Reddit reviews Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+ (Diskless)

I got one of these -> https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ and then set it up with four 12 TB drives. The total cost was ~$2000 but I had a bunch of credit card points that I used so ended up being like $600 out of pocket.

Check out /r/PleX some of the builds on there are crazy.

A NAS is "network attached storage". They are essentially computers largely dedicated to being a hard drive you can access from other computers. They aren't attached via USB, they are attached to your router using an ethernet cable.

The basic idea is that you buy a 4 bay NAS ($500) and put in 4 8TB hard drives (4 x $150 = 600). The NAS does some special hard drive combining magic (RAID) that ultimately gives you 24TB of space (3x8TB). The 4th hard drive is used for redundancy, so if one of the drives fails you just pull it out and put in a new one with no downtime.

There are plenty of options and configurations I didn't mention, but this is basically the gist of it.

https://smile.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/

The shield can then access this hard drive space.

Have fun.

>https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/

Once got an iPad Pro 512GB fully paid from less than ~7 months of spending.

Just use a card for everything, especially travel, and the points will rack up like crazy.

u/Smote20XX if i could give you some advice, it would be to spend $2k on a 3d modeling/gaming/vr machine, $500 on a Synology 4 bay nas, and $500 on a Dell S2716DG gaming monitor. You're trying to do too much, with a single point of failure for everything. Motherboard dies? So does everything you're doing. By getting a dedicated NAS like a Synology, you can still RAID your existing drives in the bay, store a ton of data, and use it as a Plex server with transcoding (and so much more actually). I would also suggest getting a legitimate gaming monitor, as TV's do not provide the same gaming experience as a 1440p 144hz monitor will. Presuming you buy a 2080 Ti for your gaming desktop build (which I would suggest), you'll be able to use VR and the monitor to play basically any and all games the way they were meant to be played. Trust me when I say, your TV's are holding you back.

As for desktop build? Something like this:

• Ryzen 2700x ($269 @ microcenter)
  
• MSI Pro Carbon Gaming AC motherboard (~$150 newegg)
  
• 32gb 15 cas gskill ($240 newegg)
  
• Corsair 240mm water cooler ($~$110 anywhere)
  
• Phanteks P350x case ($60 amazon)
  
• EVGA G3 750/850w modular psu ($70)
  
• 2080 Ti ($1200)
  
  Desktop Total roughly $2100
  
  Something like a Synology DS918+ NAS = $550
  
  Dell Monitor will be on sale for $350 (incredible price) on black friday at Best Buy

I'd go Synology on this one,

2 x DS918+ at $550 Each
https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=sr_1_2?crid=374AI59A8H6J7&keywords=ds918%2B&qid=1568938492&sprefix=ds918%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-2


8 x WD Red 4TB at $116 Each
https://www.cdw.com/product/western-digital-red-4-tb-internal-hdd/3123305?pfm=srh
- OR
8 x Samsung Pro at $875 Each
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-SATA-Internal-MZ-76P4T0BW/dp/B0786ZQ1PJ/ref=sr_1_3?crid=17S7QFJCHXW50&keywords=samsung+4tb+ssd&qid=1568939113&sprefix=samsung+4TB%2Caps%2C202&sr=8-3


SSDs are more expensive, but the performance is phenomenally better than platter. I'd heavily recommend them if there's room in the budget.

So with hard drives, cost is about 2K. With ssds, cost is about 8k.

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You'll get SHA --> so both units can present as one to the network. If one fails, the other will keep trucking. Users wouldn't see a difference.

Set them up with shr-2, and each can tolerate two drives failing without a problem. Throw in easy AD integration and file sync (like dropbox) it's almost a no-brainer.

​

That's pretty dang resilient on a budget, easy to administrate too.

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/

The CPU in DS918+ is Intel Celeron J3455 which is far from decent. It is an Atom CPU equivalent. The RAM in DS918+ is 4GB DDR3L upgradable to 8GB is also far from decent. Not only this is insanely low, but it also does not appear to be ECC.

Power consumption is pretty good, but that's only because it uses weak Atom CPU and low voltage none ECC memory. Like the project management triangle, here you'd have to pick only two from Hardware quality, Power consumption, and Cost.

Comparing DS918+ against NAS Killer 2.0, you'd come out on top only in terms of Power consumption, whereas NAS Killer 2.0 or PowerEdge R510 will give you way better performance for a much lower cost.

Hardware performance comparison:

• Intel Celeron J3455 Passmark: 2141
  
• E5620: 4860
  
• Dual L5640: 9758
  
  Power draw comparison:
  
  
• DS918+: Sleep: 13W; Idle: 27W; Heavy: 43W
  
• R510: Min: 92W; Average: 102W; Peak 182W
  
• Nas Killer 2.0 E5620, 8GB RAM, 4 drives: 80W CPU (estimate from TDP), 3W x2 4GB Ram (estimate 3W per stick), 10W x4 Drives (estimate 10W per drive under full load) ~= 126W
  
• Nas Killer 2.0 Dual L5640, 24GB RAM, 8 drives: 60W x2 CPU, 3W x6 4GB Ram, 10W x8 Drives ~= 218W
  
  Cost:
  
  
• DS918+: $539 @ Amazon
  
• R510: $200
  
• NAS Killer 2.0 w/ E5620: $145.55
  
• NAS Killer 2.0 w/ Dual L5640: $317.82
  
  
  If we look at Power draw comparison for DS918+ Heavy load (43W) vs NAS Killer 2.0 Dual L5640 build peak usage (218W), you're looking at 175W difference. 175W/hr 24hr/day 365day/yr / 1000W/KW * $0.12/KW = $183.96 power bill over 1 year. I am sure neither systems are actually going to be drawing that much power 24/7/365, so the real power price difference over the course of the year is going to be much much lesser. I'd imagine over course of 5 years life cycle of the system, you're going to be looking at very similar TCO, and you'd come out way on top with the better performance systems.

For that, id suggest a synology model, you get webui access, even over the internet. Just grab a newer 4 bay model, and itd be fine. Just dont cheap out and get a very low spec model. And for the none smart TV situation, id just suggest you to grab a cheap raspberry pi 4 and call it a day. Itd even be useful for other things beside plex streaming.

Or a terra master model will work too.

Synology:

Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+ (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4gDFDb3P0DF0C

Terra master:

TerraMaster F4-210 4-Bay NAS Quad Core 4K Transcoding Media Server Personal Cloud Storage (Diskless) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R3QT5W3/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_igDFDb80WC3H8

I actually never saw it for 600. Lust looked at my amazon order history — I bought it in jab 2018 for $529.99. Looking at the price history here it’s always user $550

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B075N1Z9LT

The 1618 hovers about $730 https://camelcamelcamel.com/Synology-Bay-NAS-DiskStation-Diskless/product/B07CR8RZYY

So it’s 33 or 25 % difference depending how you look at it

I think what happens is because with synology the majority of the cost is fixed — distribution, software, services, and support — drastically improving hardware results in minor end user cost increase. Which makes low end, a tiny bit cheaper models disproportionally worse value compared to competition where hardware cost constitutes larger fraction of the price. Does it make sense?

https://camelcamelcamel.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/product/B075N1Z9LT?context=search

Here's the price history on Amazon. You can set an email alert to be notified at a certain price point

Before recommending DS918+ for its expandablity, it's worth noting that you can basically buy a new DS918+ for the same price as the DX517.

The DX517 is ridiculously priced: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-5bay-Expansion-DX517-Diskless/dp/B06Y4J9GR8 $468-618.

DS918+: https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT $550.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-390-Intel-Core-i3-2120-3-30GHz-8GB-RAM-DESKTOP-COMPUTER-NO-HDD/362827327261? $50 w/shipping.

add a dual NIC, https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-0FCGN-Dual-Port-PCI-E-1G-RJ45-NIC-With-Full-Height-Bracket/202816687059? $11

for $61 you'll have about 3x the hardware performance of a $550 off the shelf NAS.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS918+

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS918-Diskless/dp/B075N1Z9LT/

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now, if you build your own, you'll have to fuss w/the OS. and the above doesn't have hot swap bays.

but, yeah... you're looking at about 10% of the cost VS buying an off the shelf NAS.

​

> I just need a second copy of the data really.

RAID / NAS is not a backup. please do not consider them as such.

I recommend the following in order:

1. Buy a 4 bay Synology NAS. Something like Synology 4 bay NAS DiskStation DS918+. If you think a 2 bay will fit your needs, you will regret it when you need more space. If you think you need a 4 bay, get a 5 or 7 bay. a bigger NAS is cheaper than Bigger Drives. 4T drives are a good price now (around ~$30 a 1T or 1000G. Any more than that and I think it's too much).
   
2. Buy 2 minimum 4T Drives (WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf)
   
3. Install PLEX on Synology and buy the Lifetime Pass.
   
4. Buy MakeMKV for $50, and use it to rip Bluray/DVDs to a MKV file.
   
5. Use Handbrake to convert a MKV file to a MP4 file (aka Trans-coding), BUT ONLY if you want to make the movie a smaller file OR if you want to burn in Captions for Non English parts in movies or shows. Like 1 Game of Thrones ep is ~13G, but can be transcoded to ~1.3G with captions. Though I try hard not to compress anything as you loose quality.
   
6. Install Plex app in XBox or Apple TV and enjoy.
   
   Again most of the time you only need to use MakeMKV, name the file, move it to your NAS in the correct Plex folder and done. I do not recommend compressing every movie to have more space. Storage is cheap, Electricity and time involved in compressing is not in comparison. This will cost ~$1,000. Which will give you about 4T of storage at minimum. $1k for 4T of redundant backup is a good deal.

No transcoding required.

​

I was eyeballing Synology for the attractive cases, easy expansion units, and attractive OS.

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Would this set-up work? https://pcpartpicker.com/user/GleekedOwt/saved/6GsMcf I made a quickie part list. It's $200 less than the Synology model (without the storage drives) and is more powerful. (Comparing to the Synology DS918+)

​

I'm not certain what route to go with the OS. Amahi looks nice, but I'm not sure I can install Lidarr, Radarr, or use Python scripts on it. FreeNAS - same concerns, and I've read that it's "more advanced".

Do you have any other comments or OS suggestions?

I'm partial to going with the out-of-a-box NAS's myself. Ease of setup, along with all the other stuff they can do besides Plex, makes it a no brainer for what I want. I'm currently using Plex on an old 2014 model NAS from Synology that I finally put Plex on a few months ago. The big hurdle was doing everything I can to avoid triggering transcoding, because this NAS certainly is not capable of handling anything well above SD.

I have been looking around a bit for something to maybe replace it and would again go with a NAS, but a 4 bay model with some more horsepower.

I like this [QNAP] (https://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TVS-471-i3-4G-US-4-Bay-3-5GHz-10G-ready/dp/B00S0XSIK8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1510950253&sr=1-1&keywords=TVS-471) and the [Synology 918+] (https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DS918-Station-Diskless-4-bay/dp/B075N1Z9LT/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1511545687&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=synoloy+918%2B) right now. If I was to pull the trigger, it would probably be one of those two.

Just an FYI if you start looking at the Synology marketing stuff, the transcoding they advertise if almost always referencing the units ability to transcode through their built in DS Video server/app package that takes advantage of the hardware encoder. Plex, from what I understand, is not currently able to utilize that hardware so Plex may not perform up to what they advertise. But, the CPU should be just fine for transcoding 1080p.