Synology 2-Bay NAS DS223 (Diskless)

I had a bad experience about 7 years ago with another brand of NAS that was very difficult to set up and saved data in a proprietary compressed format. That NAS failed within a couple of years, taking my data with it. I needed a NAS to better manage and access the videos I produce for my YouTube channel.This time around I went with Synology as it appears to be the market leader for home use and does not compress data by default. In addition, the industry has progressed a lot in the last seven years. I chose the Synology DS423 as it has four bays so there is room for expansion but it also is full featured. I have a home network with internet from a cable that connects to the router and modem. I have Cat5e cabling that goes to three different rooms in the house and also goes via underground conduit to the shop building on my property that connects to a wireless access point for my shop. I have several wireless extenders set up as well. The first thing I did was install an ethernet switch to the router to which the incoming cable is connected. All my wired connections including the NAS and my TV are connected to the switch. I knew it would take some time to get the NAS set up and to learn how to use it but after about a week of part time fiddling, it seems to be fully functional. There are tons of Youtube videos on how to set up Synology NAS units. I set mine up as RAID 1 so the two disks I installed are mirrored (both are 4 Tb SATA SSDs that are not on the Synology approved list but they work fine). When larger capacity SATA SSDs become affordable I'll add a second set in the other two bays but for now the 4 Tb of mirrored storage gives me security and plenty of storage for the videos I produce for my YouTube channel. As expected, there is a learning curve, but now the NAS is working perfectly and is extremely fast even though my cabling only supports 1 Gb transfer speeds. I have mapped the NAS to both of my Windows machines using SMB and it works flawlessly. My go-to laptop around the house for watching Youtube, doing email etc is an HP Chromebook plus, and I eventually figured out how to map the NAS to it as a shared drive. There is a lot of conflicting information on the internet about how to do that but once I sat down and worked through the information, it turned out to be easy. Once that was set up it the NAS showed up on my android phone file manager as well.I did not intend to use the Photo feature of the NAS to back up my phone photos but tried it and it worked well. I had already organized my photos into folders on the phone. On the NAS, it kept the folders I had set up on the phone but also arranged the photos within the folders by year and quarter, which was nice. Now I can access them from any of my devices.I'm sure there is a lot more to learn but I've got the essentials up and running and it has been a very positive experience requiring some patience but I am glad I chose this particular NAS and I see why Synology is the leader in this market.

I have been a fan of Drobos for decades, but recently when one of my Drobos failed I found out that Drobo is no more. The went out of business in 2020. So, the hunt was on for a replacement. The key feature (for me) of the Drobos was that they could hold drives of different sizes and would automatically adjust storage if a drive failed so that you only had to replace that one drive. To my knowledge none of the other DAS or NAS manufacturers supported this functionality. In my hunt, I looked at several NAS and when I got to Synology, I stopped in my tracks. Turns out Synology has an operating system for their NASs called SHR which stands for Synology Hybrid Raid. It doesn’t work like Drobo, but it is similar enough that you can put different drives in your drive station and the OS will handle it. The only down side from what I can determine is that when different size drives are used, then some space will be wasted because essentially the Synology SHR breaks each drive into very large chunks and pairs them up for data protection. If one of the drive chunks can’t be paired with a chunk on another drive then it will not be used. For example if you put a 4TB drive in your NAS paired with a 7TB drive, then SHR will only be able to match chunks for 4TB of total space and 3TB will be wasted. Not great, but usable until you can afford to buy another 7TB drive to match up with the 7TB you already have.Functionality: I wish I had known about the Synology SHR years ago, cause now that I bought their NAS and am learning about it, I am finding that there is an enormous amount of functionality that it brings to the table. I have struggled for years with sharing data between my Windows computer and my Macintosh because of the incompatible by design philosophy or either Microsoft, Apple, or both. The Synology NAS makes sharing data a breeze. Now, I need to mention that I am a software engineer (retired), so I am used to handling a certain level of complexity. So, I need to make it clear that Drobo was much simpler than the Synology NAS to setup. The Drobo was essentially a really big USB hard drive. You just format it and use it like any other drive. No muss no fuss. The Synology on the other hand is essentially a completely separate and very powerful computer that happens to have a whole bunch of storage in it. Synology try’s to make things simpler by allowing you to control everything through your web browser. Once you are connected to the NAS with you browser, you get what is actually a desktop on your NAS. I have included a screen shot of the desktop displayed in a browser window so you can see what I mean. The desktop includes various tools to adjust the configuration of you NAS as well as providing a way to download and install both updates, as well as additional applications (packages) for other things you might like your NAS to do. With Package Center you can install apps to turn your NAS into a download server, a DHCP server, And audio and or video media server, a mail server, you can load an office suite as well as a simple text editor, you can install a VPN server and eve a chat server. There are also Open Source applications that can be installed and also a category called Contributor that has some third party applications like TeamViewer and KodiExplorer.Overview: The DS423 I purchased has two Gig-T Ethernet ports on the back, along with two USB3 ports that can be used to backup the NAS to external USB drives. It has slots for four drives. As a replacement for my failed Drobo, the Synology NAS does a great job, at the expense of having to learn how to set it up. That is the only real down side. If you are a novice computer user, then you will need someone to set it up for you, or you will need to just go with a USB external hard disk and forget about using a NAS. The operating system in the NAS is Linux, but Synology has hidden it very well, so you don’t need to be a Linux expert, or even a Linux user to master the Synology, but you will need to brush up on some of the network terminology that is essential to configuring a NAS. Do I recommend the Synology NAS, definitely. I had mine up and running in a minimal configuration in a few hours, but exploring all the options takes time so expect to spend some additional hours learning some new stuff. By the way, Synology makes a 2 drive bay NAS DS223 that has all the capability of my DS423, but only costs $250. Add a couple of big drives and you have a pretty good backup system for little money.

A perfect product. Easy setup, expandable, quiet, efficient. I bought this on the advice of my son-in-law, an IT guy who has pulled all his information and creative programs off the Cloud, after losing information, and in fear that his proprietary programs and information might be pirated or stolen by hackers. He uses one himself, and advised me to use an initial roomy 16Tx2 drive setup, expandable as needed later, using the drives recommended by Synology, and running standalone. I installed the drives and downloaded the Synology software as called out in the quickstart guide, setup an account and passwords, and powered it up. After setting up the drive parameters- (There are some setup guides on youtube as well) it initialized and was recognized on my network. I have loaded about 3T of information so far, (Family photos, movies and documents accumulated over the last 50years (and longer) that were formerly spread over 5 local drives.) I have about another 2T to go, but it is a great convenience and makes it much easier maintain control of the data structure having it one place, and at long last there is hope that I may be able to bring order to my wife's CD filing system- (City Dump, not Compact Disc) - so give it a try- it seems pricey, but the expandability,and the fact that it has good expandability, and was purpose built as storage, (is not a computer that has been converted into the service,) should give the reliability needed. I wish it would have been available years ago-

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