array continued working with no obvious performance issues. I swapped the dead drive out, told the array to rebuild, and the array rebuilt overnight with no data loss. The Synology is much more powerful than the Western Digital My Cloud. Check out some of the features on their website. It’s also going to give you faster data transfer rates.

The only thing about the Synology is that I recommend you bring your own backup software. Synology’s Data Replicator isn’t that great. If you’re using a Mac, just use Time Machine. If you’re using Windows, either use the built-in Windows backup (you will need a ‘pro’ version of windows to backup to a network drive) or use 3rd party software. I’d recommend EaseUS Todo Backup.

I bought one of these just before Christmas 2013. I use it for file storage, and transferred my mail server to it soon after. Whilst it does absolutely everything it says on the tin, the only problem is Synology itself.

I had religiously upgraded the firmware every time a new version came out, and everything was fine until 3 months ago, when, after a firmware upgrade it started rebooting itself. At first the reboot was every couple of hours so it wasn’t a huge deal. Then after another firmware upgrade it became worse until it was continuously rebooting. I raised a support request with synology very early on, and checked their forums. A lot of people had experienced this, but synology took the line that it must be a hardware problem.

I went through the various hoops they set me, but the one thing they would not consider was that the firmware was causing the problem. I upgraded it again last night and instantly the problem improved although it didn’t go away. I would not buy another one of these, and I am considering asking for my money back if they don’t stop being in denial. Did you pay for your wirecutter subscription?

Did you donate to the site? It’s hard enough to listen to the drivel created by our ridiculous “the customer is always right” mentality in this country, but it has now spread to FREE services. Free, meaning they owe you precisely NOTHING. Go to another site if you don’t like the way things run here. The excuses aren’t enough to justify? Guess what – they don’t have any responsibility to justify anything to you. You are an unimportant nobody, whose opinion doesn’t matter except to the select few people who decide to tolerate you as friends/family (if any).

Please remember that before commenting in the future. The final cordless phone needed for that review was late.

It pushed that review further back than we expected. Shit happens. 3-4 weeks is ‘crazy close’ in Wirecutter/Sweethome review speak.

One thing that bothers me is when people complain or get upset when we don’t update sooner or if we take too long with a review. These are 1, 2 and sometimes 5,000 word guides that cover everything. Things take time. And sometimes some guides take more time than others. The best I can do is talk with our staff, make sure we haven’t hit any snags, relay to them that readers are restless, and come back here and make sure people know it is being worked on but we can’t provide an ETA. That’s the best I can do.

Wasn’t complaining about the cordless review – no issue there. You guys have to decide what you can and cannot do. At this point, well over a year after the first “Wait” signal went up in Oct 2013, I have no expectations for this review, and my “need” has long passed. I don’t know if the delay in this review is unique or if you have several reviews that are similarly delayed. However, I’m genuinely curious about what you guys come up with.

So I’m coming by every month or so to see what’s up and to leave gently chiding comments. I know, it’s not like I’m not getting my moneys worth. HOWEVER, (and this is not directed at you, perhaps you can bump it up to the editor-in-chief or whatever), I think it’s a bit irresponsible to continue to have this review at the same level of prominence as other more current reviews. I would suggest moving this to an archival area and more clearly labeling it as “out of date”. More specifically, the featured model, the DS213, is no longer listed as a current model at the Synology web site. Yes you can get it at Amazon for $436, but note the price used to be $287 when this review was published. It has been replaced by the DS214 which is about $294 (and came out over a year ago in Oct 2013), or the DS213J which is about $200.

So, to suggest that anyone should buy a DS213 for $436 is pretty bad advice. I greatly appreciate that you respond to comments and that other editors here do as well. But I think the editors need to come up with a plan for dealing with out-of-date reviews. Well, the other jobs of this NAS would be: -running a bittorrent client (which I guess the HTPC could do) -storing my 3TB iTunes library of lossless music, which I manage from iTunes running on my laptop & stream to my receiver via airplay from the laptop. I suppose I could store the iTunes library and run iTunes on the HTPC, but it seems like a pain using the HTPC to manage the library, sync my iPhone, and rip CDs, all using the TV as a display and I guess a wireless keyboard and remote as input devices. I do some pretty intensive management of my music library (transcoding FLACs, selecting different subsets of the library to sync to the phone, ripping & editing metadata & artwork, managing smart playlists) so having clunky input devices seems like it would be annoying.

So complicated! Gave up waiting for your update. I know its an ever evolving market, but that just means you will never release a guide, or your guides will be out of date and judging by the frequency in which you update these things it could be the either. I know its not an easy task, so I shouldn’t criticize, but a WAIT from August to an ETA release of March is a long time is nearly 3/4 of a yr. Synology have just released the ds215j which I went ahead and bought. I had to make the judgement without your expert reviews on this occasion, but I couldn’t WAIT any longer.

Not a completely unfair criticism, though. Looks like the “Wait” flag went up 6 months ago. It seems like a communication update on what’s coming in the “Recent Updates” box would be helpful. Ah, I see below you mention a possible March update timeframe. It’d be nice if that were in the Recent Updates box.

Plenty of Wirecutter pages say up front that there have been market changes, new product releases, CES updates, etc and that the recommendation may have changed. Doesn’t seem unfair to ask for the same here.

Thanks for the consistent high-quality reviews and taking the time to get it right. So, for connecting to a DLNA AVR/network stereo receiver, will I benefit form the UI or powerful software of the units recommended here, or can I just get a simpler/cheaper piece of equipment to stream my FLAC/mp3 music to the various DLNA devices I have? I guess this is an overly basic question and maybe my reading comprehension is low, but I’ve never used NAS before but would really like to, as I’m about have 3 network connected DLNA receivers. I understand I’ll have to convert from FLAC to ALAC.

I’m just looking for suggestions for the cheapest storage solution that will be reliable and is fast enough not to hamper/bottle neck lossless file playback. Pay the money and buy the 1815+. Plenty of room for expansion. You can put a couple of mirrored SSD’s for read/write caching. Sure it costs a lot more. But in the long run, you will be able to keep it for many many years, tackle any feature Synology has for it, setup virtualization.

Plus you can even add one or two more 5-drive expansions. I know people will say it’s for a business.

But I don’t really think so. We aren’t talking about a several thounsand dolar nas. You can always just migrate you disks over and expand this disks.

Plus I think the 1815+ is a better deal than the 1515+. I personally have a QNAP TS-431 that i bought to replace an aging 2-bay Qnap NAS, its a great little device, i bought it because i just assumed that its low-power CPU would use less power than its more powerful TS-451 sibling (which is a bigger TS-251). Getting to the point, I never expected that the power usage on the TS-251 would be so low, that is impressive, seeing that, i definitely should have done more research before going with a ‘low-power’ arm based NAS, i should have got the recommended ‘upgrade’ pick, the TS-451, could have actually had full featured plex streaming on that thing.

Side note: about the plastic housing in QNap’s smaller devices, the 2-bays frequently use that ‘cheap’ feeling plastic, almost all of their 4-bays that i’ve seen use a much more durable metallic material (including my TS-431). Also, even though, it does feel cheap, i’ve yet to have any pieces break on me on my old one that i’ve had for about 3-4 years now. The prices shown for the three options in the little graphic highlights at the top are misleading. Looks like the three products are all roughly the same price (~$300), and that your choice is based on ease of use. But the MyCloud includes 4TB of disk space, whereas the other two are diskless (and their prices more than double if you add disks to the configuration on Amazon). The review does mention the disklessness (but not the price doubling), but you have to read it fairly closely to figure that out. And it seems to just suggest that the MyCloud is easier to use because the disks are preconfigured for you.

Seems to be that getting the disks “for free” (compared to the other two) is a bit more than “easier to use”. I imagine there are users who will buy their own disk drives for the first two products, and might well save money compared to the preconfigured options shown on Amazon. On the other hand, you might get someone less sophisticated ordering the diskless NAS system by mistake and getting irritated when they discover it doesn’t store much data.;-( So this review should make it clearer what the total price (or perhaps price range) of a NAS system WITH disk drives will be, and not just highlight the diskless NAS prices. Given the screenshots and discussion about using an HTC phone, it seems like the testing did not include Macs. The review does not for example discuss the drive formatting, which can be important to Mac users: some NAS units can only be formatted in FAT32 which is potentially problematic because some Apple metadata may not be stored accurately if the backup NAS stores files in a Finder-readable format. More generally, my understanding is that an OS X bootable duplicate cannot be made on a NAS, so if one’s boot disk crashes you need a separate bootable drive (or cloned drive), and the only option for that is to use specialized backup software (like SuperDuper! Or Carbon Copy Cloner) directly to a non-NAS hard drive.

We made certain that all the NAS’ setups tested were compatible with OS X/Time Machine software- A NAS needs to be easy to set up as a network file server, simple to configure for local computer backup, and ready to use for streaming video, music, and photos. Based on the results of the survey, we looked for NAS devices that support computer backup via Windows, Time Machine, and rsync; music streaming via DLNA and iTunes; VPN and FTP access; and cloud backup. Its Linux-based OS is more complicated than most people are used to, but anyone who has worked with a Windows or Mac desktop should be able to set it up. But will forward along just to double-check A bonus: The TS-251 is the only NAS we tested that supports virtualization, so you can run Windows, Mac, UNIX, Linux, and Android virtual machines on it. The My Cloud Mirror’s interface also offers no way to interact with a connected flash drive.

You can’t just use the interface’s file manager to copy files to and from the USB drive; instead you must manually map to the connected USB drive from Windows Explorer or your Mac’s Finder. This is not the case with the other two NAS devices. I have a question and I am not sure the answer above gives me that information I need.I am just starting to cut the cable cord and I am trying to decide which NAS I should get. I have a Surface Pro 3, two Windows laptops with docking stations, and a MAC mini, with an iPhone, iPod, iPad; and one each Samsung and LG phones; plus Samsung Note12.2, and a Samsung Note 10.1 (phasing out for the 12.2); two Roku 2’s one Roku 3 and an ancient Wii; Cannon printer connected to the Mac and HP printer connected to one of the laptops. Will I be able to connect all of these devices and access files on the NAS from all of these devices? Obviously, I am concerned about the Mac devices not being able to share nicely with the others Am I asking too much from a network NAS with all of thees devices?

Any suggestions will help. Hi, this might be a simple answer. But with ALL NAS’s i want a simple way to get data on there without the need for a PC specifically – what I mean is that say we have a Digital Camera, take photos all day, come home and plug it into the NAS – how can we get that data in the folder and directory I want easily???? Or say photos from my Iphone. I want to sync the photos by just plugging it into the NAS, walk away and my photos are saved on the NAS and accessible.

Whats the best way to do this?? I am setting up a Media centre for friend and want an easy and quick way to transfer data to the NAS, painlessly any ideas?? Hope that makes sense Sam •. I’ve read many times that you shouldn’t use a NAS for “heavy-duty transcoding” of 1080p video, but is a NAS like the QNAP Turbo NAS TS-251 or the Synology DiskStation DS214 suitable if the only transcoding you care about is music files? All I use Plex for is my music collection (and maybe some occasional sharing of home videos taken with a smartphone or tablet, but the music is the real priority). I’m wondering if I can invest in a NAS alone or if I should still invest in an inexpensive PC plus a NAS. I recently purchased a QNAP TS-431+ on Woot for $249, which seemed a bargain.

I filled it with four 4TB WD Red drives, and started transferring from Synology 212j. However, my primary purpose is a media center for movies, tv and music, and so far the QNAP software i lacking compared to the Synology, especially in Video Station and RSS Mgr. The Qvideo mobile app is no match for DS Video. I can use the Syn apps as-is, but with QNAP I would need Plex which is not yet ported to the new ARM CPU in the TS-431+.

Support response has been slow too. I am going to spend the money and get a DS-415+. I would like to see a high perf 2 bay, like the TS-215 but with better media software. Synology is missing the HDMI, but the software is better. Did I mention the software?

RAID5 has no redundancy so if you lose more than one drive (or if you lose one drive + another drive has bad sectors on it) you lose your entire dataset. So it really shouldn’t be used in home situations unless you’re regularly backing up your entire NAS. RAID6 does give you that redundancy but at a HUGE write penalty (3x as much as RAID 10) and an even bigger rebuild penalty (10x as much as RAID 10). So your best option from performance + reliability is RAID10, the drawback is that you cut your storage pool in 1/2. It seems that the Q-nap has failed my 1 requirement since I want on the fly transcoding. My Synology DS214play which uses an atom based chip has no issue transcoding any HD video and have been able to stream any format on my Windows phone out side my home anywhere I went.

It seems that the atom based chips can handle video better than any Celeron chip can which is why I chose this over any Celeron based NAS. Did I mention that synology supports Windows phone? It also supports Roku and some Samsung TVs so not having an HDMI isn’t an issue and I wouldn’t want a constantly humming NAS attached to my TV anyway no matter how quite it is.

Did you read the fine print on video transcoding with the QNAP TS-251 and HS-251 on their website? Transcoding is done via software and I’m assuming that the issues testers had in this article has more to do with the system depending on the raw power of the CPU. The DSXXXplay has a dedicated hardware transcoder built in. No need for a beefier cpu or a lot of ram because of it which translates to lower power.

There is no stuttering and 1:1 resolution streaming. The only bottleneck I’ve come across with my DS214play was LTE bandwidth throttling down on my mobile and that’s when I tried to stream a bluray rip in MKV in another state. I get clean 1080p full hd anywhere I go. I do like the design of the HS-251 and hope that Synology comes out with something similar. Alright, I feel the need to report in my experience from the field. In my opinion, this is the first bad wirecutter pick for me, after buying at least 15 different Wirecutter picks.

It is _really_ hard to use and I’m a very savvy tech user. I build PCs, put custom firmware on my router, work as a programmer, etc. But this device just has too many features.

I found that the best thing to do is to go through every menu and just disable everything. Then I would just find what I actually want and use only that. It has features coming out of its ears! It does everything 10 different ways. There’s plugins that then does everything 10 other ways!

I just want to store files from any machine. It would be nice to access them remotely too. That takes some figuring out to do that most simple thing.

And then all the features keep on breaking too. Super not reliable. And it’s not even wireless!

At this point I’m all set up and using it happily, but I would never recommend this product to anyone that doesn’t have the inclination to figure out every bit of this product. You make a good point that some people want network attached storage and nothing else. In that situation, a person should do just as you said, disable unnecessary features and only use the file storage and file sharing features. I don’t see the extra features as a problem though, just don’t use them and you are fine. There are probably wireless NAS devices out there. I use DAS plugged into a server that plugs into the wired network port of my wireless router. I can get to my files from the wired network, wireless network, and from the Interwebz using vpn for security.

This is GREAT example of a BAD review/recommendation. Larger numbers on bullet points, and synthetic benchmarks do not make for a proper review, or a good recommendation!!! Considering this review is for “The best NAS for Most Home Users” and it is comparing entry level systems, more attention should have been given to OS and usage, QNAP OS is the Windows 95 compared to Synology’s OS playing more like OSX El Capitan (And I hate Apple lol) The best product for the most users is the one they will use(easilly and with comfort), Synology is miles ahead in OS and App usability, which makes more sense for first time home NAS users. Go Synology, the operating system is just way way better, cleaner, more polished, more user friendly, doesn’t sacrifice power user control-ability. Forget HDMI, its a useless bullet point, if you want a computer buy a computer, if you want a NAS, buy a NAS and access it through its web interface on your computer/laptop/tablet/phone, use Synology’s awesome android/iphone apps, use SSH/FTP when needed. The only real questions you need to ask is how much space/speed do I need, and whats your budget?

Define your budget then get the best equipment you can afford. I personally recommend getting a Synology with an intel x64 chip, yes it costs more, but intels are noticably faster than marvel chips, the x64 allows you to expand ram past 3GB of the x32 chips. But if you have a lower budget just pick a good 3.5″ 2bay marvel and throw in 2 4-6TB drives. Always get HGST drives, their failure rate has been 10-100x better than every other brand since the flooding in thailand.

Also get usb 3 port, it makes a big difference getting direct drops and pulls from the NAS when needed. While I haven’t used Synology to comment on it being OSX infront of QTS being Win95, I’d still agree given the number of users that praise Synology”s OS’s ease of use. BUT HDMI is definitely a useful feature. Might just not be for you. It is not just to use the NAS as a PC but as a media player as well which serves pretty good if you have a non-smart TV. The price difference between a Intel x64 Synology and Intel x64 QNAP is big. OS on both boxes will be updated in years to come.

But you can’t do the same with your hardware. Recently my Synology ds115j developed some problems. The customer support basically involves 24 hour wait intervals – so it may take days to solve a problem (ultimately the problem did get solved). Coincidentally, the QNAP 251 went on sale around the same time so i picked it up based on this website’s recommendation.

The Synology OS seems like an unrefined version of the QNAP though both get the job done. One reason, why I will switch back to Synology – their DS Audio app allows you to actually choose devices on the local network. The QNAP mobile music app “QS Music” only allows you to use the iphone or devices that are hard connected to the USB slot. One reason why I may stick to QNAP- the hdmi port (which admittedly I have not experimented with). I know these two are rather esoteric reasons. But if these two were not factors, I would chose the QNAP simply because the OS is just more easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye (well, wirecutters recommendations are for home users like me, and not techies!) •. I’m in the process of leaving Syno these days and stumbled per coincidence to a link pointing here.

I have 5 years the 12 (+12) disks Syno box in daily use, so I know the box pretty well;). Syno is NOT bad. It makes its job nice and simple. As far you accept a few ugly points. 1.Updates are painful Regular chronicle bugs in every update, which opens new security holes (think of last year worm which encrypted your box and wanted a few hundred EURs to open it for you.) and brings new surprises for long evenings troubleshootings. Just try google for “DSM update failure”; something like 1/2 million hits. That has a cause probably;-).

Never update your Syno’s DSM before the oh-so-brave community fills the internet forums with painful stories and Syno actually gets enough time to resolve them. Just look into the DSM download history: versions like “x.2.2, x.2.21, x.2.21b” on two-day base. Yes, they provide a support service: you open a ticket with like millions others. Without all your photos/media/installs/VMs etc. So you grab then your calculator, hex disk editor, few days time, google for the silly Syno-named Linux things and try and seat and swear.

I’ve been there twice. I could rescue my data. But most normal people would fail here. They did it the Syno-way Classical Linux stuff is renamed to Syno glossary everywhere – like Linux volume manager LVM is called Syno Hybrid RAID etc. So troubleshooting, working around etc. Is really painful.

You never know very basic stuff, if/how you can connect even a base-disk (simple volume, no RAID, just nightly backup, just to be sure.) to your Linux box (this was not possible pretty long!!). You find undocumented stuff everywhere, like encrypted folders inaccessible from a Linux machine, if you don’t have already all the undocumented tech bits&bytes at hand in a failure/restore scenario, like a smoked motherboard. Usability A lot of most obvious simple use cases are not supported, like TimeBackup-ing encrypted folders to encrypted folders, remote incremental encrypted backup etc. – Very simple & powerful for the Syno-thought-is-important tasks – Very painful and complicated for the missing tasks. Yes, you can script your way down and design complex solutions for them, but everything is undocumented/unsupported and broken with every update, even your painfully installed package management (ipkg) stops to run.

They even delete (!) the content of your /root home folder, where you most probably store something when SSH-ing into the box. The GIT never runs correct (it runs sometimes and very unreliable) for me and I’m really not able find out why, what’s not so usual:-). It is somehow related to the LAN internals, as when I connect through VPN to my own box, I mean from the same machine, in the same house, what’s pretty idiotic, then I can ‘git push’ always – but going straight and directly through my LAN/WiFi, mostly (not always) I get like ‘unexpected hung up’, ‘broken connection’, whatever. Of course is my LAN working 100% and of course all other services are running normally and of course is machine doing fine with every other GIT in every other LAN. Don’t ask me why, it’s a mystery and I don’t have the time and energy to debug the server part. Data safety Now it comes a bit general – don’t trust RAID.

The Syno (and most other consumer NAS boxes) do NOT offer 100% storage safety: – The memory is NON-ECC (no parity checking) – The RAID system does NOT checksum for you as is should (see BTRFS, ZFS.) – The DSM/Tools does NOT alarm you in the case of a lot of problems, as it does NOT provide the tools to fix it When you have a lot of data, time to time you realize something ‘stinks’; like ‘I had this file, for sure, where is it:-o?’ or ‘why is this.zip broken’ or ‘VLC: this movie is broken; should VLC repair index / play as-is?’. When you look into the /var/log/messages kernel log and grep for ‘superblock’ or ‘failure’ etc., you start to get white hair. First idea to fsck the filesystem sucks, as the volume is mounted when you can ssh into it.

Until you find the undocumented way how to enable fixing your filesystem, you feel pretty old. Of course Syno does not show you these problems, nor tries to detect them. And so it goes worse and worse, until it’s too late and the beep comes, flashing LED, sending you emails, the volume is corrupted.

But it reacts only on the very basic/brutal failures, like loosing a whole disk. Or when you files are screwed that much, that even Syno realizes it can’t run anymore. If you ever insert more disks into the machine, consider the failure scenario: are you prepared? Do you have all your files somewhere else? Are you able to insert the minimum amount of disks (for RAID5: n-1, for RAID6: n-2) into an external disk enclosure and rescue from a Linux box?

That’s why I have 12 disks slots, 6x for RAID6 (hence, 4 disks vital for rescuing, having an Sarkoon USB3 4-slot enclosure). The rest 6 are “basic disks” with encrypted folders, where I nightly run my own incremental backup scripts (as Syno denies inc backup encrypted folders.). And I do a nightly remote inc/enc backup to my colleague to my disk there (and he to my house vice-versa). Speaking of data-safety: the private Syno-cloud is a nice idea. Until it deletes all your files, as it thought you deleted them on a client, so it pushes this phantom delete onto all your devices. Deleted once per bug, all clients are hit.

These things and other, like the bloody “@eadir” everywhere you can NOT get rid of (the whole internet is filled with hacks how to disable it, trust me, it won’t work for your DSM current version and when somebody tries), make me search for more mature solutions, with a mature filesystem, like ZFS. The next DSM should come with BTRS support, but only for the pretty recent devices (and BTRS having their own child problems; you can bet to see find very soon filled blogs with HowTos for rescuing your Syno eaten files).

I like the Syno. But there are more safe solutions for your data, like FreeNAS, which is free and can be put onto the most HW and save you cash not spent for brand named device. PS: In the article’s style “Why should you trust me”:o); I’m a senior SW architect/engineer @telecom, assembler hacker, MS speaker, coach, project leader, 25+ years SW DEV etc. Take care for your data 🙂 •.

Yep, because of the command line and ZFS, the life in FreeNas is more simple:-). You can grab the disks and attach to another system, completely reinstalling the NAS from scratch.

This is not possible with Syno. You loose all your settings and scripts (it actually _deletes_ your /root!!) after _every_ smallest update. Yes, for Joe User with 2x HDDs running a file server, Syno rocks. For anybody tech aware it’s a nightmare, as you have hard time fighting agains all those “keep it simple” boundaries. I scanned this on my mobile, but I did not see any mention of easy/user replaceable parts.

I just learned the importance of this yesterday when my Drobo 5D dies about a week after the 1 yr warranty expired. No one sells it locally (Denver, co) and there are no user replaceable parts, so I ordered a new one for $633. I’m looking at replacing it with a PC or Mac mini based file server some thing that I can repair myself or drop off to have repaired locally to restore access to my data. I think that both warranty and the ability to get local support for the device is important, especially if you keep information that you use daily on it. Something to consider for your reviews. Regarding the Mycloud Mirror: Is it possible to configure so that data is stored on the NAS in encrypted form?

If yes, how much does that affect performance? Is it possible to use different encryption keys for different users? If I understand this right, using my mobile device to access the MyCloud Mirror relies on somebody else’s server out in cyberspace somewhere. Is it possible to avoid that, if I set up port forwarding and a static IP appropriately on my home router? And is it possible to configure so the data is encrypted end-to-end (it’s never in the clear except when it is locally stored on my mobile device or the NAS itself)? Thanks JWG PS Excellent review.

I think TheWireCutter has just replaced Tom’s Hardware in my universe as my first stop for consumer tech reviews. There is encryption to consider as well. Additionally, the software is doing everything it can to serve simultaneous requests from multiple users, and in some cases, to break up a large request into smaller ones and send them in parallel over multiple connections. So even if the individual connections are IO limited as you suggest, the CPU requirement is the sum of what they need. OTOH, for many users (like me) who just want to back up 3 or 4 machines at night, or serve a few files to three people in my family, the CPU load is probably not gonna be a big issue.

One thing that I’ve just learnt the hard way is that even if you use a standard Linux file system (like ext3/4), ARM processors have a different block size than x86. The block size relates to the processor page size – for x86 that’s 4kb, for ARM its 64kb. I had a problem with my ARM based NAS and pulled the drive to recover the files, but it was not easy to mount in Ubuntu. I think certain classes of Intel processors have AES acceleration, so if you use your NAS as a VPN gateway this can assist. The QNAP TS-231 wasn’t mentioned. Why did you pick the TS-251 over that? I was really hoping to see it show up at least in “the competition” section where the brief comparisons are made with other devices.

You included some other models there from Synology, WD, and Asustor, but not QNAP. I want to know what is lost when stepping down from the TS-251 to the TS-231! How much slower write or read? Different power usage? Same software? Under “care and maintenance” you had better add something there about checking for drive failure!

That’s like the most important care and maintenance to do. If you don’t get an email or a text and it doesn’t make a repeating alarm noise, then you had better walk by the thing and look at it every once in a while, or pull up the web interface. This is non-trivial to mention since many will probably have it tucked away and will just read/write files within Windows or OS X most of the time. Very nice article •. I’m looking at getting a NAS for myself and a couple of friends to backup some computers and files to. We want it set up so that we can use it as a cloud backup for all our computers. We don’t care much about the media servers and the other fluff.

We just want plain cloud backup that we house ourselves. Which of these tested solutions would you recommend for that? Considering that most of the computers won’t be on the specific LAN, we need encryption and something that’s stable and secure. I’ve been looking at Synology, WD Mycloud, QNAP and Owncloud but I can’t decide without buying them all and testing them which isn’t an option for me. Any advice would be much appreciated! I purchased the QNAP TS-251 about 9 months ago.

I have also worked in IT for 35 years. Mostly with Unix, so the Linux based QNAP should have been easy. First mistake that many people make is not checking with the disk drive approved list before buying their disk drives. I recommend HGST. Hands down, they have the lowest failure rate. I also recommend getting 6TB drives instead of something smaller.

The initial setup wasn’t too bad. The LED in the back is the wrong color, so you think that their is a HW failure. Finding the Admin login and Passwd was frustrating (admin / admin). I downloaded the manual and printed it (400 some pages?). I think the password is about 50 pages in. Then you have to hook it up to your TV(s). My main TV isn’t “Smart”, so I HAD to use a HDMI cable.

My other TV’s are “Smart”. You can pull up a list of movies downloaded on the NAS and then play them. My LG TV finds the downloaded moves and the transcribed movies.

One works and the other doesn’t. My Samsung TV (not smart – HDMI) works great with transcribed movies. But, some files types will not transcribe correctly, and will not work on the Samsung, but work on the LG Smart TV. You also need to download QRemote from the Apple App store (if using an iPhone).

This IS your remote for the displaying, selecting, and playing movies. But, only if you don’t have a Smart TV. So, if you need to buy a TV, but a Smart TV. I bought it for PC backups, syncing live files, movies, photo storage, music storage, and a few other things. Once you download the movies from your PC to the NAS (With File Mgr), the NAS will automatically transcribe them so that your TV will be able to play them. The transcribing works within minutes sometimes, and other times takes days. The HD Station will sometimes turn off, so you have to restart it.

It works okay, and does the job. But, it has some quirks. You cannot transcribe and play a movie at the same time. Where and how it stores files is weird and poor.

The Photo station if awful. I have 12,000 photos. I quite after about 30 files. I don’t use the NAS for photos. Music storage is good. You have to use iSync on the NAS and iTunes on your PC. You can also play music from the NAS directly by downloading Qfile from the Apple app store (free).

But, only within wifi range (unless the music is loaded in memory of the iPhone. Back up of your PC seems to work fine. Manual control, which is good. Sync works but has problems. You setup a directory on the PC, and files within the directory automatically sync. But, moving around in the directory tree is painful slow. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds for the directory to display.

There are constant upgrades to the software. Updating some and not others will result in the NAS not working.

Support is slow, but good. States that it works with Linux PC’s. But, only with some select ones. You can get around it by putting in the IP address of the NAS and port number (192.168.0.1:8080). They should mention this. Good device, but problematic and not debugged well enough.

Next time I will buy a TS-451 instead of a TS-251. Worth buying, but you need to be somewhat tech smart •. You need to go back and read the post again. We always print manuals.

A separate comment on the pw being on p50. Read it again! Sometimes you have to flip back-and-forth in the manual for info. Just faster sometimes to have a printed manual. But yes, you can search a pdf with a Ctl+F. But, sometimes the password can be abbreviated with “pw”, “passwd”, etc. Or, they use and image to prevent searching.

Good manuals have that info at the front or back of the manual. Why should the user have to waste time looking for critical info. But, you missed the point. The manual is eclectic.

That is also a sign that the code is poorly organized. With QNAP high KLOC ratio, that would explain the problems so many people are having with the device. First of all, it isn’t a “router” manual. The QNAP NAS is basically a modified Linux Server. If you have ever taken a good graduate Software Engineer course, programming code organization is very important.

Those programmer who write in top-down style with proper partitioning and good organization have the lowest error ratio and maintenance cost. Those who program in an ecliptic style have the highest error ratios and maintenance cost. KLOC ratio is a well known software engineering term. “KLOC” stands for thousands lines of code. The KLOC ratio stands for the total number of lines of code that have to be changed due to errors and corrections. Most projects spend 1/6 of the time coding, 1/3 of the time planning, and 1/2 of the time testing. Some companies cut back on testing to get the product to market.

That is what QNAP did and does. Just look at Qfile on a mobile device. It has over 50 major errors, including some catastrophic ones. Qmusic doesn’t even work. It gets a catastrophic error when you start it. Absolutely unbelievable.

What works for most people is local backup and remote backup. How you do it exactly is not important. RAID is not synonymous with backup, but rather with fault tolerance ( one or more drive failures does not impact data availability ), so keep them separate.

Now you have RAID – keep working even if a drive fails Local backup – restore previous data that was lost or corrupted Remote backup – restore previous data that was lost or corrupted and when local backup is not available( theft, fire, flood, or you are on the road!) If you can keep these 3 items separate, it will help you put together a good backup plan. I have an Asus 5300 that supports USB 3 and Link Aggregation via ethernet ports. Would it be better to get a USB 3 external hard drive or a NAS with Link Aggregation? While one may have theoretical higher performance in reality which would have the fastest most reliable performance. House uses new Macs with ac wireless and would be backing up using Time Machine. Also it will of course vary based on which particular devices I use but assume I am using the most recommended upgrade pics for either NAS or External Hard Drive as recommended by WireCutter. Thanks for any help!

There’s a new model for the “Also great” pick: My Cloud Mirror Gen 2, which currently costs $300 on Amazon. Consider updating the link to point to that, or add to updates? (snipped from anandtech): Compared to the My Cloud Mirror model from last year, the Gen 2 version has a faster internal platform. While Gen 1 used the Marvell ARMADA 370 SoC with a single-core ARMv7 CPU running at 1.2 GHz, the Gen 2 uses the Marvell ARMADA 385 SoC sporting two ARM Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.33 GHz.

Other than that, the other specifications such as the external I/O ports and amount of RAM on the board remain the same. Are there any NAS:s that have native Windows storage? I have (had) a Buffalo linkstation and had a power surge burn one of the drives. I took the whole thing apart and removed the drives only to find out that the one that still worked is not readable. I know there are way (one of which i used) to get the data to other means of storage, but i don’t want to go through the same hassle again.

What i want is to be able to pull out a drive if needed and using a SATA-reader use it as an external drive. Hi, Thanks for a great in-depth review picking my first NAS is not an easy task. I wish the following solution: 2 discs (probably 2 x 4TB running RAID, so I wont risk data loss). In addition, I would like to either plug in an additional external HDD, I already own, or perhaps take it out of the casing and insert into a 4-bay NAS?

This HDD I wish to use with 2 or more IP cameras – so they record to the extra HDD. Is that possible / a good idea? I like the WDs because they are not so expensive. My needs are: Data storage/protection, sharing some files/photos and recording home surveillance.

I do not currently need any streaming to TV/PC of movies etc. – so that is just a nice to have. I hope you can point me in the right direction. Is the WD My Cloud EX4 a good choice? I bought the QNAP with 2x 6TB WD Red Drivesbut unfortunately am sending it back. As far as a NAS, it worked ok my goal was to free my MacBook air at home as well as NAS.

My MacBook Air runs a Windows 10 VM for d-link viewcam software and Plex. Since QNAP natively runs Plex and KVM virtualization, I installed the single VM and Plex and the QNAP crashed daily. Plex wouldn’t run and had to keep uninstalling and reinstalling. Then the Windows VM was too slow to use. When it crashes at least daily then you have to check the RAID then the sync takes 4 hours on the 6TB WD Red drives every time sigh So if you only need a NAS I would say QNAP is probably ok but if you want the other features, it just isn’t stable. I work on enterprise storage for my day job (wouldn’t run one for home for the power draw 🙂 ), so really got a bad taste after this experience.

My colleagues all run Synology for home and am going to give it a try. Since I need to run Plex and my Windows VM off box anyway, I may as well get the best NAS only box from my circle of experience. Because of this review I gave it a good try and really would have liked it to work out having a small all-in-one solution running all 3 things I needed (nas, plex, 1x windows vm). Anyone else running things other than NAS successfully without crashes on the recommended QNAP? The nature of my work has me spending over 100 hours a week on my work laptop.

As a consequence, I end up using my work laptop for a lot of personal needs as well. In order to backup my personal information from my work laptop, I have used GoodSync in combination with a Seagate Backup Plus 1 TB HDD over USB 3.0. This approach works well for me since GoodSync does incremental backups and preserves the Windows directory structure and the original files. I can also encrypt and password protect the storage drive. So, I can always plug in my backup hard drive to any computer and access my files. This approach has worked well for me for a number of years. Now, my employer is throwing a spanner in the works by making all USB storage connected to work laptops encrypted.

The encryption will make any data transferred from my work laptop to an external storage device via USB readable only on my employer’s machines. So, my current backup approach is going to cease working. I am therefore looking for alternatives that might let me continue to backup my personal files from my work computer via a non-USB means to a personal storage device. Below are the features I am looking for – i.

Should be a portable hard drive ii. 1 TB capacity iii. Should be able to backup wirelessly either through WiFi or a direct WiFi connection with my laptop (given no USB) iv. Should preserve the original files and Windows directory structure (Should not require proprietary software to manage the files on the drive) v. Files should be retrievable directly through USB connection to another computer (Wireless media streaming, files access is nice to have but not necessary) vi.

SHould be visible to Windows as an external hard drive when wireless so that I can continue to use GoodSync to backup (the software does an awesome job) I did look at the Personal Cloud recommendations here but these are are not portable by any stretch of imagination. Any inputs, suggestions would be highly appreciated. Hey there Aditya 🙂 I’d first check if you can use and remote storage locations from your work and if this is allowed. One option is to set up a NAS at your home and access it through the web interface or through an application on your work laptop and thus transfer the files there and access them on any device. I could suggest checking out the single-bay WD My Cloud as the simplest, yet easy to use and effective solution as it allows you controlled access, encryption and remote file management plus backups.

Here’s a link: Another thing you may consider is a Wireless external drive such as WD My Passport Wireless. Here’s a link to that too: Feel free to ask if there are any questions 🙂 Captain_WD. Was just looking for some guidance on my setup.

Id2q V6 Serial Number. I’ve currently got a Mac mini setup connected to a 4tb LaCie quadra usb 3 ( which just seems to have died) and a 2tb western digital mirror. I’ve also got an AirPort Extreme with 1tb to use time machine to backup my mac mini and my MacBook Air.

The main purpose for the usb drives connected to my Mac mini are to store redundantly a big archive of photos and old family videos. Would a Nas be a good solution? Would it be more reliable than my current setup, or do I not need it since I have a Mac mini connected to usb drives? Hey evbart 🙂 I’m sorry to hear about the failed enclosure. Did you mean you had that enclosure with two 2TB WD drives in a RAID1 mode or a separate WD Enclosure in a Mirror mode connected to your system?

A NAS would be a good option here as it won’t be susceptible to power or connectivity issues in case the computer malfunctions. Moreover, NAS devices can be accessed through the network by multiple devices and are not necessarily dependent on the computer’s performance but rather on the network’s.

You mentioned you have a backup configured to your AirPort device. A NAS such as the WD My Cloud Mirror can act in a similar way and access your data over the network and still have full access to it. Here’s a link to the WD My Cloud Mirror: Post back if you have any questions! Great write-up and great review method on these devices.

That being said, maybe next time you guys can build a small home server and throw something like open media vault on there and compare that. Right off the bat, here are some thoughts. PROs: 1) customized hardware 2) easy to upgrade 3) easy to mix SSD and HDD as needed 4) things like plex/kodi transcoding use a real cpu and work much better 5) jumbo frames and gig+ capability 6) if you need more space, add more disks 7) to martin’s point, noise noise noise.

Easy to control noise when you pick the hardware. CONs: 1) cost increases as quality/speed increases 2) complexity (in terms of building, the openmediavault gui is pretty simple) 3) CAN take up more space unless you stick to a mini/micro itx build 4) can use more power unless you know what you’re doing •. I want to post my experiences using the QNAP 451 which I purchased based on the review of the 2-bay system here.

I bought this system on Black Friday of 2015, loaded it up with some consumer hard drives, and started setting it up to replace the Mac Mini that I was using as a server. First off, the biggest issue with the device is that while there is an App Store, packages are created by QNAP users. Therefore, packages for the most useful apps (not made by QNAP) are usually some (or many) versions behind. This included Madsonic, which I planned to use for music streaming and Transmission, a torrent client. I ended up installing both manually, but I know many people would have given up by then.

Transmission I got by installing the Entware package distribution system and installing from there. Subsonic – the music streamer software Masonic is based on) – I installed manually (and in fact, wrote a lengthy medium post on how to get it installed). Moreover, the 451 technically allows the user to upgrade the system’s RAM. I was happy to be able to upgrade to 8GB of RAM.

However, what QNAP doesn’t tell you is that it’s a nightmare to access the secondary RAM slot based on how the device is put together. The second RAM slot is underneath part of the metal frame, and even with my smaller hands it was nearly impossible to get RAM into the slot and seated correctly. It’s a really frustrating experience, and I’m surprised I didn’t get injured or break the device.

This is besides the point that the device is mostly made of plastic and taking it completely apart to install upgraded RAM, I was often worried the device would break. Getting it configured – even in the limited way I was using it – took forever, and more than once I regretted getting this over, say, a local RAID system attached to a new Mac Mini. At this point, I’d recommend most users get an actual computer running Linux, Mac OS, or Windows, and use that as a server instead. Doing so is worth the few hundred dollars of extra cost. But I learned from the experience and was content to run the system as it was. Then, after a few months, the device started rebooting on its own.

I had configured it to email me when the powered down (and when there were errors) and I suddenly started getting tons of emails from week to week. Not only did it shutdown by itself (it’s actually plugged into an APC battery system that should give it an hour to shut down if there are power issues) it would complain about file system errors when it booted back up. The system had everything on it – my CDs, my photos, project files, everything. So data integrity is a big deal, and I began backing things up and communicating with QNAP’s tech support. I’ve had worse tech support experiences, but not many. QNAP used a branded version of Team Viewer to look into my system.

The device’s file system kept popping up errors. Their first solution was to try and fix the errors using Unix commands. When the system rebooted and popped more file system errors, they recommended that I replace all of the HDs. I knew that I had used quality consumer drives, so I didn’t balk at their recommendation, and spent $700 on 4 NAS drives.

In the mean time, I backed up my files to whatever other drives I had around, but wasn’t able to save everything. Things should be all well and good right? Of course not – even with the new drives and a reinitialization of the system, I still kept getting file system errors and reboots. QNAP asks me to replace the upgraded RAM with the default 1GB stick and try again. I do so, and again reinitialize the system.

Still reboots and errors. So QNAP finally gets to the point, after several weeks of back and forth, of letting me RMA the device. Some great companies, like Apple, just take a faulty device and replace it with a new one or a working refurb. QNAP is not like those companies. They told me they’d replace the mainboard and send it back.

Not ideal for a device that should work for years without me having to do anything, but fine. However, after all of this, the thing that gets me is that they want me to pay to ship this heavy device back to them in CA to get the board replaced. Configuring and servicing this device has been a huge nightmare. I highly recommend others avoid QNAP.

At this point, I’d be happier with a $400 Windows desktop or laptop machine, locally hooked to some kind of local RAID system for my storage needs. Hi gouramiagogo, Sorry to hear about your ordeal.

I have also experienced some frustrations with my NAS, and also have two QNAP NAS devices including a TS-453+. I also had to wait for support from QNAP by Team viewer and can empathize with the taking a day off to give access and not getting a solution. However let me encourage you, the NAS is a Linux machine and technically if you had a PC running Linux, its possible you may of had problems as well, especially when installing different products side by side.

Although I don’t always get the latest version of products on my NAS, I do get some comfort from the fact that someone else has tested them with the NAS and other software products I use and confirmed they work together. I am curious, when you installed the other products such as Masonic, I assume you used the installer provided? Also, the memory upgrade, did you try swapping it out.

I know its a long shot, but maybe you have some in another PC you could test for a few days to see if it effects the rebooting. Generally when you reinstalled using new drives and ran the NAS stock standard, if it was still rebooting it would point to a problem with equipment (i.e. Covered by warranty) and environmental factors (again a long shot but I have seen the strangest things effect machines over the years), so only you can give that some thought.

Anyway, just for encouragement my NAS’s have run for years. I just lost one raid drive on the main machine and the other drives kept the site going till I got and swapped the replacement drive. Never had to turn of the machine it rebuilt the replacement drive in 20 hours (8TB WD) and all the websites, Virtual machines and services just kept running the whole time. Hope you got it sorted, best of luck. Look no apologies, smikbox supplies NAS solutions using QNAP/Synology/WD/Dell and others and we have a lot to offer our customers with a “turn key” style product. These people just want something that works “out of the box”.

In your case if your Linux box works for you then that’s great!! I mean it!Don’t think there is such a thing as one size fits all when it comes to a NAS solution. For me I just don’t have the time to mess with the OS and get things like virtualization, docker, file sync, automated backup, rsync, surveillance, virtual host and the apps that run from App centre working. Don’t get me wrong, I have the experience with OS and would enjoy the challenge, but life gets in the way right. Have to make choices! So, if there is a trade off with using QNAP its probably that I am not using the very latest “bleeding edge” stuff out there for the OS. I choose to back off and wait for QNAP to figure things out and “productize” it.

But that is a time vs cost decision that is different for everyone. Hope your NAS works well for you and you get to do awesome things that improve your lifestyle and help those around you, •. Wow, it looks like NAS software has come a very long way in recent years. I have a very old Synology single bay unit that I want to upgrade eventually. I love the Synology web interface, the software is very powerful and offers a ton of features and add-ons and plugins. Nice to see QNAP is finally catching up to the Synology DSM software.

I remember using an old QNAP from about 4 years ago and it looked nothing like what I’m seeing in these screenshots. The interface was all menu-tree driven, and very clunky and hard to navigate compared to the Synology interface. I also have experience with the Thecus NAS devices from a few years ago. Those interfaces were complete garbage. So much Engrish fail it wasn’t even funny. Now I’m considering QNAP OR Synology going forward. Probably go with a 4 bay unit just for expandability.

Right now I have about 6TB of data spread out on my NAS, external drives, and 2 internal drives in my desktop. Both me and the guy who recommended Drobo to me lost ALL our data. To make matters worse, Drobo uses a proprietary file format which they claim keeps your data safer but in reality, makes your info unrecoverable WHEN your Drobo goes on the fritz. I’ve had two units and both freaked out at some point and lost multi-terrabytes of data. Fortunately, I back them up so all I lost was about 30 hours restoring to new units.

You’ll love your Drobo until the day you have a simple glitch, and that day is most assuredly coming. I replaced the Drobo with a NetGear ReadyNAS which is low cost and moderately speedy (it uses an ARM processor).

It hasn’t even sneezed in 4 years. It’s on 24×7 because I run some of the built in utilities – which are terrific by themselves. Back up your Drobo – disaster is imminent. And if you don’t believe me and mike_mu, ask Mr.

Google about Drobos crashing. More pages of furious users than War and Peace. I’m sorry that happened to you. Mine’s been fine. I use it in a semi-production purpose, and it’s regularly used by over a dozen people offsite.

The Drobo is only a solution for drive redundancy/ failure. People need to know that no solitary NAS is a true backup or storage solution. Everything should also be backed up offsite, and if possible copied a third time (locally or not). I went into it knowing it was a semi-proprietary format. People should know that they’re trading that for ease of use, sure.

But that’s something today, over a notional value on an open format that requires more time and effort to take advantage of. It’s a tradeoff, but the advantage of the ootb ease of use and functionality I continue to get has worked out. The problem I had with my Drobos (both of them) is that suddenly, 3 drives lights started flashing red and I got a message from their utility that 3 drives had failed and there was nothing to do but reformat and restore. Drive redundancy was worthless. Having tried all else, I took the drives out and checked their SMART status.

Not one had a problem. And yes, I have 3 backups at all times. And btw, I plugged in the NetGear NAS and had it set up the way I wanted in about 15 minutes. It has not so much as sneezed ever since.

Good luck with yours – you’re gonna need it. I never said Drobo was hard to use. It’s just that Drobo advertises itself as a glitch-free storage device and it’s most definitely not. Yet you pay extra for that “feature,” along with a proprietary file format that no one but they can recover. Do I want to pay them to recover terabytes of recorded TV or movies ripped from my collection?

Obviously, no. The problem is, I had terabytes of data on it (some of it was Acronis and Time Machine backups) so it was backup to my data. Am I going to pay a cloud service to back up terabytes of movies and recorded TV? Obviously, no.

BTW – the important stuff on my drives gets backed up separately so I never lost any of that. It was on the Drobo, but it wasn’t the only backup I had. I don’t rely on the cloud, I backup to external drives and store them in a bank safe deposit box about 30 minutes away. The box is higher than eye level and I go there once a month to exchange drives.

So my stuff is backed up moment-to-moment locally and once a month it all goes off-site. I took the Drobo out of my environment and rely only on the NetGear ReadyNAS (still working flawlessly after 3 years – never lost a byte of data. I lost 2 Drobos full of data in 2 years). But I learned my lesson from the Drobo and I’ve got the ReadyNAS backed up on stand alone drives that only get turned on when backing up the NAS – about once a week. I’ll stick by my original opinion that Drobo sucks, until they offer free recovery of lost data.

My guess is if they did, they’d go out of business. I wont challenge this review, because I’ve been committed to Synology for almost 5 years now. But back when I started looking into NAS. The primary reason to choose QNAP was faster hardware/better specs. The primary reason to choose Synology was better software/performance/user experience.

The difference between the two was akin to making the choice between Android or iPhone. The Android phones have better specs and hardware features on paper. But in real life use the iPhone has a better user experience, consistent software updates and a ton of great developer support.

While it looks like QNAP has made great strides on their software. I’d caution anyone who is on the fence and looking for a NAS solution that “just works” with no headaches. To just pay a bit more and stick with Synology. Outside of the more expensive price, you simply wont have regrets in the long run.

My 5 year old DS1512+ has ran 24/7 headache free for the past five years now. It gets constant software updates and has great mobile apps. Plus there is a wealth of 1st/3rd party dev apps where I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the things it can do.

I also have to applaud my five 3TB WD RED HDD’s which get checked monthly for errors or failures using SMART. And also have performed perfectly for the past five years!

I think where most reviews miss the boat, and so most readers/users don’t quite understand is that there is a “single source of failure” side to RAID NAS devices. Here’s what I mean: Let’s say you have a 2-drive NAS set to mirroring so that every file written to drive 1 also gets written to drive 2. “Great,” you think, “my data is protected because if one hard drive fails, the other one automatically takes over and my data is fine.” And, that statement is correct. However, there are other components of a NAS that could fail, and even though your data would be fine and eventually retrievable, once your NAS fails, it is out of commission until you can get it repaired! If the Ethernet jack, power supply (most likely to fail!), logic board, etc. Fail, your data may be safe, but your NAS is dead in the water, and you will not be able to get it working again until after hardware repairs are complete.

How long will it take you to a) get an RMA to fix your NAS, b) ship it back to the factory, c) have them repair or replace it, d) ship it back to you, and then e) you get it all setup and running again? Yes, IT people will know how to pull out the bare drives and grab some data from it, but as you stated in this article, this review is meant for home users, and most of them are not IT folks. There’s a middle path between a proprietary NAS and a homebrew FreeNAS machine made from an old PC, and that’s to use an HP Microserver with the OS of your choice (I use FreeNAS running off a tiny USB drive stuck in the back). Small, minimal power use, everything’s upgradeable and no irrecoverable files if the system dies as it uses whatever formattting the OS requires (FreeNAS uses ZFS) instead of anything proprietary. It must be said though that this is quite a palaver to set up, but once it’s running it’s hard to beat.

There really should be a tech note inclusion to the article relating to data integrity/bitrot and ZFS/BTRFS. A popular use of home NAS is to serve as an archive for personally produced content. If a bit or two flips, the content can be effectively lost. ZFS is the most mature (and stable) file system with bit-level integrity. The problem with ZFS and linux is licensing and the linux kernel- Oracle (who acquired Sun and ZFS with Solaris and OpenSolaris) has decided not to license it for linux and put their $$ behind btrfs development. *BSD has it available and FreeNAS makes use of it, but that isn’t really a friendly solution to the typical home user.

Anyways, if laid out simply as an aside, this should be a serious consideration when looking at home use archival storage technologies. If someone were to make a NAS with bouncy mac buttons with a base that included bit integrity, they’d likely do very good business in the sector. ZFS on Linux doesn’t seem to have a *practical* problem with regard to the supposed licensing incompatibility. And it almost certainly wouldn’t matter for a device for which an end-user would never even need to know that it’s running Linux or ZFS.

I’ve been thinking, in the abstract mainly, about building a friendly NAS on top of Linux and ZFS for a couple of years now. I suspect tho that a reasonable price is still too high for almost anyone.

The device itself could be at least roughly the price of current NAS-s; they’re all basically just a mini computer with several hard drives. The real costs to any business trying to offer something like this would be in the development of the custom software needed to make the existing software friendlier. I’d worry support costs could be higher too, both because the underlying technology is a little more complicated and the ‘promise’ of ZFS and similar filesystems is something that would require a *lot* of careful attention to even be possibly something on which one could deliver. With the current movement towards home routers and their lack of support for USB storage devices, the importance of a NAS for home use for photos and music is of increasing interest to me. Is a single disk NAS better than a WD My Cloud? I’m a little conflicted as I keep waiting for someone like Orbi to make the USB ports capable of supporting a USB hard drive.

I am currently using a 1900AC router with my Sonos music on the USB, but would like to move to mesh. Wait and hope, or bite the bullet and buy a mesh system and a single drive NAS? An excellent review (and many excellent comments), but left a couple of unanswered questions for me. My requirement is just reliable file storage accessible by the 4 Windows PCs and 2 Android devices in my home-based business–the equivalent of a large, reliable and scalable network-attached hard drive; not a media box, cloud server, etc. So my questions are: Do any of these NASes support RAID with mismatched HDDs?

Do they support a gradual increasing of storage capacity by swapping in larger HDDs one by one over time (i.e. As budget allows)?

Specifically, I have several spare HDDs of varying capacity (definitely not WD Red) and would like to put them to good use. Would it be possible to slot them in a 4-bay NAS in a RAID configuration to get started.

And then as I can afford to buy larger WD Red drives, pull out the smallest old one and swap in the new one? Does net storage capacity immediately show an increase? Finally, how does a NAS present itself to Windows clients?

Do they see it as a network share (or shares) to which drive letters can be assigned? Thanks so much. I originally got a QNAP because I liked that I could upgrade the RAM, and there was support for Crashplan Cloud backup (if Unofficial).

Ever since Crashplan announced that they are no longer offering home services, the Crashplan App has disappeared from the QNAP store. Looking at the supported NAS for Backblaze, I see Synology supported due to iSCSI support, but QNAP is not on there. Right now, its somewhat making me nervous that I have about 6 TB of Data on my QNAP NAS without a method to back it up. If I knew it was going to be this much of a problem backing up my QNAP, I would have gone Synology. Is there a comparable service to Crashplan/Backblaze that can backup a QNAP with the amount of data I have? Amazon Glacier costs more in a month than I would have paid in a year for Crashplan.

I considered that too, especially since QNAP has software that allows you to duplicate certain NAS folder contents to your computer. Might get a small energy efficient PC on top of my family plan and use that as the spare drive’s host, and purchase a decent external high capacity drive from Costco. Not ideal, but a 6 TB $120 external drive is still cheaper than paying $30+ a month($480+ a year) for “Warm cloud storage” in B2 that I just need for cold data.

I get backblaze’s rationale for not doing cold NAS backups, but its still a pain. In another post I suggested in the update to use the direct connect feature of the TS-451A to use it as an external drive to a windows/mac so the cloud service sees it as a direct drive rather than a networked volume. On backing up a NAS: Noticed that in your update to Cloud backup, you noted that some cloud backup services will not work with networked volumes, but as a workaround, you could duplicate NAS files to a computer, and have that computer back it up. Also Cloud backup services recognize external drives.

What about direct connect NAS, like the QNAP TS-451A and the TS-453BT3, which can direct connect to a computer, and back up that way? Direct connect offers an extra backup strategy, which added with upgradeable ram may tilt it again towards QNAP. I don’t know if this is fair, but I feel I will never buy another Synology product, after having a horrible experience with the Synology DS409. It never worked as a proper NAS from the moment I plugged it in.

I don’t know if this was because we have a Mac-centric household, but their tech support was never any help at all. It couldn’t even behave as a simple backup system – any folder with hundred of files (like a music backup) would churn away for half an hour before displaying the files in the Mac OS X Finder. An Aperture Library copy would take days because, though it appears to be one file, it’s some kind of an archive that the DS409 couldn’t handle. I don’t know if this was because of deficiencies with the SMB protocol on either the DS409 or Mac OS X, but I gave up.

The QNAP TS-251A was Wirecutter’s choice for quite a while, now it’s not. I think I’ll go with the QNAP, even though it’s rated “slower”.

Hey, Very basic question here. I see that Plex has a number of ReadyNAS builds on their downloads page, as well as being listed as an available Plugin. Since Im a plexPass member, Id like to download their beta builds.

But I'm wondering which one I should install for my ReadyNas. I recently got a 516. Is that an Intex4.x, or Arm5.x, Intel6.x distribution? I remember that the previously new line was ARM, and that the old sparcs were probably Intel4.x. Which leaves the ReadyNAS 516 as an Intel6.x. Or maybe the '6' indicates OS6? Rather than guessing, can anyone translate the Intel4. Buddha In Daily Life Pdf Converter more. x, Arm5.x and Intel6.x notation?

And what command / where can I go on my NAS to see which Im using? My 516 (Intel6.x?) >uname -a Linux readynas516 3.0.93.RNx86_64.2.1 #1 SMP Mon Sep 30 11:46:22 PDT 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux My NV+V2 (arm?) >uname -a Linux envy 2.6.31.8.nv+v2 #1 Thu Apr 18 17:40:54 HKT 2013 armv5tel GNU/Linux Thanks!

I have been setting up my new ReadyNAS 316. I downloaded the Intel 6.x file from the site, and tried installing it from ReadyNAS admin page. It sort of succeeded, but it shows the older version (0.9.7.xxx), and it doesn't seem to run. At this point I think I should uninstall it and install using your recommended two file approach described in their forums. HOWEVER, I can't seem to uninstall it.Clicking uninstall appears to do nothing Listing my packages installed on the system, all I see is plexmediaserver-ros6-binaries What's recommended at this point?