Features:

  • Powerful and scalable 6-bay NAS optimized for data-intensive work environment. File or folder level data restoration makes data recovery fast and flexible
  • Quad-core, 2.1 GHz CPU with AES-NI support and 4GB DDR4 memory, expandable up to 32GB; Outstanding performance at over 1,550 MB/s reading and 580 MB/s writing
  • Boost IOPS system performance with M.2 SSD cache by using optional M2D17 adapter card
  • PCIe 3.0 slot for optional 10GbE add-on card; Four built-in 1GbE (RJ-45) ports with failover and Link Aggregation support
  • Advanced Btrfs file system offering 65,000 system-wide snapshots and 1,024 snapshots per shared folder.Maximum Single Volume Size:108 TB
Complex made reasonably simple

Basic use is pretty straightforward. Unit is very easy to set up. I just stuffed 6 4TB drives in and configured it as one big storage pool in Raid 5. Lots of capability under the hood if you want to investigate/use it. This is my second unit, as my first one is now about 8 years old (with no problems ever) and everyone knows how unreliable children can be when the hormones kick in. So I figured I better have a fall-back.... FWIW, the first unit has 3 different size disks in it and 3 different storage pools supporting 4 users. It runs as a Surveillance Station, Audio and Video Media Servers, and Time Machine backup disk. Never been a problem except for hitting the quota on the Time Machine backups, which was easily remedied. This new unit is doing the same, and the old one is migrating into an online backup. My only real gripe on these is the licensing fees for Surveillance Station. They just seem too high for more than two cameras. On the other hand, while I gripe about it, using Surveillance Station is still typically cheaper than a standalone recorder (not counting the cost of the NAS of course). Not only would buy again, but did buy again....

Just cruising right along

Seems like people are having problems, but I haven't had any with my DS1819+. It's been smooth sailing right out the gate. I did make some upgrades, but nothing earth shattering. I added a used $40 Mellanox ConnectX-3 MCX312A-XCBT off of ebay. Immediately recognized it without any glitches. I then added 2 sticks of Kingston ECC ram to get me to 32GB. Not necessary, but I wanted the ram cache. I then filled up the NAS with five 9yr old 3.5" 1.5TB-2TB drives. A couple Caviar Green, a pair of Seagate one being an SSHD, and an odd ball Samsung, to round it out. All stuff that had been sitting on my shelf. While it did take a while for my volume to get created, it proved to be fast. Crystaldiskmark was able to do a sustained read of 1035MB/s and a 640MB/s write via CIFS through a mish mash of 10gbe devices. That's with five 9yr old drives in SHR1 and a fat ram cache. Added in a 2 4tb IronWolf and 1 10tb Red to fill all the bays and now I see the array doing writes at around 750MB/s with SHR2. Pretty happy to see my large files in their new turn key home and zipping around the network.

This is my 4th Synology diskstation. Wonderful devices and great support.

I purchased this diskstation to replace the DS-1515+ that I've had for about three years. The 1515+ stopped working and I needed a replacement fast so I bought this one. What I didn't realize was that Synology was going to express a replacement for my failed diskstation, even though the warranty was just ended. That's the kind of company Synology is. I've always been happy with these diskstations and love the fact that the software Synology supplies with them keeps being updated for even the older machines. I work in IT and I also use a diskstation DS-1815+ in our department for many uses.

Easy to set up, works great.

I have three 10 TB WD RED drives and five 4 TB WD RED drives in this system running on Synology Hybrid RAID with 10 TB redundancy. It shows a total of 34.9 TB storage so there is a total of 15.1 TB for redundancy and “overhead”. Everything is working great so far.

An AMAZINGLY fast NAS

I'm not going to talk about the great Operating System in Synology NAS, it's the same in all Synology Consumer NAS. My older DS211j, DS211 and DS411 still get both security and OS updates at the same time. Two thumbs up for the continued support of older models, with the notable exception of not supporting btfrs in the DS411 which I now use for backup. WHY? All the necessary drivers are included in the respective DSM. I'm only going to talk about transfer speeds which is what you may want to compare when choosing between different Synology models. I purchased the DS1618+ to upgrade from my old and slow DS411. Anything I wanted to do with the DS411 spiked CPU usage to 99%, even simple file transfers (4 disk SHR-1 configuration), which topped at about 12MB/s. Opening and closing apps was also terribly slow. On the DS1618+ I used 3 older drives (16000 to 36000 hours) from the DS411 plus 2 new drives, all Western Digital RED 4TB in a 5x 4TB SHR-2 configuration and a single Volume (12000GB total usable space) for added HDD failure robustness, since I've had 2 drives fail within 1 month on the DS411 a few years back and was barely able to finish rebuilding after the first drive failed when the second one (different make and model) failed too. Plus RAID only helps you so far, only against HDD total failure, not with corruption or bitrot. I was weary of the transfer speeds I would be able to achieve in this 5xHDD SHR-2 configuration (double parity means more CPU usage), since when I moved from my 2-bay DS211 with 2 HDD in SHR-1 to my 4-bay DS411 with 4 HDD in SHR-1, transfer speeds dropped from about 36MB/s to about 12MB/s due to the higher CPU usage. Lately this has been a pain since now I'm processing large amounts of drone images stored on my NAS. But I was blown away: Transfer speeds are as fast as Gigabit ethernet allows you to. I never thought I would see 99% usage of my GbE PC connection. Both writing and reading from the NAS to my Windows 7 x64 PC SSD is about 100MB/s which I tested with a single 16.6GB movie file. Since I had one drive slot left (Disk 6), I used it to put an older 64TB SSD I had laying around and enabled it as SSD cache. No need to buy the expansion card. However when using only one SATA SSD, cache is limited to read operations. But as you can see from the attached image, the sustained writing speed of 110MB/s was entirely done on the 4TB HDD. CPU usage stayed fixed at 30% during the entire transfer. (The difference between individual disk write speed is just because it shows the instant write speed, not the mean write speed which usually was the same between Disks 1 to 5). Now I'm considering adding a second GbE port to my PC, since this NAS has 4 GbE port which support link aggregation. I'm extremely pleased with this purchase. Plus it has INTERNAL power transformer, so there is no extra bulky external brick whose power cable comes out easily when reaching behind the NAS as the older models I have.

Blown away with ease and amazement!!

I previously had a 2 bay QNAP, nothing bad or wrong just ran out of space and needed to upgrade and decided to look at Synology and was blown away worth their customer service, ease of how to setup the unit and the different raid types. The unit itself is so much easier to use than my QNAP, you don't need screws or anything to hold the drives in the bays, the speed and responsiveness is very fast!! I'm very happy with my purchase!

A fantastic NAS, a worthy successor to the DS1517

If you're considering the 5-bay Synology DS1517, this 6-bay DS1618 is much better option with a much improved CPU to handle intensive tasks such as running VMs and Apps, or transferring lots of small files. The previous gen Intel Atom CPU was less capable compared to the C3538 Atom in the DS1618. The only thing I wish my DS1618 has is built-in is 10Gbit Ethernet. I think it's time for Synology to push the performance envelope and lead the SMB/home NAS segment into higher speeds with standard 10Gbit ports.

Great box, awesome features!

This thing is amazing. Recently upgraded from Drobo to this beast. Awesome Synology Apps for IOS/AppleTV allow you to easily and with minimal effort begin centralizing music files, photos, videos, etc. in a central repository and its super easy to access all your digital content via their apps on all my devices. I'm finding this thing to be so much easier with AudioStation to get songs in to my iPhone rather than iTunes which tends to slow down over time when it gets loaded down with lots of content.

Coming from a DS1512

Replaced my trusty 1512 with the 1618 and love it. Noticeably faster when using synology and docker apps. I was worried I wouldn't notice enough improvement for the cost---esp. since I didn't have any real issues with the 1512 (other than hoping for better performance). I run lots of synology apps and docker. No regrets. It also helps that I gave it 2 500GB SSD M2 drives. That wasn't even an option on my older 1512.

Amazing Piece of Technology

I needed a Network Attached Storage (NAS) setup for my Plex server, as well as a way to access my files on-the-go from anywhere in the world. This device checks all the boxes. It has far surpassed my expectations with its capabilities and ease-of-use. With its proprietary RAID-style system, I have the peace of mind that if one drive fails I can swap it out and not lose any data. This also means I can upgrade my array drive-by-drive without having to back up the entire thing before upgrading to a larger drive size. Synology has a smartphone app that will automatically back up all your photos you've taken with your phone and you can also do neat things like set up an automatic backup partition for your Macs, just like you'd expect using Time Machine. Its QuickConnect software allows you to access your NAS from anywhere with a custom URL that makes it easy to backup or access files from anywhere. I would not hesitate to get another Synology product.

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