Synology DS218j 20TB 2 Bay Desktop NAS Solution | Installed with 2 x 10TB Seagate IronWolf Drives

I purchased this unit to provide a simple Time Machine backup service for home office use. I had a couple of reasonably new 3.5" drives so thought I would get something that was hopefully quick and simple to setup.This device is certainly quick and simple, but it has a huge range of features. I won't be using any of them for what I need, but the breadth of technology built into this little unit (PXE boot server, iSCSI etc) is amazing for the price. And various third party applications can be downloaded and installed too. WordPress, Video Transcoding, CCTV recording - pretty much anything that would drive you to setup your own server at home is already here. Don't bother, just buy this little unit, stick in some disks and you're done.The user interface is extremely well executed. It's browser based but feels like an application. After a few minutes you'll have the whole thing set up just as you want. There is a LOT of functionality here - the more timid user might be put off. But for those who have a good feel for this kind of technology, you'll be right at home and very pleased.Build quality is good too. I like the noise insulating mounts for the drives and the rubber feet to further decouple the chassis from anything that might vibrate. I've got my unit configured for Quiet fan mode. It isn't getting warm at all, and in this configuration it is almost completely silent. I'll tuck the unit away in a cupboard shortly, and it will likely become completely unnoticeable.Very pleased. First time buyer of Synology kit but it's made a very good impression. One of those few occasions when "it just works" is quite literally true.

We bought this to free some space up one our laptop, rather than treating our computer like a disposable object and buying a whole new one just cos the internal storage had filled up.A few years ago I couldn't have told you what 'The server' actually was and now I’ve just bought one for my family, weird.In the past we have paid monthly to used cloud storage, and assuming my plan to trade space with a friend actually works, this should be much cheaper and give us 3-2-1 data storage, with nothing saved on our PC, 2 copies on the NAS and one copy off site on a friends NAS (Server).Umm as for how easy it is to use: I found it very easy but who knows if I have done the set up correctly.There were two things to look at before i started 1) Online I found a video that recommended you assign the NAS a permeant IP address. A bit of googling and I found that domestic/home rather than business VirginMedia clients can’t have static IP addresses. People on line were speculating as to why: I expect this is to reduce the number of questions they have to field from have a-go-heros like me. However one poster said that the IP addresses are sticky, so it shouldn’t be an issue. I have believed them and just told my PC that is the IP address.2) The other thing I did was check what RAID 1 was and that my NAS was defaulting to that. RAID 1 means that there is 2 copies of your data on the NAS. This is so if one Hard drive breaks you have the second copy. So the 2 X one terabit drives that I bought to go in the NAS are giving me only one Terabit of storage. It was doing this and this is what I want.It would seem we are good to go.Assuming I don’t start trying to do anything more interesting with it like hosting a home brew website, my families data should be protected.I feel better knowing where our data physically is. I don’t think it is any more secure than it would have been ‘in the cloud’ (on someone else’s PC). One way to access the server is through a Synology website, as one assumes Synology have access to my data, I bet the NSA are in there already confirming what a dull man I am. None the less being able to look at the object that holds our baby photos seems less creepy to me.Finally, the other thing that occurred to me as I migrated our data to the NAS was: ‘Do I really need all this stuff?’ I kind of worry our data has become a virtual ball and chain we are now all expected to carry round with us for the rest of our lives. Why am i even building this digital treasure trove? Is it the modern equivalent of a pharaoh's tomb? Do i think I will ever look at most of it again: no? Will my kid trawl through it after I die? No. Will they ultimately be buried under this data with me? What is it all for? I don’t know but we better back it up just incase we do need it some day…

Initial review.The item was received as per the shipping information in a the original Synology box with a shipment label attached. o outer packaging.Unpacking all was OK, the NAS enclosure, power adopter, Ethernet cable, a bracket and some screws. A quick start guide was also included.Installation of two Seagate 8 TB IronWolf 3.5 Inch drives was OK but required the installation of the supplied bracket to provide support to the rear of the drives to stop them wobbling. Nothing in the quick start guide explained installation of the bracket or the correct type of screws to use to mount it.Powered up and all was good. Setting up took a little more time. I downloaded the PC installer that kept providing run time errors. As I'm not a complete novice with NAS installations double clicking the icon from the windows file explorer network took me to the NAS web page where setup was simple.Using the automatic settings where all mounted drive data is deleted (manual set up is available however I didn't use his option so cannot comment) it configured the drive redundancy such that if one drive fails all data can be recovered using Synology version of RAID1. Using the NAS web page this looks like it cannot be changed, maybe this option is available to higher end NAS enclosures that would cost a lot more. Not a problem for me as RAID1 (or something like it) was exactly what I wanted. So if you install 2 8G drives in this mode 8G is available for storage as one drive effectively mirrors the other so precious files are not lost. A big plus.In summary, the hardware is great. Instructions could be better for hard drive installation along with the configuration. So far top notch use.Dropped one star due to vague hardware and software configuration. If you have used and configured NAS systems before you should have little problem in setup. If you have built systems before the hardware tweaks will be simple as well. A top notch basic NAS, far better than most at this price.Note: following a reboot of the NAS and PC (or two) the installed Symology PC app is working fin but just takes you to the NAS web page.