Synology 2GB DS418 4 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure

Product Information

The best overall NAS from Synology is the DiskStation DS220+. This enclosure has two drive bays, allowing for up to 32TB of data to be stored. This is more than enough for most NAS owners who are new to the market, and the 2GB of non-upgradable DDR4 RAM is brilliantly matched to the Intel Celeron J4025 processor. Usable capacity for each volume will be lower than the maximum volume size and is dependent on the filesystem and the amount of system metadata stored.

Many thx if someone far more intelligent then me , possible a bit younger while containing much more knowledge then me could help me. Despite the Synology hardware portfolio in the last year or so slowing moving towards more ‘file server’ and ‘high transfer speed’ processors, the Synology DS423+ NAS is the first release diskstation release from the brand in almost 2 years to arrive with an Intel Integrated graphics processor! Now, WHY is that a big deal for Plex, Emby and Jellyfin media servers? Don’t all the Synology NAS systems play 1080p and 4K media? Well, yes they do! But there is a certain contingent % of users who need their multimedia servers to convert (AKA transcode / encode/decode) their multimedia collection on the fly. In brief, must users have multimedia NAS needs that fall into the following categories: Update 25/02/23– Synology is having a remarkably busy start to 2023, with several high-profile NAS solutions being introduced to the market and today we want to discuss one that many have been waiting to hear about for quite a while – The Synology DS423+ NAS. With some much of Synology’s hardware output in the last year or so feeling that they were erring more and more in the direction of business users, it is quite a breath of fresh air to hear that Synology is releasing a new desktop 4-Bay that is arguably more multimedia friendly. Serving as the followup to the summer 20202 released DS420+, this new 4-Bay is an Intel Celeron-powered compact system that (although not exactly reinventing the wheel – more on that later) is a slight shake-up of what we have come to expect from this dual-core equipped tier of the brand’s portfolio. Let’s discuss the Synology DS423+ Diskstation. I will also be maxing out the M . 2 slots with the highest expandability **STRICTLY for Caching only** The Synology DS420+ is essentially the same as the DS220+, but with a few notable differences. Instead of the front plate, you've got full access to the drive bays without having to detach anything. This NAS also has four bays instead of two. Then there are the smaller differences, like the addition of M.2 SSD cache support and an eSATA port.A arguably smaller point here and one that has increased in it’s important lately! Unlike a number of higher profile (i.e more powerful and expensive) NAS systems in the Synology NAS portfolio that have much stricter supported official HDD and SSD compatibility/support, the Synology DS423+ supports pretty much everything you would expect! As long as it is SATA and 2.5/3.5″ – they will almost certainly appear on the Synology compatibility lists. There is still talk of Synology releasing a standard class range of HDDs (to accompany their existing enterprise HDDs and SSD media), but if/when they do, they will likely always allow competitor 3rd party HDDs in the WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf NAS drive series to be used on value series NAS like the DS423+. They DO only support upto 18TB at the time of writing across all supported HDD brands, likely down to Synology’s own drives currently capping at 18TB, but most buyers of the Synology Diskstation PlusNAS systems like this one were far less likely to install HDDs of this scale! After a period of relative silence from Synology regarding their plans for their 2023 series of hardware and software, we finally have confirmation that their annual event is taking place! ‘ Synology 2023 and Beyond‘ will be a globally streamed event taking place on October 27th 2022 (times listed below, depending on your region) and will cover the brand’s plans for the next year+. These events (which in the years since the pandemic first arose have made the switch to digital exclusives) will feature the successes of the 2022 period, followed by the plans by the brand to improve existing features, introduce new ones and pepper the whole thing with their intended hardware products that will roll out in the next 12 months. Many of these we already know and have featured here on NASCompares, but I am sure there will still be some surprises along the way. You can read more about the timezones for this event and my predictions HERE in the full article. The one and only thing I don’t like about Synology multimedia apps or drive apps…. Is they TELL you where to put your media AND GENERALLY HAVE TWO-WAY SINK AS DEFAULT

I want to be able to run my own home lab on this with Plex, a few containers, including pie hole, maybe a Minecraft server for the family, and ability to run OwnCloud for family google photos and apple drive replacement. RS822+/RS822RP+ supports up to 8 drives with the addition of a Synology RX418 expansion unit, sold separately. Thank you for the time you have put into these comparisons. I have had a lifetime Plex pass for over 10 years, but switched to Jellyfin two months ago. Maybe my observations will help someone, sorry if it gets a bit wordy..My thoughts: If you’re looking at the DS220+ as the perfect NAS but find the two drive bays a little too limiting for storage capacity, the DS420+ may be a better option. It has four drive bays and even SSD caching support. A RAID 5 or 6 (from my understanding, the major differences are the amount or drives that can fail at once). If my understanding is correct, then the cinfig will be RAID 6. As a better, more secure solution. This enclosure also supports up to 8GB of RAM, compared to the 6GB in the DS420+. Then you have full enclosure support (via the eSATA port), allowing you to throw in the Synology DX517 into the mix and add a further nine drives. Other than these improvements, the two NAS are pretty much identical in size and design. All NAS systems in this guide are compatible with (and can be accessed by) Windows, Mac, Android and Linux operating systems If you have been looking at Synology or a more cost-effective, low-price and highly power-efficient NAS drive in 2022/2023, then there is a very good chance that you have been wondering about the release of the DS123, as the current affordable ‘standard series’ offering of the DS118 has been available now for well over FOUR AND A HALF YEARS! Well, I am pleased to share that I have been informed that Synology has plans to release the newest entry into their standard class tier with this new 1-Bay NAS in the last quarter of 2022 (or possibly the start of 2023). This little snippet of information (alongside mention of other new desktop NAS’, such as the DS223j, DS223+, DS723+ and DS923+), details which units are going to form the bulk of the brand’s home-prosumer-SMB diskstation portfolio. The DS2xx and DS4xx series have always been highly desirable as the entry point for most first-time Synology NAS small business users and although is a solution that arrives with hardware that could arguably be called ‘economical’, it is worth also remembering that it will almost certainly arrive with support of DSM 7 – so you are going to be looking at an affordably jumping off point into a complete hardware+software solution. Although the details we have on the DS123 are incredibly thin on the ground at the time of writing, this information DOES come from a very trustworthy source that I am sorry to say I cannot share. I am sure this will result in many having doubts about the reliability of this information (I would feel the same), but you are just going to have to trust me on this and/or wait out the rest of 2022 as this all plays out. Let’s discuss the DS123 a little further.

The DS920+ is powered by a quad-core 2GHz Intel Celeron J4125 processor and has 4 gigabytes (GB) of DDR4 RAM that can be expanded to 8GB. It uses two whisper-quiet, multi-speed system fans to keep internal components cool and can be populated with 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA or SSD drives (hot swappable) for a total of 64 terabytes (TB) of internal storage. It also has two built-in M.2 SSD slots for cache acceleration (accessible from the bottom of the enclosure) and can be expanded to 144TB using a Synology DX517 Expansion Unit. The DS920+ supports the Btrfs and ext4 file systems and offers several RAID types, including Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR), Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10. What we said in our Review – The QNAP TS-451D2 is an interesting solution to add to the range at the tail end of 2020 for the company, sandwiched in between the launch of newer business devices and likely one of the last units in the QNAP D series. The brand has long since shaken off the reputation of being a hardware provider and light software provider, becoming something much, much even. With a huge number of first-party applications in the QNAP QuTS library (many of which are genuinely unique) as well as releasing an affordable 4-Bay NAS solution that has aimed itself at the new NAS buyer, or the NAS user who wants to spend a little now but can expand greatly later.If the DS220+ isn't quite good enough for your needs or simply seek something with a little more functionality, the DS420+ is a great step up and takes our runner-up spot. Because we're looking at an additional two bays, Synology included an extra fan, which means the DS420+ runs cool, and you barely notice any noise. I think it would be fair to say that, when it comes to users who are making the jump professionally from Cloud to their own private server, the 4-Bay NAS market is often their first choice! Aside from the obvious benefits in capacity (NAS hard drives are now available at 22TB and 24TB is just around the corner) and redundancy (i.e safety nets), 4 disk servers tend to be where NAS brands introduce better hardware internally and externally. As NAS technology has improved year on year, the standard of the average prosumer/small-business 4-Bay NAS has increased quite substantially – all the while with the price point largely remaining the same at each tier (give or take a few %). So, today I want to discuss the very best 4-Bay NAS drives that you can buy right now at the end of 2022 and into 2023. I have reviewed hundreds of NAS devices in the last few years, and I can comfortably say that 2022/2023 has easily been the most competitive. We have seen the evolution of M.2 NVMe SSD use in these systems extending to caching and storage across all NAS brands, the continued growth of 2.5GbE, a new generation of processors arrive that open the doors to larger bandwidth internally and all the while, the software that all these devices arrive with become incredibly diverse and capable! So, let’s get down to it, what are the best 4-Bay NAS drives of 2022 and 2023? Let’s go. What Have All the Best 4-Bay NAS Drives Have in Common?