Question Which Home NAS - Please help decide

[ketrab]

Hi,

So I'm looking for replacement of my old (6+ years) Seagate Home network drive. Some of the features that I'm looking in the new NAS:

1. Storage redundancy RAID 1 (don't need more than 2 disks)
2. Backup both Mac/PC
3. Photos backup for phones (to replace google or amazon)
4. Sharable folder structure to something like BOX where can create users and privileges.
5. Internet access to folders
6. Video and Music server (that works with appleTV i.e via app)
7. Budget - probably 400ish with drives.

So far I found two vendors Synology and QNAP but would like to get more opinion from the community.

From Synology I was looking at DS218j and from QNAP some like QNAP TS-251B.

Thank you in advance for any advise.

Regards

 

[kanewolf]

The DS218j or DS218play would be good choices. The Thecus N2350 and the Asustor AS1002T are alternatives.
The SmallNetBuilder website has very good tools and reviews of home NAS hardware
Remember that all the the NAS units you listed and the ones I listed are sold without disks.

 

[ketrab]

The DS218j or DS218play would be good choices. The Thecus N2350 and the Asustor AS1002T are alternatives.
The SmallNetBuilder website has very good tools and reviews of home NAS hardware
Remember that all the the NAS units you listed and the ones I listed are sold without disks.

@kanewolf thank you for the SmallNetBuilder webpage - Good stuff. Honestly, I would be looking at the two options - Can you give me your 2 cents on these two?

1)DS218j
-not hot swappable
-lower ram
-single network uplink
-powerful software (i.e appletv app)
-2 year warranty
2)QNAP TS-231P-US
-hot swappable
-dual network nic
-not sure about software - especially as video server and photos backup

Seems like this becomes more of a software battle than anything else. Which vendor software is more superior? Especially for the followings:

1. Photos backup for phones (to replace google or amazon)
2. Sharable folder structure to something like BOX where can create users and privileges.
3. Internet access to folders
4. Video and Music server (that works with appleTV i.e via app)

 

[kanewolf]

Dual NIC, not useful in home situation. Software, simlar on both units. Hot swap disk, not really a big feature for home use. I have only owned Synology units but I don't have any apple products so I don't know how well they play together.

 

[ketrab]

Dual NIC, not useful in home situation. Software, simlar on both units. Hot swap disk, not really a big feature for home use. I have only owned Synology units but I don't have any apple products so I don't know how well they play together.

Thanks for the feedback. Still struggling with the pick - sorry overthinking it.

1. Price point perspective - they match
2. From the hardware perspective - QNAP wins with more RAM + Video Transcoding + dual nic and hot-swappable (even though it may not be needed but its there for the same price)
3. Warranty - Synology wins with 2 years vs 1 year on QNAP
4. Software - This is where I struggle. Who has greater app support? Both can backup your machines and photos. Synology got its own nice video station app where QNAT you can do plex (although they have video app on appleTV)
5. Upgradability - How can you increase/migrate the capacity on either of the units? i.e lets say you start with 1TB but later you want to increase. Is there a good migration process or you would need to start over and it's probably advisable to start with bigger disks?

 

[ketrab]

@kanewolf also on your synology can you backup entire OS instead of folders? Similar to what time machine does. In case of disaster, you can just retrieve the whole OS?

 

[kanewolf]

I use the Synology as a destination for backups. I use Acronis as the backup software. Again, I have no experience with Apple products.

 

[ketrab]

I use the Synology as a destination for backups. I use Acronis as the backup software. Again, I have no experience with Apple products.

Just curious why not build in backup but Acronis?