Synology DS218j & DS218play DiskStations Reviewed

[thiggins]

Synology's DS218j and DS218play bring good value and performance to two-bay NAS buyers.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

 

[CivHunter]

Tim thanks for the review. I have one question. I am currenty using a DS211J for file back up on my PC. I don't use it for media streaming but I'd like too. My biggest complaint is how slow the user interface is and how slowly it responds when trying to stream a movie. Now I know it' several years old and the value model but I was curious if you could tell any difference in the way these 2 newer units respond to user inputs in regards to each other. I am considering upgrading and as I do so on a slow cycle I'll probably go with the play version but I would love first hand user input. Thanks!

 

[thiggins]

The responsiveness of the admin GUI on both products was about the same. BUT I did not test the GUI while streaming or transcoding.

The DS211j has a Marvell Kirkwood SoC. It was impressive back in the day, but not so much now.

 

[iwod]

I honestly dont think there are any differences in all the 2xJ, I have a 211j too, and it does it job well enough. But If anyone wants to upgrade they should definitely consider NAS that has either Brtfs or ZFS. I have seen far too many silent image or video / files corruption.

 

[JulianG]

Hi there,

Under the performance section on the second page you have a small error ::

"All tests were run using two Western Digital Red 1 TB ST1000VN001 we installed and configured in RAID 0 and 1 volumes."

 

[thiggins]

Thanks, Julian. Corrected

 

[Raindrop]

Hello,
I was hearing great things about Synology units for years, so I upgraded to Synology DS-218 few months ago. In my old D-Link unit, the OS was installed on the Flash/eMMC memory. I did not realize that modern NAS units use the hard drives to install the system OS. My experience with Synology is disappointing compared to my rather simple but old D-Link unit. Mainly the hard drive hibernation feature does not work in Synology. Even when hard drives are not been accessed still the trivial things like clock sync, e-mail alerts, using DDNS or using a USB printer can wake up the hard drives or does not let it go to sleep to begin with. I have been in contact with Synology support and submitted my system logs but I was told that Synology support does not have any solution to my issues. And with OS installed on hard drive units there is constant wear on the drives.

Check out following link from Synology website to see how broken is the implementation of their hibernation feature:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/know...Synology_NAS_from_entering_System_Hibernation

And it seems that QNAP has similar kind of issues with their implementation of their spin-down feature:
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/why-are-my-nas-hard-drives-not-entering-standby-mode/

Can I suggest that when you review a NAS unit, please do mention if the OS is installed on the Flash/eMMC memory or on the hard drive unit?
And if you can run a standardized test on the hibernation feature, that would be awesome.
Thanks.