Best Starter Synology NAS in 2024 (dont waste your money)

Summary

In 2024, choosing the right starter Synology NAS demands a keen understanding of models and configurations. SpaceRex delves into how newcomers can avoid common pitfalls, emphasizing the importance of starting with a 4-bay NAS equipped with expandable hard drives for future-proof storage solutions. He recommends models from the DS series, explaining features like btrfs support, RAM needs, and CPU capabilities, while also considering essential upgrades like networking options for power users. SpaceRex highlights models at various price points, from budget-friendly to more robust configurations, advising on which features are worth the investment for both home and business users.

Highlights

• Start with a 4-bay NAS and invest in large capacity drives for flexibility! 🔧
• btrfs support is a must for new Synology users considering RAID configurations. 🔄
• More bays provide more storage and redundancy options at minimal cost increase. 💾
• Networking capabilities enhance performance, especially for data-heavy tasks. 🌐
• The DS 423 Plus is great for media enthusiasts with its transcoding abilities. 🎥

Key Takeaways

• Always evaluate the number of bays; start with a 4-bay NAS for flexibility and expansion! 🚀
• Consider btrfs and RAM upgrades for better performance and future capabilities. 🧠
• Avoid filling all bays initially; buy bigger drives to allow room for growth. 🚧
• Networking speed might be crucial if you're transferring large files or using it as a media server. 📡
• The DS 1522+ is highly recommended for businesses due to its expanded capabilities and upgrade options. 🏢

Overview

Navigating the world of Synology NAS in 2024 can be daunting, especially for newcomers. SpaceRex walks us through the essentials of choosing a starter NAS, emphasizing the value of beginning with a 4-bay unit. This choice is more than a matter of storage; it's about ensuring one's setup is scalable for future demands. Don't just think about today—buy a NAS that will grow with your needs.

When diving into specific models, SpaceRex highlights the importance of btrfs support and RAM considerations. These aren't just fancy terms; they indicate how effectively your NAS will manage data and run additional applications, such as Docker or media streaming platforms. For those slightly tech-savvy, these recommendations are gold.

For those looking beyond basic file storage, SpaceRex points to networking capabilities. Are you a home lab hobbyist or a small business? The ability to upgrade RAM or networking options becomes crucial here, allowing for faster data transfer and more demanding usage. SpaceRex's thorough analysis ensures that whether you're a beginner or an enthusiast, there's a Synology NAS that fits your needs perfectly.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Starter Synology NAS Models This chapter provides an introduction to selecting starter Synology NAS models. It is tailored for first-time buyers who are interested in expanding their storage capacity and delving into new technology. The discussion will cover models up to an 8-bay, aimed at novices who don't yet have extensive RAID arrays but are ready to begin exploring NAS solutions.
• 00:30 - 04:30: Understanding Key Parameters of Synology NAS This chapter discusses the key parameters one should consider when acquiring a Synology NAS, using the Synology 923 Plus as an example. The main focus is on the number of bays a NAS has, which is a critical parameter in understanding and choosing a Synology NAS. The potential for expansion, as reflected in the naming conventions, is also highlighted.
• 04:30 - 10:00: Choosing Between Different Synology NAS Models This chapter discusses how Synology NAS model numbers are structured similarly to car models, incorporating elements like the release year and model features. The 'DS' in the model number indicates it's a disk station or a desktop unit. The plus ('+') designation means that the model has enhanced features compared to standard models. The narrator suggests that for most users, a plus model is recommended, while larger, more robust models may be necessary for some users.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Recommendations for Budget and Advanced NAS Models The chapter discusses the value in non-plus Network Attached Storage (NAS) models, emphasizing the importance of considering the number of drives (bays) when selecting a NAS. It advises against filling a 4-bay NAS with 4TB drives with just enough storage to meet current needs, warning that this approach may quickly lead to running out of space as needs grow over time.
• 15:00 - 20:00: High-End Synology NAS Options The chapter discusses the advantages of starting with a 4-bay NAS if the budget allows. It suggests that installing two 16 TB hard drives in the NAS allows for expansion and highlights the benefits of RAID systems, particularly in terms of redundancy. Smaller models often allocate one drive for space and parity.
• 20:00 - 24:00: Conclusion and Recommendations The chapter discusses the flexibility and scalability of storage solutions, emphasizing the ability to easily expand storage space by adding more terabyte drives. It highlights the scenario where starting with a certain amount of space (like 16 terabytes) can be seamlessly expanded to double the capacity, and then further increased by simply slotting in more drives. This approach is presented as highly practical and beneficial, catering to growing data storage needs. It also shares a personal anecdote of purchasing a limited-capacity storage bay, filling it up quickly, and the subsequent need for expansion, a common experience for many. The chapter ties this concept into a broader recommendation on planning for future storage needs and the advantages of starting with expandable systems.

Best Starter Synology NAS in 2024 (dont waste your money) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 all right how's it going yall So today we're going to be going over what are the best places to start if you're looking at buying a sonology NASA for the first time we're really going to be focusing on kind of starter nases I am going to go all the way up to an 8 bay just kind of cap it off and have that end there because there are few people who have these massive rate arrays already and are looking to get to a Nas but really the primary focus of this is going to be people who are just realizing hey I need an assas I want to get more shortage and I want to get into technology we're going to really going
• 00:30 - 01:00 to start where kind of the best values are and some stuff to avoid this right here is a Synology 923 plus and we're going to kind of talk about it because there are a few different things you need to look at whenever you're getting a Nas it's there's a few key parameters that really can basically summarize any Synology Nas at least the most important being number of Bays so this is a four Bay and the way the naming convention works that nine is because it can actually get a five bay expansion and so
• 01:00 - 01:30 that's how you get the nine and then the 23 means that it is a 23 model it's kind of car year it's just now November and they've already released 2024 models so it is very much car your style and the DS stands for disc station which means it is a basically a desktop unit and finally the plus means hey it's a little bit better than standard ones and for a lot of people I do recommend the plus units for larger ones though honestly
• 01:30 - 02:00 there's a lot of value right now in the non plus models that we're going to talk about so whenever you're getting an ass the single most important thing to look at is the number of a that's just where you need to start and one thing you really want to do is you really should not get a 4bay Nas and put four 4 tab hard drives in there because you need 12 terabytes of space today that's a common thing that people do and it means that in a year or so when you realize wow I've got all this space I'm using it more you're now now going to run out and
• 02:00 - 02:30 have no real option to upgrade instead what I would really recommend doing is by 4bay Nas if you've got the budget for it I think a 4B is a really great place to start buy a 4bay Nas and put two 16 TB hard drives in there what that really gets you is the ability to expand because when you're talking about raid especially raid with redundancy with smaller models basically always just take one drive and that's used for space and parody so so if you
• 02:30 - 03:00 start with that you're going to start with 16 tab usable space but if you start running out of space you can just slot another 16 terab hard drive boom hit expand and now you have 32 terabytes happens again one more and now you've got 48 terabytes really really really useful thing to be able to do and personally I bought a tubay filled it up immediately and then I had to grow on it is something that a lot of people do and it's one of those things that really just if you if you buy a 4bay and fill
• 03:00 - 03:30 it with two 16 tab drives you will very much extend out your investment and it just has a much more flexible solution so for people who are just starting out number of Bays by far the most important thing to look at and really kind of go off of that we're going to talk about it here and then there's a couple other things I do want to touch on and here it's going to be btrfs so I'm going to recommend a Synology with btrfs for every single person for starting and every one of these that I'm going to recommend on this list has BFS except for one of them which
• 03:30 - 04:00 it's just because of the price point it's hard to justify not getting that for people who are really looking at a low price point model the next thing to look at is the amount of ram one gig is going to be a bit slow if you're just planning on using it purely as a place to dump your files it'll be fine but two to four gigs is really what I would say especially if you want to start using some of the apps is where where it would be at but that is one of the things that nudges you up to that larger price points and things like that and finally the CPU the CPU is important for if
• 04:00 - 04:30 you've got Docker and some other support like that but for people who are really just starting out it is not too critical and you really kind of have to ask yourself is this something that I'm going to be using often and what apps am I going to be using and we're really going to be talking about that in this case finally there are two additional things that really kind of set different nases apart one is the ability for m.2 nvme ssds and you're going to see this as a really key selling point but for most starters who are really just kind of starting out and using it as a
• 04:30 - 05:00 general file server this is not something you really need to harp on and make sure you get if you're already getting a Nas and it has that capability go ahead and throw a cheap 500 gig SSD in there and make it a readon cache but for most people who are just starting out unless you know you're somebody who's tinkering running Docker all that kind of stuff you probably don't need to really worry about that and spend the extra money to get a unit with it because quite frankly it's not that critical for basic usage and then last lastly something that is very critical
• 05:00 - 05:30 for specific people is the ability to upgrade the networking so right now unfortunately all sonology is come with a one gig connection on them at least all the ones we're talking about now and compared to something like USB 3 that's slow now if you are just going to be accessing this thing over Wi-Fi and dumping some photos to it you're never going to notice the difference don't worry about networking but if you're somebody who's kind of a power user you want to start dumping movies and copying a bunch of files and you've got ter data
• 05:30 - 06:00 really look and see if you're going to be able to have a wire network if you are wired 1 GB your max transfer speed will be about 120 megabytes per second which is the speed of a slow external hard drive so that's about what it is now if you go to 10 gig and 2.5 gig you can get much faster speeds depending on your number of hard drives in your array finally for people who are kind of knowing they're going to Tinker more and want to play around and really want to get into that home lab space check out and make sure it's got the ability to run container manager and possibly
• 06:00 - 06:30 virtual machines for most people you probably just need container manager and now if you are going to be running virtual machines really make sure you've got enough RAM for that because those are the one things that are a ram hog to be fair Linux you can have a very lightweight Linux distro that uses 500 megabytes of RAM and runs quite frankly fine so that is going to be the key specs to look at we're going to kind of go over each of these at these price points right now and we're going to kind of start at the very cheapest one
• 06:30 - 07:00 and that right here is the DS 120j it is the only sub $100 unit and if you are really trying to hit that price point it's the only option it is the only one that we're talking about here that has no btrfs on it but it's just a single Bay and if you're just looking to get started and want to just do very very very basic things it is hard to beat with this price point it's also something that if you do upgrade to larger unit later on you can use it as a
• 07:00 - 07:30 backup Target which is nice but this is a very very very lowcost unit and you only get one drive for that so you won't be able to do any kind of redundancy but for this price point you're really not worried about that you're just worried about having a central Cloud if you're trying to hit that price point that's the only reason I would get it otherwise I would really look to go into a larger unit I would not recommend buying the DS 124 quite frankly because it is just one
• 07:30 - 08:00 Bay and is only $10 cheaper than the DS 223j which is basically the exact same system right here this is at $190 the DS 223j is $190 the ds24 is $180 I would really just go straight to the DS 223j in that case even if you just stick one hard drive in there they both have btrfs and I think essentially the same CPU in them but it's really one
• 08:00 - 08:30 of those things that the extra bays are going to be so much better of an upgrade than anything else so I would just straight up skip the 124 and go to the 223j just because you've got the Xtra Bay that's a huge upgrade for $10 so then moving on up the product tree and the next one I would definitely skip is the $250 DS 223 quite frankly I just don't see as enough of an upgrade over the DS 223j to to justify a massive price increase for that it's like 70
• 08:30 - 09:00 bucks more expensive and it's just honestly not worth it because I think the only thing that gets you is an extra 1 gbyte of ram which at this price level and at this amount of ram it's difference between 1 and 2 gigs is substantial but it's just much harder to justify that price given how limited it is with the only the two bays I would probably really try to push for the 423 just because if you're looking at this as a overall investment the the cost of your hard drives are very
• 09:00 - 09:30 quickly going to be more expensive than the cost of this unit and so having a much more flexible unit that you can add drives to later on with a 4 Bay I think is really valuable now if you're somebody who knows you're never going to really be growing at all then there's reason to have this but otherwise I would really look at running the DS 423 though it does come in at 370 which is a substantial price hike now we are talking about a 4bay Nas and so you're definitely going to be spending more on your hard drives for this than on your
• 09:30 - 10:00 overall Nas itself which is one of those things you need to keep in mind just because the Nas is $100 more expensive does not mean that that is going to be $100 cheaper if you buy the cheaper one especially once you start including raid math in there if you're going to be running a redundant raid in that same vein we're going to be going over and we're going to be skipping over the 220 plus and the 224 plus unless you're really somebody who just needs the ability to upgrade your RAM I would really recommend if you're if you're in that section probably go the 723 but
• 10:00 - 10:30 there's very few people who really are in this section right here I would next up really look at the DS 423 Plus or if you are Savvy and okay buying something used look at the DS 920 plus from last generation because they're basically the same thing now the DS 423 plus is the first one here that I'm recommending that does have that upgradeable Ram starts off with two gigs which is a
• 10:30 - 11:00 little limited but it does have the ability to add another four gigs to it which is going to be night and day for people who are running dock containers tinkering and things like that and so it's a solid unit for that it does have the ability to also have NVM drives which is a nice to have but not really something you should be looking out and buying especially at these levels just because it's quite frankly not that critical and one other thing that this DS 423 plus does have going for it is this Intel cellon CPU it is the only
• 11:00 - 11:30 lineup we're really talking about here that still has Intel Quicks sync on it so if you are often using Plex transcoding and you've got a Plex pass this right here is going to punch above its weight class for Plex Hardware transcoding because it has an actual GPU in there that can actually assist in the encoding and decoding of h264 video so that means that your actual Plex server can run much much much faster even though this is a less powerful CPU so for people who are looking for that
• 11:30 - 12:00 this is why it's still in this list it does come in at $500 so it is not cheap but if you're really looking for that it's well worth the upgrade compared to the 423 because of this CPU and the upgradeable Ram is a very nice plus and you do get some additional features like the ability to add in your nvme drives as well so this is now where we've now broken into that $500 price point which is is now we're spending a good amount
• 12:00 - 12:30 of money on our Nas but it does also have serious capability behind it so there is that I actually would skip over this guy right here the DS 923 plus and if you're going to want more than the 423 plus has to offer I would really look at the 1522 plus 1522 plus has built in 8 gigs of RAM which for people who are having that amount of data is really nice having that extra Drive Bay from 4 to 5 is a huge value at as well
• 12:30 - 13:00 and I just think that it is an overall longer term unit that will last much longer than the DS 923 plus and is absolutely worth the upgrade price and so I very rarely ever recommend the 923 plus and instead would jump right to the 1522 plus this is once again where we're talking about a $700 unit now so it is not cheap but it does have solid features to back it and that 8 gigs of RAM I do think is a value ad spefic specifically for businesses who are
• 13:00 - 13:30 going to be deploying large techology Drive instances and things like that if you're a hardcore home labber this will also benefit you plus it does have the ability to add in 10 gig networking after the fact which is a very nice feature ad for people who are looking to get faster and faster performance the DS 1522 plus is probably one of my most recommended units to businesses just because it is very flexible in that sense and can hold a whole lot of data it loaded up with 520 TB hard drives and
• 13:30 - 14:00 a raid 5 configuration can store 80 terabyt of usable data which is pretty impressive in the same vein that I'm often skipping over the 923 plus I don't think I've recommended the 1621 plus to pretty much anybody in the last year and a half honestly I just skip right to the DS1 1821 plus because there's a $100 difference there and the two bays are completely worth it in my opinion if the 1522 plus does not have enough data for
• 14:00 - 14:30 you or enough performance I would really just skip right to the 1821 plus but now we are talking about ,000 unit8 Bays I think can justify that price pretty decently but it is definitely on the more expensive scale and quite frankly the 1821 plus is the max thing I really recommend to 95% of people it is probably my most recommended units just because you can stick four 160 tab hard drives in there to start today and then just as you need more space very easily
• 14:30 - 15:00 add one more at a time really overall lowering your total cost of ownership because if you run out of space you don't have to buy a brand new unit so for people who already have 60 terab of space 50 terab of space I would really recommend that 1821 plus because there is just the ability to have 108 terabytes in that unit in the head unit and then it's got two expansion units as well so you can really just pack that
• 15:00 - 15:30 thing with data and it's just at a good price point everything that goes past this starts requiring Synology hard drives which makes it a lot more expensive if you want to follow their guidelines and not have a yellow flashing warning on the side so really the 1821 plus is a great unit that I end up recommending a lot all right well that's going to be it for this I'm going to leave Amazon affiliate links down in the description below check out all those and I'll also leave links to the hard drives I recommend and things like
• 15:30 - 16:00 that down there as well go and leave any other tutorials you like to see me make in the comments below and have a good one [Music] bye