Synology 2-Bay DiskStation DS723+ (Diskless)

I needed to replace my aging WD NAS, which was struggling to keep up with my needs. After quite a bit of research and product comparisons, I decided to go with the market leader, and bought a NAS that seemed likely to be able to support my needs for several years, and offered some options for expanding the ways I use a NAS. For context, I mainly use my NAS as "network-attached storage": I back up files, and I share files for use on our multiple home computers. I don't use it for remote access (security concern: I'd rather use cloud storage services for that), and I don't use it as a repository for a media server, or anything else like that. I decided to use WD "Red" drives for this unit: based on specs and user and professional reviews, they seemed most likely to run reliably for as long as I needed. My previous experience with WD black, blue, and red drives has been consistently positive, whereas other vendors have let me down. Installation and setup was very easy: I had the unit up and running within a few minutes. Copying files over from my old NAS took some time, but the performance of this Synology unit exceeded my expectations. I was also pleased with how much faster my backup jobs were. I was especially pleased when apps that use network files began running much faster: so clearly both read and write performance were much improved in comparion with the old system. I also set up a USB backup. It took a little bit of reading in the Synology KB to learn how to do it right, but after that it was a breeze. I plugged in a USB hard drive in the back port (the front port can be configured for use with the USB Copy button), opened up the Hyper Backup app, and ran the initial backup to copy the entire NAS contents to the USB drive. Then I scheduled it to run incremental jobs every day, so now my paranoid backup demon is happy. (I save backup drives in a secure location to provide "disaster recovery"; overkill perhaps, but it buys peace of mind.) One criticism: the unit came with only 2GB memory, which seems cheesy. And what makes is super-cheesy is the way they price their branded "compatible memory" at ridiculous multiples of the market price. I was able to buy a 4GB Samsung memory card for under $15, and it worked just fine. You can do a web search and see that others have upgraded using larger memory cards. The Synology KB website is very good: it's well written and comprehensive. There's also an active user community, so there is a ton of information easily available. Overall I'm very happy with my Synology purchase, and would buy their NAS products again without hesitation.

So far I do like it. Overall the product is what I expected and meets our household needs. It's fairly easy to set up and deploy, so I have no negative comments there. I do wish the directions and assorted videos were a bit more easier to follow and Synology realised not all users have the background or terminology to understand everything. If you're looking to buy a NAS (and I would 100% suggest this model for basic household use because of price, etc.), I hope my following suggestions help: 1. Organize, organize, organize! My biggest headache was that my digital data and digital artifacts (files, pictures, videos, etc.) were spread across a combination of drives and flashdrives i.e. external hard drives, disks, flashdrives, etc. accumulated over a good 20 year period. I started copying files and ran into issues like where my cords were (apparently I forgot over the years different devices had different power sources, cords, etc.) 2. Patience young grasshopper! Many of my files over the years started with weird characters, periods, dashes, in some cases the entire first sentence of a document. File extensions that looked like might have come from an old word processor I once had in the 90s. Definitely some file extensions that were from various Nintendo handheld devices, PDAs, etc. So there seemed to be a bunch of pop-up warnings when transferring. Overall, I think the NAS captured all the important stuff, but like I said, I had 3 different WD and ioSafe 2TB external devices, and I didn't bother to check if everything went over. 3. Where do I put things? I was a bit confused about the whole Shared Folder vs. Folders that seemed to already populate (photos, music) Synology Photos, Music apps, etc. I still really haven't figured that part out so I just created a folder, then basically dumped all my device files into it. Like I said, this is for the house, nothing I need to worry about other household members accessing, so i went the easiest way. Share and share alike, I guess. 4. The wireless/hardwired ethernet stuff was easy to set-up. Synology pretty much does everything for you. But it is so SLOW! My mistake was that I believed because I was using an ethernet cable from my laptop to my Netgear router and a cable from Synology to Netgear router this would be the fastest way. It wasn't until I remembered that you can create a network on your laptop and that seriously sped things up. It was a bit more complicated to set up though. Now I have a "drive" all I do is connect to and it acts like any other external hard drive I've used in the past. 5. Hardware: Definitely decide what you want. I went with 2 4tb drives. I wish now I saved up and went with 2 6 or 8tb drives. 4tb filled up super fast! I went with the Iron Wolf and Synology 4TB HDD models. THey work great. 6. Upgrade that RAM before you start. I upgraded to TimeTec 4gb because of price and reviews. It did make a difference. I think it's more than enough for what I need. 7. Watch a bunch of YouTube videos! Some are really good, some are too advanced, so just look for some that meet your needs. 8. I highly recommend this product or at least a NAS type set up. it's easy to use. So far we love it. Organizing videos and photos has been really fun for us in the evenings. Watching the children from birth to now age 20+ makes for nice memories in the kitchen, plus there's no good shows on TV to stream anyway. Hope this helps.

I purchased the Synology DS224+ NAS primarily as a media server. My requirements were pretty straightforward. I was in the process of transferring and consolidating years of analog and digital multimedia. I was not comfortable with sticking with cloud storage. Unpredictable internet speed demanded local storage for performance. So, I decided to get a networked storage device that was fast and simple to set up and maintain. After considerable research, I settled on Synology's DS224+. I had some experience using Plex on my PC with an external drive, so the built-in Plex Server app was a bonus. The setup of the RAID 1 (other options are available) dual drive (drives purchased separately) was straightforward using the Linux-based DSM 7 operating system. My knowledge of networking is limited, so it took some poking around to figure out how to map a shared folder on the NAS to a lettered drive on my PC. Transferring all of the media files from my PC to the NAS was incredibly fast once the setup was complete. Performance using LAN Plex clients on my PC, Android tablet, Roku, and phone was better than I expected. The DSM 7 OS has a rich set of apps for backing up, taking snapshots, and setting up a cloud-based drive service. Those were very easy to set up on both the NAS side as well as the PC client side. I decided to take it one step further and set up remote access. The DSM 7 NAS OS has options for VPN service. So, I decided to set up the OpenVPN server. This is where things get sticky. Without getting into all of the details, the default VPN configuration makes some minor security compromises, perhaps to accommodate older client configurations. I had to make some tweaks to the configuration and regenerate the security certificate key to get a sold VPN connection with no warnings. So, you may want to have someone handy who knows a bit about VPN setup to help out, or be prepared to do some research! Alternatively, you can connect remotely using Synology's QuickConnect. The setup is straightforward. It may not be entirely as secure as a VPN connection since it relies on Synology's servers, and you can't access other devices on the LAN remotely. All that being said, if you simply want remote access to your NAS, I would recommend using QuickConnect simply based on easy of setup and use. The Plex performance was so good that I decided to ditch my Tablo and purchase an HDHomeRun quad tuner as an add-on to the Plex server. That was super easy to set up. Now, I have an Over The Air DVR setup that integrates with all of my other media. So far, I have found the Plex's performance and reliability to be far superior to the Tablo, especially when accessing it remotely. If you are simply looking for a simple home NAS and media server setup, the Synology DS224+ provides a solid solution at a reasonable price. Add on a multi-channel network tuner and you end up with a setup that will seriously tempt you into cutting the cord on cable and paid streaming services. If you are willing to fiddle around with the setup a bit, you get the added functionality of a secure VPN connection into the NAS and Media Server as well as other devices on your home LAN. Bottom line: The Synology DS224+ is solid winner in the entry level NAS arena.

Ever since Apple discontinued the Time Capsule a few years ago I have been looking for a worthy successor to handle backups for my Macbooks. The Time Capsule just worked, and although it did little else but Time Machine backups, it did them well and with little effort on my part. First I tried building one with an old computer and FreeNAS. It was a FrankenNAS assembled from the corpses of PCs past, and although it worked okay, I wanted something more compact and with better components. When I originally started shopping for a NAS I had quickly narrowed it down to two devices, IIRC, the Synology DS218 and the Buffalo Link Station. I made the mistake of trying to save a few bucks and went with the cheaper Link Station. I limped along for about a year or so. It needed to be reset on a near daily basis and it would always drop connections in the middle of backups. On the occasions that I could get a backup to save, it took all damn day and I felt like I had to babysit it constantly. In short, it just wasn’t working out for me. Fast forward to 2022 and I have a new Macbook coming. My preference is to use my Time Machine backup to perform the migration from the old Macbook, so I was already placing a renewed scrutiny on the Link Station. Fed up and frustrated with an oft-failing device, I happened to see the DS220+ at a rather steep discount during the Prime Day sale. It was a no-brainer purchase. The difference was night and day. Every aspect of the DS220+ was an improvement on the LInk Station. Where the DS220+ really shines though is a software suite that Synology has developed called DSM (DiskStation Management). It’s an OS in it’s own right, including a web interface and various mobile apps. It has SSH terminal access if you absolutely need a command line, but honestly, DSM makes that entirely unnecessary. The feature set on this is beyond anything that I will ever fully utilize, and this device would be equally at home in a multi-user business setting. There are numerous pros, and I have yet to really encounter a con yet. * It has a package manger to install third party software. There are servers for days; mail servers, web servers, media servers, chat servers, etc. Like web development, install LAMP with Docker. * Security is covered. It has virus scanners and has it’s own firewall. Just run the security scanner and it tells you where you need to shore up protection. It even supports MFA for those admin accounts you want to keep locked down. * Did I mention Docker? You can run VMs on it. * It is very well documented, with a robust support system to match. I haven’t even scratched the surface with all that it can do. It’s an impressive device, and probably a bit more than I’ll realistically need, but it just works and so far it does everything I need it to well. It was well worth the money and I would wholeheartedly recommend this NAS to anyone in the market for one.

I've been using this NAS for about 3 weeks now with 2 10TB drives in RAID 1 configuration. So far, I'm generally happy with the purchase. Build/materials: The case gets the job done, but the plastic cover the goes over the drives and is held in place with rubber grommets seems a bit cheap. The plastic clips on the drive trays also seem a cheap option. However, it works and even these areas of concern have not caused any issues so far. Since I don't plan to be frequently swapping drives these are minor gripes. Specifications: The biggest complaint I've got so far is the installed 2GB of RAM on this model. If the intended purpose is strictly to use this for file storage and transfer, that's probably sufficient. But I wanted to do a bit more (nothing really intense) and quickly found the system using swap space on the drives causing significant performance issues. To add insult to injury, the official Synology branded memory was all insanely overpriced when I looked into an upgrade. However, I did find a 4GB Samsung module (4GB DDR4 PC4-21300, 2666MHZ, 260 PIN SODIMM, 1.2V, CL 19) that I purchased for 1/5 the price at the time that has worked flawlessly so far. That cheap upgrade has made the a far more capable little box and transformed me from someone starting to have buyer's remorse into a delighted user. Installing the RAM was not difficult, but it was nerve racking picking a module that would be compatible as there are reports of Synology NAS units throwing warnings when using non-Synology modules. Use: General use of the system has been relatively straightforward. I have a strong computer background and have not had any serious issues. I would expect most tech savvy folks to be able to manage this will little trouble. However, there is the occasional oddity that leads to some frustration. For example, enabling the virus scanning was easy enough, but trying to manually update the virus definitions does not work - UI doesn't return an error, but the updating message does not change and nothing happens. However, scheduling the update to happen on a scheduled basis before the scan works fine. It appears this is due to the scheduled operation running under an account with different privileges than an admin user. While this isn't necessarily a big deal, it does result in a little confusion/frustration. Overall I'm satisfied and would buy again if I were to do it over again. I'd just go in with the mindset that the RAM could be a significant bottleneck for some use cases and be prepared to upgrade.

If you are looking at this product, you are probably looking at NAS from synology and QNAP. First, I recommend that you go with synology. Synology software is more secure, feature rich and easier to use. QNAP has a history of security vulnerabilities. Nothing can redeem a device that loses all of your data to ransomware. Synology software is fairly slick and just works. It does everything you need and is simple enough for lost if us to use. Second, I recommend this entry level business synology for most consumers and small businesses. It supports raid. That makes data more secure and makes recovery a snap if one drive fails. It also makes upgrading hard drive size a snap. Just put one new, larger drive in, let it replicate, then install the 2nd larger drive. Upgrading to a new NAS is much easier when you have a raid pair, too. This is also the cheapest synology to support active backup for business. That is a free backup client that can backup all of your connected macs and pc’s. That alone can pay for this device. Synoligy C2 online backuo is affordable and easy to use with this. It makes for simple backup. At my home I also use DS video to store all of our videos. No looking for dvds or blu rays. All of our home videos are easily accessible as well. We can also connect to our movies from anywhere. When we go out of town, we just bring our chromecast and can watch our entire movie library. We also store our surveillance cam footage on this too. You get two free licenses, but have to pay about $50 each for additional cameras. The surveliimce software works adequately, but it is probably the weakest feature that I use. You can set up a VPN, which works well and is easy time use. We use synology drive which is kind of a private Dropbox, for remote access and sharing of files. The iOS client works well. It alsi has a cloud sync client so you can sync your NAS to things like Dropbox, Google drive and OneDrive. This is an easy, affordable, secure, robust file server that lets you do so much more. I recommend.

I read a lot of reviews, and chose the 2-bay w/4TB Seagate IronWolf Pro disks. I selected the Pro disks as: 1) not that much more than the standard NAS-quality IronWolfs; 2) 7,200 RPM rather than 5,200 RPM - speed matters. For my use, I found the default 2GB DDR4 RAM to be sufficient. It can go to 6GB, however, don't know who sells 6GB DDR4 RAM... Sure, a 4GB DDR4 RAM stick is $20, but I skipped it. I still get 980Mbps transfers over a 1Gbps LAN switch (see more below). If needed, you can always do the upgrade when you need it. The other reviews really flesh out why this is a great NAS. At least one reviewer mentioned YouTube's MyDooDads videos, incredibly helpful for anyone to get to know this device. Short how-to videos for beginners to advance IT users. Just watch them, well worth it. I'm an IT infrastructure consultant, and have architected and designed Tier 1 providers networks. I'm not a SAN/NAS expert however I do know a lot. Each vendors' NAS O/S is different, and worth learning how to get the most out them. The one thing I found was the network speed: I'm using the 2x1Gbps bonded connection (simple set-up in Control Panel -> Connectivity -> Network -> Network Interface). I have a one year old Lenovo X390 ThinkPad with a 1Gbps UTP connection to a 1Gbps Netgear switch. When running backups using GoodSync, I routinely get 980Mbps throughput (my 7 year old WDC NAS would vary from 98Mbps to 230Mbps) - this is wicked fast like a colonoscopy prep (TMI?). My laptop and DS220+ connect to the same LAN switch that then connects to my router for ISP access. For backups, I prefer a wired 1Gbps connect over wireless. SHR (Synology Hybrid RAID) looks like a good choice if you think you'll want to upgrade disk size - I think for the vast majority of users this will be a good no-brainer choice. I started with 2x4TB disks, I'm only using 17% and no plans for the need for a lot of storage at this time. In a few years, I will probably want to replace the drives and will go larger as prices will drop. I can take out one 4TB drive and replace it with a larger drive. Once it is sync'ed. I'll swap out the other 4TB drive with a matching-sized disk (probably 8TB or 12TB, we'll see). Pretty straight forward as long as the chassis is healthy. I will refer to the MyDooDads video when it is time to replace disks to make sure don't hose my data. Other RAID options are available, I just felt like SHR is what I needed. Nothing exotic, I just need a reliable NAS for backups, and eventually a place to host videos I moved from VHS & Hi8 to DVD so i can get rid of the DVD media. I don't play music in the house. My wife likes music like "Air Supply" (or as I call it "sappy chick songs") and I like R&B, Motown and Cool/Bebop Jazz (I was a disco DJ for 2 years while in college) - does it get any better than Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck or Kool and the Gang's "Summer Madness" and "Open Sesame" on Klipshorns powered by Mcintosh! You'll enjoy this speed demon and really nice GUI. One more thing: I use static addresses for the 2x1Gbps ports - clean, simple and I don't need to risk a DHCP change to mess with. I use static addresses for printers and NAS stuff.

The DS224+ arrived 4 days earlier that originally promised. I'm pleased with how the process(es) have gone. NAS disks have been here for 2 weeks, and extra 4 GB ram, longer than that. The NAS server (my 3rd Synology NAS) went together super fast. The 2 Ironwolf 8 TB drives plugged into the removable drive carriers, are accessible from the front, and are apparently hot-swappable. The whole drive and RAM installation went together in less than 30 minutes. I'm using a stick of Crucial 4 GB (less than $17 from Amazon) and it's running fine so far. I know the warranty requires use of Synology or other approved RAM, but the Crucial had good reviews and it's cheap. I needed two tries to get the little memory board in its proper place, but once done (a little extra but careful push in the initial placement) and clicked down, the NAS Control Panel/Info Center acknowledged and is now using the extra memory. Less than two hours in the door, the NAS is in its rack spot, being populated with bike racing videos coming over from an earlier device (218j). As a test, I streamed a race MPG while the other files were being loaded, and the performance was excellent. To summarize: The Synology DS224+ arrived earlier than promised, went together very quickly, and setup was simple. It's in productive operation 2 hours and 20 minutes after I picked it up off the porch. If things change much, I'll come back and update/edit this review. Right now, I'm very pleased with all parties.

One of the best 2 Bay NAS station for Home Users. Especially for MAC users who had a limited storage space, this NAS supports BTRFS file format which makes easy to use and configure for multiple platforms(MacOS, Windows, Linux). My only issue with this is that the RAM can only be maxed out at 6GB; 2GB installed 4GB expandable ( you can increase the size by installing a higher memory but do it at your own risk as there is a tendency that it will not boot your NAS if you do so). Aside from that everything is perfect.

Uff!! De las mejores nas que hay, excelente producto fácil y rápida de configurar e implementar compatible con ssd y hdd de gran capacidad. El sistema operativo es de los mejores que hay en el mercado. Gran calidad de construcción es un producto premium

I bought this NAS for one of my projects on Synology but I m using it on daily basis. It's worth the price

wie immer tolle Qualität, Synology halt :-P

Cuando lo tengas listo, activa el Firewall Prometo comprarme unos discos de NAS como dios manda! pero de momento, me tira y sino mirad el reddit... Synology es la mejor marca por su Software y esto lo puedo escalar a 32GB de ram, con hasta 800 de M.2 (hasta 2 ranuras) y 18 TB de discos x2 asi que