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What are the best physical data storage solutions for home use?

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Apr 22, 2019

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Here’s the Deal

2 Options Considered

Best physical data storage solutions for home use	Price	RAM	CPU
-- Synology DS216+II	$289.00	1 or 2GB DDR3	Intel® Celeron® Processor N3060 (2M Cache, up to 2.48 GHz) with AES-NI hardware encryption engine
-- QNAP TS-451+	$449	2GB ( DDR3 ), expandable up to 8GB	Quad-core Intel® Celeron® 2.0GHz ( burst up to 2.42GHz )

Synology DS216+II

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Top Pro

Single-button press backup functionality (ports and button on the front)

This function is called USBCopy. You just need to attach your media to the front, press the Copy button (labeled C on this version) and wait untill it's done (no need to have it attached to any PC and no need to login to the NAS as well). By default, the backups get compressed to a single archive per backup and are named after their device name and timestamp attached (changeable within the settings). Older/other versions also had an SD-Card reader, this one doesn't (but it seems to have an eSATA port) so you might search for an alternative if you need the SD-Card reader. See More

Top Con

Expensive

While the cost is not as high as some, there are similar storage size options for cheaper prices. This price tag, like most, is for branding and the high quality product you get from Synology. See More

Specs

RAM:1 or 2GB DDR3

CPU:Intel® Celeron® Processor N3060 (2M Cache, up to 2.48 GHz) with AES-NI hardware encryption engine

SSD support:Yes (with TRIM)

Data redundancy possibilities:Synology Hybrid RAID, Basic, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1

Top Pro

Usability (WebOS)

Product and software work seamlessly with any operating system (since it's a WebOS running in the browser). Product software has easy to follow icons and GUI that allow users to use it as a VPN, time machine, media server, etc. See More

Top Con

Requires a bit of work if you want to get the most out of it

It's clearly not made for people that want to buy a device and just use it but those that take some time to set it up. Once you're done, it runs, and runs, and runs (till you want to do more, which you can since it has Package-Management built in that enables you to download new packages and extend the functionality of your simple NAS). See More

Top Pro

AES-NI hardware encryption engine

Encryption performance at over 113.01 MB/s reading, 111.66 MB/s writing. See More

Top Pro

Company-level advanced BTRFS file system with built-in data integrity check

See further details on Synology's page See More

Top Pro

Full flegged x86 CPU

See this for tech-spec. See More

Top Pro

Synology has by far the best LTS of any comparable manufacturer

Even 10-year-old NAS storages still get updates for their OS (called DSM). The only thing that limits you is the hardware. See More

Top Pro

DiskStation Manager OS is rock solid

DiskStation Manager OS is by far the best commercial NAS-OS out there when it comes to expandability, usability, and stability. No other system comes close, unless you build one yourself and use an Open-Source NAS-OS that you fine-tune to your needs. See More

QNAP TS-451+

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Expandable storage

You can expand the storage potential of this unit up to a 96TB with an eight-bay extension unit. A cheaper five-bay extension unit is also available. You can also expand the RAM from 2GB to 8GB of DDR3 RAM. See More

Specs

RAM:2GB ( DDR3 ), expandable up to 8GB

CPU:Quad-core Intel® Celeron® 2.0GHz ( burst up to 2.42GHz )

Maximum total storage volume:20TB ( 4 x 5TB, 2 x 10TB )

Data redundancy possibilities:RAID0, RAID1, RAID5,RAID 6, RAID10

Top Pro

Saves power when not in use

This unit has a scheduled power management system. Rather than always staying on standby, when the NAS isn’t being used, it will switch to a system sleep mode which only consumes 0.57 W. See More

Top Pro

Excellent for home entertainment

This NAS unit performs brilliantly in terms of multimedia transcoding. It can stream Full HD videos to multiple client devices simultaneously without any lag. See More

Top Pro

Great for surveillance systems

This unit comes with two free surveillance camera licenses that can be used with special surveillance software. If you want to use more than two cameras, you can scale up your surveillance network by purchasing additional camera licenses. Up to 40 IP surveillance cameras can simultaneously stream data to this unit. It supports more than 3000 different kinds of camera. See More

Top Pro

Easy to configure by using it as a standalone station

You can hook up a mouse, a keyboard and a display to this unit and use it as a standalone station to setup and configure it. This is possible because it has four USB ports and a HDMI port. See More

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