Features:

  • A versatile entry-level 2-bay NAS for home and personal cloud storage
  • Over 113 MB/s reading, 112 MB/s writing
  • Dual-core CPU with hardware encryption engine. Operating Temperature: 5°C to 40°C (40°F to 104°F)
  • Everywhere access with iOS/Android/Windows ready mobile apps
  • An integrated media server supporting multimedia streaming.Maximum Single Volume Size:16 TB
  • Compatible drive - 3.5" SATA HDD; 2.5" SATA HDD (with optional 2.5" Disk Holder) ; 2.5" SATA SSD (with optional 2.5" Disk Holder)
My first NAS, so far its great!

The Synology DS418j is my first ever NAS for home use. I've owned it for only 1 week, but so far it has been great. The camera angle used for the pictures make it appear large and ugly but in reality its a really compact and nice looking unit. Here's why I picked this Synology DS418j over all the other NAS boxes out there: 1) 2 or 4 bays? If you have data that you can't afford to lose, like years of family photos, tax returns, etc, you need data redundancy. RAID1 requires 2 drives but only 50% of the total drive capacity is usable for storage. RAID5 requires at least 3 drives but 67% of the total drive capacity is usable for storage. With 4 drives 75% of the total drive capacity is available for storage. I am using the Synology SHR (which is RAID5) with 3 WD 8TB drives for 16TB of storage and 8TB used for redundancy leaving one bay blank for now. If I run out of storage at a later date I can add another 8TB drive and get 24 TB storage and still have 1 drive failure redundancy. 2) The Media Server is DLNA compliant. I have a lot of MP4 files that I want to be able to watch on two different LG 4K smart TVs, a Sony 4K smart TV and an old Roku2 (1080p). Each of those devices has a video playing app that looks for a DLNA server on the network. Each device can see the Synology and all the MP4 files placed in the special video folder that the Media Server automatically creates. The smart TV app is then used to select the desired movie and it begins to play it smoothly and continuously. Works great. 3) Which CPU? If you need to transcode videos on the fly from one format to another to stream to a smart TV then you need a high end CPU. I chose the 418j with the medium CPU because I don't need to transcode. It costs less and consumes less power. All the videos I want to stream are already MP4, the LG, Sony and Roku2 already understand what an MP4 is. All the Synology needs to do is stream the data out unaltered. Don't need a lot of CPU horsepower to do that. 4) The DSM (Disk Station Manager), accessed using a browser, acts very much like a Windows desktop and the File Station is very similar to the Windows File Explorer. It took me a few days to get use to where everything was and what each item did. Took a few hours to figure out the user and group permissions, but its all working well and is discoverable by all the PCs on the home network. 5) The NAS is for home use, its not going to get pounded by 50+ users 24/7 so I don't plan on having to swap drives out every other month. Therefore the fact that the box must be powered down, the back of the box opened and the drives slid into the cage from the back doesn't bother me. I considered a QNAP, Synology's main competitor, but since both of my brothers have Synology NAS units and liked them I decided to go with Synology too. Only minor complaint is the LG video app, when it see the mp4 file, is supposed to read the file and take a snap shot from the movie and replace the default icon for the file with a thumbnail. This works fine if the mp4 is on a USB drive plugged into the LG USB port. But it isn't doing this to the mp4 files on the Synology. This issue has several discussion threads on the Synology forums with no official solution yet. I can live with this minor annoyance. UPDATE (April 2019): Synology updated the Media Server app and now the movie playing app on my LG 43UK6300 Smart TV changes the default icon to a slowly updating series of thumbnails. So its an improvement. But my older LG 55UK6200 still only sees the default icons, no thumbnails. Still happy with the DS418j, been flawless for 6 month now.

I totally love this NAS system!

I got the NAS after a good friend of mine recommended it for a long time. I hesitated at first but once I noticed my seagate external 3 TB drive wanting to fail I immediately got the system. I put two 8 TB drives in it and am totally in love with the whole synology software/interface. I setup my photo, video and vpn as primary gateway. I access my nas all the time from my mobile phone or at work when I need to download things and not do it on my work computer or just transfer files/watch movies. My only issue I've had which may be just more android related (though I just finally got ore 8.0 on my galaxy s7) is DS video not loading a good range of movies I have when I am remote and trying to cast it. I looked through forums for possible solutions and nothing I tried worked. After the ore 8.0 upgrade on my phone it seems like it's working good but I haven't tried it thoroughly yet to see that it is in fact fixed by the OS upgrade. I like that synology release updates often and keeps the system up to date with security patches ect. But I think what I love the most about the system is the remote access through quickconnect and using DS get app to download things while I am away. I rarely get much on my computer anymore since I got my NAS. There are so many nice packages to get the most out of the NAS. I also setup my phone to get backed up with its videos/pictures when I am on wifi only. Now after having this system I can't imagine ever not having redundant backup solutions to your pictures and videos. I mean those are precious moments to keep and not only that but all your documents, software and important data in general. You cannot rely on a single external drive.

Great for my use case. Amazing solution if it fits your needs!

I own four Synology NAS drives, and purchasing another today. If the drive provides you with the utility you're looking for, they're hard to beat. Don't just purchase this drive without researching all the use cases. It can do a TON, but will be worthless if you don't have a plan for how it will be used. I own a business with seven locations. I use these drives for three main purposes, and am still learning additional functionality that can be implemented with no additional cost. Here's how I use them: 1. Surveillance DVR. This drive works great as a DVR in conjunction with the right IP Cameras. We use the REO link 5k IP Cameras, and it couldn't be better for our scenario. It can get a bit expensive, depending on the number of cameras you use. Each camera after two requires the purchase of a Synology camera license that runs about $50 each. The cameras all connect to the Synology drive and allow me to remote view on my iPhone or any computer with web access. I have them set up to record to the drive, and backup to my Google Cloud storage for permanent keeping. With unlimited Google Cloud storage I can now keep all my surveillance videos indefinitely and not have to purchase additional drive storage. Saving all the video to the cloud also increases security. I have four of my locations set up this way, and in process of setting up a fifth. 2. File server. Works great as a cloud based file server. Replaces a service like dropbox with your own server. 3. Chat. We use the Synology chat app company wide. It's a legitimate replacement for Slack. We are just starting to understand all the things it can do, but so far so good. I love that we can add as many users as we would like and take advantage of the service without paying any additional fees. In the future we will also take advantage of the hosting abilities to run in intranet, and the proxy server capabilities. Have yet to test either, but they look very promising. Overall it's a great product if the Synology platform has solutions for your needs. Do your research before purchasing to ensure it can. If so, it's hard to beat at the price point.

Perfect NAS for the typical Home network server

I've been using this DS218j for about a week now and it serves my needs very well. I really just wanted a place for storage on my network for photos, music and video as well as a place for backing up generic data files. I also wanted something for managing a couple of security cameras. With the media server and the surveillance application memory usage is about 45% and CPU usage is low, on average around 10%. I have a couple of 2T drives set up as RAID1 (changed to RAID1 from the default SHR for best performance and simplicity). SFTP server is also set up because I do use that sometimes. If all you need is file share for your network for media and backups, manage a few cameras and a way to have your own cloud storage for portable devices this is perfect. If want to do transcoding for movies or have a lot of users on your network accessing it and/or doing a lot of encryption of files etc you may want to bump up to a higher end one with more memory and CPU power.

Easy to setup, great tools

Update: this NAS enclosure is awesome! It has a great web based GUI where you can run applications. For example, I was able to mount my other NAS drive, and copy/move files directly from it. This is awesome! It also has an app store where a lot of useful tools are available. For example if you are coding, there is a git server module that you can install. It has a downloader app where you can let it download for you. I was thinking how I should move stuff from my old nas to the new one. I mounted my old NAS, selected files to copy, then started the copy. You can also put the copy to the background so you can continue doing other stuff. This thing is amazing, I highly recommend it. Setup was extremely easy. I previously bought Buffalo 220 NAS enclosure, and it was a nightmare. It didn't work at all. I had no problem with the installation and setup. Everything was really straightforward. Also, it is really quite. It has SSH and SFTP servers too, which is great. I setup automated alerts too, which is really nice.

Works perfectly *FOR MY USECASE* so we can do weekly backups over the home network.

I gave this five stars because it fits what *I* need. You should do significant research before investing in this sort of thing. 1) I am NOT using this for a server for media although it can serve that purpose. 2) See 1. :) So... Here is how I use it and in what situation it gets a 5 out of 5 from me. *I have the system mirrored using RAID 1. This means I have TWO 8TB disks because mirroring duplicates rather than giving more space. *The Synology box is powered OFF 5 days a week. *On Sat/Sun we do full backups of all 5 PCs in the house using Acronis software. *MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT WHATEVER BACKUP SYSTEM YOU USE CAN ALLOW YOU TO BOOT A FAILED SYSTEM IN SUCH A WAY AS TO SEE THE Synology NAS! *I also back up my Google Cloud stuff once a week (in case I do something stupid when deleting things) *I also separately back up all of my music and photos as they don't change much and exclude these from weekly backups. *When all that stuff is backed up I either power off the system until next week, or once a month bring my external USB 3.0 8TB drive in from my remote location to back up the whole NAS in case of fire or other catastrophe. So far it succeeded in restoring a failed HD with no problem.

My first NAS

Before you buy: google "DSM demo" and select the first result. They have a free trial of what using the NAS is like, (with a few caveats of course). You can use the interface, use some of the packages, look at the options. It's a touch slower than my own NAS but otherwise very indicative of the end user experience. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I bought this with the intention of decluttering my computer's HDD and for sharing my movies and things with my roommate, and for this purpose, it works brilliantly. But it has far and away exceeded my (admittedly naive) expectations. Hardware: I'm a huge fan of SFF things, especially with computers. This NAS is amazingly efficient in terms of space utilization. As a fan of design, I give them a huge thumbs up here. With the drives out you can see everything inside, and they don't waste a single milliliter of space. Everything has a use from the structure, to the PCB, to how they've tapered one edge to make the power button and LED on the side fit nicely while still fitting with the exterior design language! There's a fan for the drives, and it's user-replaceable! Seriously, this thing has a winning design. The tiny PCB packs a relatively low-power 1 GHz dual core ARM processor which is how it gets away with such little cooling in this form factor. As far as how this impacts performance, I don't have another NAS here to compare it with. I will say that if I was given the interface and had to guess the speed of the device, I would not guess that low. I guess that's the magic of first party hardware and OS. The only very minor gripe I can throw at them: why do I have to label my drive sleds? Synology only provides 4 stickers and sleds anyway, so it's not like I'll be swapping them out. The stickers are tiny; I would have preferred if the labels were just embedded on like they are under the bays. As far as the drives I'm using, I have 4x Samsung Seagate 2TB Laptop HDD SATA III 2.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive 9.5MM (ST2000LM003) in mine with a RAID 5 config. No problems with noise, but I have mine on a shelf in my office. If it were on my desk right in front of me, spinning 4 platters at once, I'll hear it, but that's what I get for using HDDs. Under normal conditions I cannot hear the device when it's in use only a few meters away. Operating System: I've thoroughly enjoyed using this. The DSM OS has a nice Unix-like feeling, its got lots of options for configuration and access. I don't know what I expected, but its essentially a low-power server, which is awesome. I usually dismiss any service that claims to have an "App store" but this is a new product category for me, and the package center has a compelling selection. I am able to control the access of all the users, because I'm literally the sysadmin. It has unix-style system permissions, for users and groups with folders and files. Packages: This is where the device really sells itself for me. I bought it thinking it was just a storage box, but these packages have changed how I use the device. Here's a list of some that I found pretty cool: - They have a first party suite of packages for managing media like movies, music and photos. I use the Video Station package the most and it makes the viewing experience remarkably easy. There's a web portal for desktops, and of course apps for both iOS and android which work pretty identically to each other. Video Station can stream playback to lots of devices, DLNA, Chromecast (I can only do this on the mobile apps, not the web interface for some reason), and even Apple's own airplay. It's not perfect, but it's really good. - Developer tools like Python, Java, Ruby, and even a first party Git server, which I think is pretty neat. There are a few cases where I could see myself using my own personal git server, and I've downloaded it but haven't had the need to use it yet. - A seedbox style download manager. I've used this to download an OS disk and it worked splendidly, it's a set it and forget it kind of thing, just like regular torrenting. But what's more, I could be at work and pull up my NAS desktop and check on the status, add more, the works. There's loads more that I haven't even been able to use yet. A personal VPN, a security camera suite, Wikis, moodle, backup managers, cloud backups (which I think Synology hosts themselves, don't quote me on this), etc. I recommend you look at the full list on their website before you buy, (google "DSM packages" and its the first result). A little note here, when messing around with some of the packages, I downloaded PLEX to try it as an alternative to Video Station, and while it ultimately didn't suit my needs, it did tell me that due to the low-power CPU on the device, it was unable to use the on-the-fly media encoding that PLEX does. Those who use PLEX might want to know about this. Conclusion: I have had only a few problems using the device, but after lots of googling, as far as I can tell none of them are within Synology's control. From HEVC playback in the HTML5 player the Video Station package uses, to Windows severing network connections while writing large files. For my use case, it's quite perfect. I wanted lots of storage, small form factor, and a well designed product, and I didn't mind the asking price. I thought it was a risky purchase from the start, but I'm totally sold now.

Amazingly simple setup and capable of so much more than just storage

I purchased the Synology 2-disk storage device and set it up a few days ago. Let me tell you, it was worth every penny. The first thing I was amazed by was the simplicity of setup. It runs it's own distro of Linux called DSM, I haven't tinkered around a whole lot with that part of it. But the UI in the web configuration is amazingly simple, and they have a huge number of available applications that can be installed with the click of a button. Packages like Wordpress, Drupal, iDrive backup, PHP, Perl, Apache, Plex, Git server, Mediawiki, and much, much more. So really what you get with this network storage device is your own little Linux server that can help you manage files and securely back them up, but also run applications, web sites, you name it. This little device has turned my home network into a powerful media center with remote administration capabilities. Pair this with an Android TV box like the Nvidia Shield, and things start getting really interesting. I couldn't rate this little device any higher, Synology has done a fantastic job creating the OS and user experience to make setting up complex systems incredibly easy.

Another great product from Synology!

I already had a DS1813+, which is an 8 bay Synology Box. It's been working flawlessly for years. As my storage needs have increased, I have been slowly upgrading the 4 TB HDDs with 10 TB HDDs and now I had a surplus of 4 TB on my hands i didn't know what to do with... Enter the DS418j: This is another great product from Synology. It runs the same DSM operating system as the DS1813+. It's a well designed, compact box (I'm tempted to say "cute", but this is a NAS and not a teddy bear). It was relatively easy to setup (see one minor complaint below) and get it into a useful state. I've installed my surplus 4 TB HDDs, set up a SHR-1 disk group, and turned this DS418j into a remote backup (archival - with version history) server for my DS1813+. It's been quietly backing my data for a few days now. This replaced my USB attached external backup drive that did *not* support version history and did not have the 1 disk fault tolerance of SHR-1. My only small complaint is that to install disks, one has to open up the box. This is unlike the DS1813+, which has a caddy based, quick HDD installation (no screws needed). However, opening up the DS418j isn't too difficult once you've read the instructions and I don't think this should be a big consideration in purchasing the DS418j.

Reliable and easy to use. Great Entry level NAS device!

I was uncertain about getting a local storage device for my home thinking I did not really need one with all the cloud services that are out there. Having gotten this model I am very pleased with it. It works well, its very simple to set up and use. It is easy to swap out failed disks. I have managed to upload all of my old home movies that I had earlier transcribed to DVD's onto this device. My wife an I are able to upload all of our digital photos from our smartphones freeing up space on our phones. Memories is a great app for the task of backing up your digital photo's. Only downside to it is that I cannot seem to use a USB connection to move data from the phone to the server directly, it seems to insist on using the WiFi. As I had many photo's and video's to move across and because Wifi was slow and quirky on occasion I would up moving the photos to my laptop and then from my laptop to the NAS. My son also has a Synology NAS (he suggested that I get a NAS for my home). As a result I was able to share the old home video's with him directly by syncing the two devices. We now backup each others critical data between the two NAS devices. The downside is that there are a few quirks to consider. Drive (synologies equivalent app to DropBox or Google drive) does not seem to work as seamlessly. Simply storing info into drive does not seem to move it to the NAS device. If I mount the NAS as a shared folder I can save documents to it and then they appear in Drive on any device I add the app to. Could be my inexperience. Moments is tied to Drive. Once Drive is loaded the more sophisticated CloudStation Server app cannot be used. Basically you have to choose one or the other (Drive or Cloudstation). Lastly (and this is my fault), this unit does not transcribe movie formats. So if you have a mix of formats you will need to use an external device to recode them in to a MPEG format. Here I should have done a little more research, but the workaround is simple, use your computer, using open source software and recode it and just store the recoded files. I am able to run video directly from my Samsung Smart TV, or an Apple TV (you need to use your phone to push the video to start on Apple TV, but once you do this your phone is no longer needed. This is similar to how Chromcast seems to work). It also works on Roku, although Roku is giving a message that the video app is not fully compatible and will no longer be available after the end of 2018. I am amazed how much data you can store on this device. I purchased two 4 Terabyte NAS disks, and with everything I placed on it am using less then a terabyte of storage!

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