Best Raid Configuration For Home Nas (2024 Update)

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

Would definitely recommend this. I've had it for just a few weeks now as a replacement for an old 4-bay Drobo. Set up was easy and straight forward, and the USB drive in the back helped make the initial backup from a temp backup HDD quick and painless. Having it attached to our wi-fi and accessible from anywhere in the world is handy. The software you use to access it is pretty easy to understand. I didn't have any problems with the UI, and this kind of tech isn't my area of expertise. Build quality seems just fine, although seeing the board on the inside made it look kinda flimsy? This is the only point of contention and it's a mild one, wish I could give it 4.5 stars for this reason. That said, there were no problems with installing the disks. And I was able to set up a RAID5 with zero difficulty. Even someone like me, who doesn't know much about RAID, was able to figure it out pretty quickly and easily. For someone who just wanted to replace an old, failed DAS with near zero difficulty, this did great, and I didn't realize how much I'd benefit from an NAS.Jason

The box is appears well built and is noticeably quieter than my Drobo. I am using it to backup my office server and some family members computers (kids at college) every weekend. I really like that it has a feature to let you set it to automatically turn on and shut off on a set schedule. Since I only use it for these weekend backups, I don't need it running all week long. I have it set to automatically turn on Friday afternoon and to turn off on Sunday night. Being turned off is also the best security possible from hackers and ransomware attacks. I use Acronis Backup for both my office server and my other computers. Acronis Backup 12.5 for Windows Server has an option to backup to cloud and allows you to select an sftp server. The Synology NAS easily allows you to setup an sftp server. Then on my office sever I just put the following as my backup location, sftp://my home IP address//folder, so it looks like sftp://108.000.000.106/backup. I don't have a static IP address at my home (where I have the NAS), so this number may change at some point, which means I would have to update it on my office server, but my FIOS IP address rarely ever changes. The Acronis software then asks for my user name and password. You can add users for the NAS and give them access to certain folders or features. So I added a user for my office backup and gave it access to the sftp service on the NAS. I then put that user's name and password into Acronis and it confirms the connection. I then created a backup plan that runs a full backup every weekend. I did the same basic thing for my other computers, like my brother's home computer. The only real difference is that the Acronis software for Windows 10 does not use sftp, it use regular ftp. You do need some basic computer/networking skills to set this all up. I am an insurance agent, not a computer pro, but I do have a fair amount of basic networking knowledge. For example, you will need to add port forwarding rules to your router to send port 22 for the sftp and port 20-21 for ftp to the IP address of your NAS on your local network. You can also use it to have your phone automatically backup all of your photos. I have not tried this feature, but it does not look like it would not be hard to setup. Unfortunately, I think Apple only allows you to backup the entire phone to iCloud or iTunes, so you can't automatically backup your entire iPhone to the NAS. In terms of speed, you will most likely be limited by your Internet speed or the gigabit connection to your local computer. My Internet speed is 150Mbps, so that limits me to a data transfer online of about 15MB/s. When transferring a file directly to my local computer over the Gigabit connection (only using 1 of the 2), it does transfer at the max speed of 100MB/s. I am using Western Digital Red 5400 rpm drives. Since it appears the limiting factor in terms of data transfer speeds is the Gigabit connection, not sure if you would benefit from faster drivers. It does allow for the connection of two Gigabit connections. My WD Red's have a read speed of 150MB/s, so if using both Gigabit connections does give you a transfer speed of 200MB/s, you might benefit from faster drivers. This is my first NAS, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I was able to get it to do exactly what I wanted, so I like it.William

to buy this products is just replace the old synology diskstation ds412+, never exceptation that the workstation is dead before the hard disk, and no more choice except to buy another similar products to replace the old dead one. just remind once buy such diskstation and setup raid storage to sure how to do if the disksatation dead before the hard disk. the staff give me great help in the dealing process. a good purchase experience.QirenG

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

Pros: Good reliable storage device that you can add many apps to expand the usage of the device such as a VPN unit Cons: Need to be able to expand hardware such as CPUMark

Easy to set up, but somewhat confusing because there are so many options; I'm probably still not making full use of what this capable of. I have very quickly used nearly all the disk capacity, and I think that next time I'm in the market for a NAS, I'll buy a 4-bay version rather than 2-bay as it makes expanding the disk capacity easier.les-litwin

I waited for this unit to become available and I'm very glad I did. This was an excellent upgrade from a dead TS-453mini. Much faster at doing everything. I put 16-GB of RAM from Team Group 2x8GB-3200 DDR4-SODimm in it and it flies. My 453mini died shortly after I had updated to 5.0.0 (1911). I simply moved over the drives from the dead unit (in the correct order), turned on this unit and it started right up, recognized everything and just worked. I simply had to do a file system check and then the firmware update and all is perfect. QNAP definitely hit a home run with this unit.Matthew

I had a little trouble finding it one computer, but it showed up fine on the rest. Took a little while to figure out. Once everything was set up though, I copied 13 years of work onto it in a few hourssaxon99qq

Supporting Windows Server at home is expensive and with Azure, there's no reason to do it anymore. Which is another reason I bought this – Move my local file storage to a network share and retire a server. But at this point, I am ready to take the drives out and put them into the file server I had and toss the Buffalo box.MICHAEL D.

This uses Synology's DSM software, and for my needs it offers exactly what I want in an easy to configure system. I use the NAS to do Time Machine backups for a couple of laptops, to run a Plex server for my digital music / videos, and to archive some old but important files. As I use wifi the raw speed of it doesn't matter as much to me as it might to some others. As I'm familiar with DSM the setup was easy. The hot pluggable drive trays let me install drives without tools, and Synology's web site has a page which lets my laptop connect to the NAS to do the initial configuration. The NAS itself is quiet, but the discs picked to populate it will make more noise than the NAS's fan. I have a couple of WD Reds (quiet and slow) and a couple of Seagate Iron Wolfs (louder and faster). Because of the Seagate drives I'll probably move into a cupboard. A couple of weeks in and it's working fine. It's possible to expand the memory if I want to run Docker containers in the future.mi-9372

Easy to install, reasonably straight forward to configure. I set up 2 RAID 1 storage pools and 3 volumes. Used for image storage and system backups, plus a play space for storing virtual machines. I upped the RAM specifically to run some VMs. A nice selling point is the free Virtual Machine Manager. For my use case I could probably get by with smaller cache SSDs and re-use the ones I got in another project. Network performance is fine on a gigabit wired network, and noise level is acceptable and probably depends on your disks and usage – it's actually pretty quite – probably quieter than a desktop PC with the same disk configuration. The only niggle I had was with the VMM which could not connect to the VM console during VM build from ISO. Turned out it will only connect if you open the DSM in HTTP (I'd configured mine for HTTPS). It's only a problem during VM installation – once you can RDP/VNC/SSH to your VM you don't need the console. I like it – useful tool and a fun toy all in one 🙂DavidF57

My first experience with a Synology NAS has been very satisfying. In retrospect, I should have purchased one long ago! The operating system offers so many options, I'll probably be tweaking it for years to come as I learn more about this device's capabilities. And that's a good thing! For now, I'm very pleased with the ability to use Pi-Hole through Docker. I suspect I will find Synology's unique hybrid RAID feature to be extremely helpful when I need to add storage capacity later. For now, my next task will be to set up my NAS for home video surveillance storage. I'm sure this Synology unit will serve me very well for a long time to come! Highly recommended!Paul

Would definitely recommend this. I've had it for just a few weeks now as a replacement for an old 4-bay Drobo. Set up was easy and straight forward, and the USB drive in the back helped make the initial backup from a temp backup HDD quick and painless. Having it attached to our wi-fi and accessible from anywhere in the world is handy. The software you use to access it is pretty easy to understand. I didn't have any problems with the UI, and this kind of tech isn't my area of expertise. Build quality seems just fine, although seeing the board on the inside made it look kinda flimsy? This is the only point of contention and it's a mild one, wish I could give it 4.5 stars for this reason. That said, there were no problems with installing the disks. And I was able to set up a RAID5 with zero difficulty. Even someone like me, who doesn't know much about RAID, was able to figure it out pretty quickly and easily. For someone who just wanted to replace an old, failed DAS with near zero difficulty, this did great, and I didn't realize how much I'd benefit from an NAS.Jason

The box is appears well built and is noticeably quieter than my Drobo. I am using it to backup my office server and some family members computers (kids at college) every weekend. I really like that it has a feature to let you set it to automatically turn on and shut off on a set schedule. Since I only use it for these weekend backups, I don't need it running all week long. I have it set to automatically turn on Friday afternoon and to turn off on Sunday night. Being turned off is also the best security possible from hackers and ransomware attacks. I use Acronis Backup for both my office server and my other computers. Acronis Backup 12.5 for Windows Server has an option to backup to cloud and allows you to select an sftp server. The Synology NAS easily allows you to setup an sftp server. Then on my office sever I just put the following as my backup location, sftp://my home IP address//folder, so it looks like sftp://108.000.000.106/backup. I don't have a static IP address at my home (where I have the NAS), so this number may change at some point, which means I would have to update it on my office server, but my FIOS IP address rarely ever changes. The Acronis software then asks for my user name and password. You can add users for the NAS and give them access to certain folders or features. So I added a user for my office backup and gave it access to the sftp service on the NAS. I then put that user's name and password into Acronis and it confirms the connection. I then created a backup plan that runs a full backup every weekend. I did the same basic thing for my other computers, like my brother's home computer. The only real difference is that the Acronis software for Windows 10 does not use sftp, it use regular ftp. You do need some basic computer/networking skills to set this all up. I am an insurance agent, not a computer pro, but I do have a fair amount of basic networking knowledge. For example, you will need to add port forwarding rules to your router to send port 22 for the sftp and port 20-21 for ftp to the IP address of your NAS on your local network. You can also use it to have your phone automatically backup all of your photos. I have not tried this feature, but it does not look like it would not be hard to setup. Unfortunately, I think Apple only allows you to backup the entire phone to iCloud or iTunes, so you can't automatically backup your entire iPhone to the NAS. In terms of speed, you will most likely be limited by your Internet speed or the gigabit connection to your local computer. My Internet speed is 150Mbps, so that limits me to a data transfer online of about 15MB/s. When transferring a file directly to my local computer over the Gigabit connection (only using 1 of the 2), it does transfer at the max speed of 100MB/s. I am using Western Digital Red 5400 rpm drives. Since it appears the limiting factor in terms of data transfer speeds is the Gigabit connection, not sure if you would benefit from faster drivers. It does allow for the connection of two Gigabit connections. My WD Red's have a read speed of 150MB/s, so if using both Gigabit connections does give you a transfer speed of 200MB/s, you might benefit from faster drivers. This is my first NAS, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I was able to get it to do exactly what I wanted, so I like it.William

to buy this products is just replace the old synology diskstation ds412+, never exceptation that the workstation is dead before the hard disk, and no more choice except to buy another similar products to replace the old dead one. just remind once buy such diskstation and setup raid storage to sure how to do if the disksatation dead before the hard disk. the staff give me great help in the dealing process. a good purchase experience.QirenG

– During setup when creating the drive volume it went into an infinite loop on the dialog and wouldn't let me finish creating the volume. I exited the volume creation and tried again, but it then claimed that 100% of the drive was already used and that I couldn't create a volume. It said that since there was no volume I couldn't use the drive, but it stated that all drive space was used in a volume that wasn't actually there. I had to power the unit off and on and redo the volume creation twice before it finally worked. – During login it goes into a continual loop asking me to log in over and over again a random number of times until it finally logs in, I typically get the login screen three to four times in a row before it will finally go to the desktop. – The Main Menu icons don't render on the page half of the time. – Using any of the apps like the Resource Monitor actually slows down the performance of the drive transfers. – I have zero confidence in this unit for the long term. I did hours of research before buying it, and I thought that it would be the best brand buy since the other brands continually get worse reviews, but if this is the best, I would hate to see the worst. – I am using this unit with two 16TB drives as a file archive in my small personal business. I don't work directly on the NAS, I just use it for a set of network file shares that I Robocopy Mirror my computer system data files to.David G.

Hardware is ok but the software requires work. I would have liked to give a 3.5 star rating but of course this is impossible. It's straightforward enough to fit the hard drives and to set the unit up, the problems start when you begin to upload files. The upload speeds are painfully slow, I was getting 4mb/sec which meant it would have taken me days, if not a couple of weeks to get all my files uploaded. There's no manual but there's a lot of information on YouTube with various video instructions. After doing various searches and reading online forums I finally found out how to set it up to be recognised as an external hard drive. I can now upload at speeds of around 100mb/sec. This information should be more clearly marked in the basic setup instructions, it would make life easier. This is designed as being a home solution so can't be expected to be very computer savvy. This is the only NAS system that I've had experience with, perhaps they're all like this. I would suggest watching the online tutorials before buying to fully understand what's needed to get this system workingsteve92b

Pros: Very quiet – I used the same 2 WD Red NAS HDDs that were noisy in a QNAP NAS box and I can't hear the DS218 at all.Very easy set up, just remove the front panel and mount the drives in the removable trays.Excellent performance, well worth getting this model with the 2GB of RAM.DSM is a breeze to set up and use. While it has a huge array of configuration options available they are presented in a user friendly interface. There's also a good selection of apps available for easy installation; one of the best for my use is Surveillance Station, it amazes me that it is free when you see the price of standalone Windows based programs that do the same or less for the money.Unit looks good and is well constructed. Cons: Front panel could be a bit more secure fitting; it doesn't fall off but is too easy to remove in my opinion, minor point though.HENRY

I use the DS218 with 2x Seagate Ironwolf 4TB in RAID1 (actually Synology Hybrid Raid, BTRFS), primarily for media storage and system backups on my home network. Setting up the hardware is extremely simple, and while the software requires slightly more knowledge, it is still not difficult due to the abundance of tutorials and forums online. I set it up for remote access, syncing with my other cloud accounts, etc. In only a couple hours. So far everything is working as it should! Performance is as expected, I can saturate the gigabit ethernet connection fairly easily. More than sufficient for my needs. Browsing the interface is also quite smooth. The apps and software are well designed and are fairly self-explanatory. If there is an issue or question, Googling leads to quick and well-explained answers. No complaints so far in terms of performance. The NAS runs fairly quietly with the fan on "Quiet Mode". Noise primarily comes from the hard drives spinning, which isn't Synology's fault and can be alleviated with SSDs (but the price – ouch). Other nice aesthetic/environmental features for me are the control over light brightness and the ability to schedule turning the lights off, as I don't want the super bright lights on my desk during the day, and I don't want them on at night at all. Didn't think those were things I needed, but they're nice to have. Environment/aesthetics wise, I'm pleased with this NAS.A.S.

Now that i have this up and running its great. But what hassle getting it set up. Unbelievably there is NO guidance for setting this up and despite watching youtube reviews and so on i had a relative nightmare getting this going. Now that may be because im not as tech savvy as some and it did need my IT department to log on and sort things out. In the end i just hadnt clicked on a few buttons to make cerain files visible but it would have been so easy to write some documentation to get you going. Still giving it 4 stars because as a unit its great. Small, sits out of the way in complete silence doing its thing. I think 2 hard drives will be plenty for most people and i have started with 2x3Gb which i think we will see me good for a number of years. If you have thousands of large photos, perhaps taken on an slr then you will probably need bigger. But as i said, once running it think its great, well built and discreet. Once im using the full features of what it can do this will be a gamechanger i reckon. So far im just touching the tip of the iceberg with using Plex for movies. On a significant sidenote: Be warned that if you think you're just going to plop all your blurays and dvds on this thing then think this through. Again, not being massively tech savvy, i had no idea that the transcoding process is so paaaaaaaaaaaaainstaaaaaaaaaaaking. It would be better to call it a labour of love, because oh my god its labour intensive. My PC has been on 24/7 for the last couple of months first converting the bluray to mkv file and then transcoding using handbrake which literally takes 2-12 hours per Bluray and i have a i7 6700. It does crunch a 40Gb to between 2-8Gb but it involves a lot of attention and ideally a powerful CP. But in the end its worth it and after 2 months i have gone through about 180blu rays so far!L.

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

Installing the QNAP TR004 I am using the QNAP TR004 as a DAS to a Intel NUC D54250WYK running Win 10. I assembled the 6T WD Red drives (WD60EFAX) in the DAS and set the switch to Hardware Raid 5. I then plugged it in and installed the QNAP software. Once the software came up, it saw the TR004, but I could only see the individual drives in the QNAP software. I had forgotten to switch to administrators, so Disk Manager was not available. Once rebooting to admin and restarting the QNAP app I could see the drives in DiskManager, but saw no way to setup a raid 5 array. After changing the switch to software control and reloading, the red button to setup a raid array was visible (restarted app). I clicked on it and added all 4 drives to the raid 5 volume. Then Disk Manager could see the raid drive and I could format it. After setting up a GPT partition and quick formatting as exFat, I restarted. The system would not boot up, even after trying several times. I unplugged the drive and booted up. Then inserted the usb connector and that finally mounted the TR004 and I reformatted as NTFS doing a full format. A day later I tried rebooting again but it would never quite come up. Many times I got a message “Bios has detected unsuccessful POST attempt(s). Possible causes include recent changes to BIOS Performance Options or recent hardware change.Press ‘Y’ to enter Setup or ’N’ to cancel and attempt to boot with previous settings.” Pressing Y did no good, because I could see no setting that needed changing. If I press N it would still never boot up if I had it formatted as exFat, but will boot with difficulty if NTFS. Somewhere in there I found that I had to change the DIP switch back to the “Hardware Raid 5” setting. I don’t believe I could ever get it to boot after formatting the raid while it was set to software control. I usually had to pull the usb cable and let the computer boot, then plug in the. TR004 after booting. It will boot now in the following steps. A long boot time with black screen, then the POST error dialog, I press N, long time again, then it goes to normal boot process. I have never had this problem with any other external drive, exFat or NTFS. I am still looking for solutions.Dallas P.

I've got it loaded up with 4 12TB Toshiba X300 drives configured as RAID10 and it's been working great for a week now. Only 2 things keep me from giving it 5 stars. First, the locks on the drive bays are a joke. There's no proper indication of whether they're open or closed and the little metal pieces clipped on to the plastic axles popped off when I opened the bay doors. Not a big deal for me since it isn't in any sort of secure environment, but perhaps a more robust bit of construction is called for there. Second, the Windows app that pops up every time the box is connected (I leave mine on all the time so this only happens when I reboot the computer) has no setting to start itself minimized. So minor gripes, and overall it does what it's supposed to, with transfer rates in excess of 200 MB/sec over USB 3. Very happy with the device.Douglas

I have a QNAS TS-451+ with 4x4TB drives in raid 5. Its nearly at its capacity now so the options are either to buy 4 new higher capacity hard drives or to get an expansion enclosure. I went with the expansion enclosure route as its less disruptive and cheaper ( I already had 3x2TB drives already) TR0004 was easy to set up (You Tube is your friend) and now I have 4TB extra to go with my 11TB in the TS-451+. When have the enclosure in software control in QTS, the QNAP software recognize it as an external storage in that can be managed via QTS Using the setup to store my movie files (Plexmedia server)and backup files. So far no issues. Special thanks for PLE for shipping this quick time (from New Zealand). Shipping time was better than some Australian based shops.PradeepP17

I ended up purchasing this product because it had decent reviews online and based on some YouTube reviews of the QNAP product overall. Although this is my first NAS, I'm not new to IT. I've developed a ton of software, built my own computers, etc. I was hoping that thing would just kind of work for what I needed it for – as an extra storage unit for my home network because our media library has grown a bit enormous. Alas, this has been nothing but a headache since I purchased it last year. From the initial setup and configuration to the major security problems, to their cloud access solution, to their virtual switches, etc. Everything I try to use with this software seems to have bugs of some sort. This is the worst hardware/software purchase I've made in the past two decades and it's not close. I've contacted their technical support team twice. Once I was connected with a technical representative who had to do some research on the problem I was having for about a week before he informed me that what I was trying to do wasn't possible because they use a unique version of Linux for their OS. Another time I called and someone from India answered the technical support line to tell me he couldn't really help me with any technical problems. I can't really understate the security issues that have been going on either. This past year, it's one security notification after another including what appears to be a major security concern associated with the web access for their myQNAPCloud service. I feel like having that access configured is basically creating a big hole in my own home network inviting ransomware in. And the pace of 'security alerts' that they've been sending out lately doesn't make me feel any better. I mean – it's great that they are looking for, finding, and fixing security problems. But it does seem like I get one security alert a week from QNAP saying that found another vulnerability. I could go on and on about how much of a pain in the side this machine has been for me but I'll just wrap up by saying this if you want something that just works don't even consider QNAP – just go with the Synology.Anonymous

My biggest issue with this product is that the product pushes 200+ MB/sec transfer rates. Sadly, I missed the fact that I had to purchase an optional 2.5/5gb USB dongle for the NAS. I thought it was getting 2gb over LACP/LAG paired 1gb connections. Dont get me wrong, the built in interfaces work fine at 1gb, but when you buy the additional QNA-UC5G1T for the NAS, as well as a 2.5gb/10gb QNAP switch, AND another QNA-UC5G1T for my PC…. all I get is my QNAP locking up the QNA-UC5G1T network adapter in the middle of file transactions. The only way to recover is to reboot the NAS. The adapter will suddenly go from working to just a rythmic on/off flashing state and no longer will respond to ICMP/ping. If you set the internal ports on the NAS to another address for fail over management, you can log into the NAS and see that the QNA-UC5G1Tadapter has gone disconnected. You can unplug, and replug but the only way to get it to work again is reboot the NAS. I have a support ticket with QNAP open for over EIGHT weeks now and they want me to RMA both the NAS and the adapter. I am confident this is an adapter only problem, but what am I do to? I am an enterprise QNAP customer as well with a QNAP device with over 32TB presented to vShpere hosts with dual linked 10gb iSCSI and it has been rock solid for years. I guess you really get what you pay for, I wanted a small economical NAS for home that I can also remote replicate to my QNAP in the data center, and all I got was a FARSE with NO support. If QNAP cannot address my issues with their product failure, I will be forced to sell this to someone else where 115MB/sec single gig is fast enough and move vendors to Synology. Just my experience and $0.02.Chris T.

I was lured by features and hardware specs that were priced below Synology’s equipment. But now I regret this purchase after experiencing the QNAP interface. Even my 2012 Synology DS712+ has better and way more responsive interface. It’s a stark difference. Also, I will not dare expose my QNAP NAS to the internet since their devices have been targeted multiple times by ransomeware. Apparently QNAP does not take security seriously.W.S.

AS I said before my ex4 was upgraded to only work on the local network. Red light on and drive degraded. Ordered a replacement drive and went to install after recreating logins (a pain) and found that drive OK and EX4 rebuilding. You owe we me a harddrive which I have now as a spare. NO WHERE DOES THE UPGRADE SAY IT WILL CAUSE ALL THESE PROBLEMS. LOGINS MUST BE RECREATED. RED LIGHT ON DRIVE 1 COMES ON AND SYSTEM DEGRADED, Overall a bad update causing lots of trouble and yes I rebooted a couple of times and red light on drive 1 was on after about 3 minutes NOTE I AM RAGING ON THE EX4 UNIT AND NOT ON THE PR4100. THE GOOD THING IS ACRONIS FOR WD WORKS GREAT NO WAY I COULD FIND EX4 TO COMPLAIN ABOUTWILDWILLIE

Implemented this NAS last March 30 in our home office. All good until it failed with 'Power Supply Failure' three times late September. Wd wanted to replace with 'reconditioned' one, I insisted on a new one. Replacement arrived 2 weeks later obviously used. Meantime I discovered mine works if I don't use my surge protector. And a caution:. This device is discontinued and no longer supported. Tech support could not figure out the problem. I returned the replacement and kept mine. I have mine loaded with 22tb of data and system backups, and I'm a bit nervous.skeleton

I am a 73 year-old retired Marine. I wanted all my files, pictures, music and programs backed up if one of our computers failed. I had my IT employed son on stand by to help me with the installation of my My-Cloud Expert SeriesEX4100. I unboxed the unit, looked through the quick start information and decided that I couldn't mess it up more than he could fix. In less than an hour, I had it attached to my home network and purring like a kitten. I proceeded to each of my home computers and selected the frequency and files to back up. I then set up each of our kids and grandkids with permissions as to what they could view and/or contribute to. Incredibly easy to set up. I went with a 40TB unit so I could have a RAID system to protect against one drive failing. This unit replaced a ten year-old MyCloud 4 TB that reached end of life. Never had one problem with it so -stay with what works.MarineBob48

Pros: All storage in one place – Lots of apps to explore Cons: I don't think of myself as a novice, as I studies computing at university. They NAS is Not easy to setup, I lost allot of files. The device is very slow to copy and load files using Macbook and not clear if Direct USB drives have been copied correctly. It doesn't seem to like apple filing very much. Not so easy to use with a number of devices although it prefers windows. A more detailed setup manual would be useful (although I understand that online apps are always evolving).It took nearly two weeks to move over 1.8tb of files correctly. The 3Gb drive looses about 30% space due to system usage, so be sure to allow for this when choosing your drive sizeJD

I bought this as a second NAS to synchronize with my primary NAS at the studio. For that function it's working great – synchronizing automatically across the Internet using several easy to create jobs for different file types. And it provides a live copy of all my data so I now have a COOP (continuity of operations plan) that works well. I can pick up editing images at home from where I left off when I left the shop, and I had power go out for an entire day at the studio, just drove home and kept on working. For this the NAS is fantastic. I bought this model with the video support hoping I could retire my Intel NUC running Kodi as a multimedia server in my home theatre. While I can load KODI (no longer formally supported but manually installable) I found Hybrid Desk Station (the app that controls the video) to be somewhat unstable and many of the modules are just web pages that don't render properly if you are using this in a home theater setting. I'm still giving this 4 stars as it's performing its primary tasks brilliantly.Jim

I give it a solid 4 — I was having some serious issues with some of my 15MB/s MKV files not playing on my 5G wireless Ipad Airs with my old HP Proliant N40L server (also had 8 GB RAM and a RAID controller). Issue appeared to be CPU power couldn't drive some of the direct play files so this was a good fix. Also should use less energy than the Proliant setup. Still will keep the old set up Proliant offsite as redundant store and change over to RAID 0.Anonymous