Synology DiskStation DS218j - Reviews
(4.2)
94 reviews
Info
Reviewbucket.co.uk scanned the internet for Synology DiskStation DS218j reviews.
You can find all Synology DiskStation DS218j reviews and ratings on this page.
Analysis
For Synology DiskStation DS218j, 94 customer reviews collected from 2 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 4.2.
Detailed seller stats;
Amazon has 85 customer reviews and the average score is 4.1. Go to this seller.
Ebay has 9 customer reviews and the average score is 5. Go to this seller.
Detail
Similar Items
6.5.2018
I'm a bit of a tech geek, and this really does meet all my requirements and exceeds it. I personally just use this as document storage for work and personal reasons. It homes everything from photos, to films to software. The multiple user functions are great, and can give friends/family access to specific parts and let them use it for their reasons too. I bought the enclosure only, with 2 6TB WD RED drives, and it was literally plug and play. No messing about. Id advise that its a bit cheaper to get them separately than together, but its users choice.My only issue, is that i'm struggling to get decent data transfer speeds (it's limited to 98mbps) my network at home is a bit messy,
18.8.2019
Originally, I wanted a Synology NAS but couldn't justify the price so I purchased a Zyxel one some years back and although it was OK, it was frustrating in parts.I bought this Synology NAS when it was on a deal even though I really didn't need it. I actually planned to return it but left it too long. I installed x1 drive from my old NAS and then using Synology's 'File Station' , mapped my old NAS as a remote drive which enabled me to copy everything across. Finally, I installed the second drive from the old drive and that was it! Very simple.The GUI/OS is excellent, really straight forward and a massive improvement over my old Zyxel. One of the main reasons I wanted a Synology NAS is because I wanted to use OpenVPN,
27.9.2019
Love it. I sent my original choice of NAS back cos user interface was poor and I am not technically familiar with this stuff. I needed a NAS to create a home cloud for my non-technical wife and children to use. This has been excellent from the start. Hardware (NAS box) looks so deluxe and as very easy to setup and install the hard drives. User interface is fairly easy and now I have all users (wife and kids) setup with their own accounts. All photos & videos off our phones so uploaded to NAS into our home cloud. Films added that can be shared around the home on our Amazon fire sticks (by simply adding their DS Video App) and on our PS4 (by simply adding media player) and on our Xbox.
16.1.2020
My first venture into NAS, as I wanted to set up local storage for backups and data. Purchased the bare DS218j with two WD Red 4Tb drives during Black Friday period. Fitted the drives myself (simple) and let the unit set itself up as a RAID (I.e. a 4Tb mirrored drive). Fairly simple to use the Synology DSM application to set the NAS up.Have now copied around 1.5Tb of photos and home videos onto the NAS, which now sits attached to my router.Seems to work well and have set up Syncback free which allows me to manually run an application on my main PC to check any changes and copy the latest between PC, laptop and NAS.The DS218j is fairly quiet, but I think you would notice it in a quiet bedroom.
30.7.2019
bought it to establish a wireless backup for our pics, music, and whatever other files. trusty seagate wired hard drive still going strong, mostly, but it's 15 years old and a couple of files i think have started to go a little funny. want the convenience of pushing a button from my phone and pictures are saved, and seem to have found it. still playing around with it, only set up for a few days so - no judge at all about reliability. but good so far. the fact that i am not a techie but found setup relatively easy is a big score, and very much what i was looking for. explicitly, we have a wd mycloud from a few years ago that i never got working, at least the way i wanted,
20.12.2019
I seem to be cursed when it comes to NAS. You can be sure that something will go wrong or where you need technical expertise to resolve the problem. Even with a machine as slick as this one which should have been ideal but sadly I found that although the NAS said it was connected to the LAN when I went to my computer it said it was unconnected. Then you're expected to go through a storm of material and spend fruitless stress-filled hours getting nowhere. The truth is that when you buy stuff like this, there should be a professional helpline, but pigs might fly sooner than companies like Amazon and Sunology provide decent customer service.In summary: I'm probably the problem. The machine seems good but just,
3.2.2020
I bought the Synology DS218J 8TB 2 Bay NAS to replace a WD 2 TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud that I assumed was a NAS but turned out that you can't access over your home network (you have to go through a browser). The biggest problem with the WD device was the image quality on the iOS app. Thankfully I returned the WD device and bought the Synology NAS instead. The interface was a little different to what i was used to (this all happened because my WD myBook Live NAS crashed without any warning) but it didn't take long to get used to. Furthermore there are several iOS apps one in particular for viewing images so now I can see decent thumbnails and view/save/forward full quality images.
16.5.2020
It's great and so simple to use, but in my eagerness not to have to fiddle with mounting drives meant it came pre-configured as a Raid so the second drive was a mirror of the first. It took me a full day to break the RAID and configure as separate storage (which - you guessed it - meant opening it up and unmounting and remounting the drives). Not the kit's fault, I wasn't across the full detail in my haste to purchase. For a server it takes up no space, it's about 66% of the size of an Xbox One, but stood on its end. It even fits under the TV on a shelf next to a sky box. Super quiet too (though much credit goes to the WD red drives for that).If you're thinking of taking the scary leap into home servers,
15.4.2018
It has just arrived, I plugged it in and it's working - all good so far. I do feel a bit cheated though, I bought a 16TB drive, which I knew would be RAID 1, so I expected the RAID safety penalty (half the capacity, double the safety) but I wasn't expecting each 8TB drive to only have a capacity of 7.3TB! - that's 700GB missing from each drive!!! Where is it? Who's got my 1.4TB?!!?Fortunately, for me, 7.3TB is more than enough to serve my current needs, but it's a rather misleading listing to say it offers 16TB storage when in reality it's 14.6TB.I'm sure there's a good reason for an 8TB drive to not offer 8TB of storage,
7.12.2018
Hadn’t used a “real” NAS drive before, so was pleasantly surprised by the number of applications provided, from movie streaming to full-functional surveillance system.For those that want to, can share among family members in the ways you’d expect, with individual / sharing folders.Security looks to be complete from virus checker, firewall and security features.You do need to bear in mind that with the 2 bay drive you, one of the disks is used for redundancy. It’s less of a problem with the bigger NAS drives with 4 bays. Only one is used for redundancy. Essentially this means that your data is protected. Also have the option of backing up to various cloud providers.
15.2.2020
Previously had a Seagate Personal Cloud network hard drive which died. Replaced with a Western Digital My Cloud which was impossible to install - over complicated, lacking in instruction and my smart TV could not find it.Sent back and got this Synology 2 Bay NAS which makes sense to have a 2 bay unit. Easy to install - my computer found instantly, lots of on line help and tutorials. I like the options to set shut down time and hibernation if not used which should extend life of the drives. Smart TV found all my movies and music right away once copied over. Overall whilst pricier than the alternatives I consider it worth the extra money for ease of use and dual drives.
3.1.2020
These boxes are awesome. Really simple to install. I bought one for work about 3 years ago and have bought 2 more for backup and other organisations i work with.There are so many uses. Straight Network attached storage. Map a netwok drive locally or over the internet. Mirror internally or to another device in an offsite location. Have your own massive distributed cloud storage (like dropbox, but not quite as good). Really good backup program as well as multiple versions kept on the disk itself. Create links to files for others to download. Autobackup to or from your other cloud providers. Apps for your phone to access files or music. Wow.
15.9.2018
Google setting it up with NFS and on Windows 10 go to programs and apps and install the windows feature NFS client. I found NFS also worked a lot better for Kodi setup. The transfer rate is much faster. This device is not really for the beginner though - I had to do a fair bit of work to get it to do simple things. It is very fast though and pretty cheap in comparison to other NAS's of similar speed. I was easily getting 80MB/s on large file transfers. This is about the normal speed of HD writes so is as good as you will need unless you have an expensive SDD file storage system (for your media library I mean).
26.2.2020
I use this as shared storage for my windows and mac pcs. The unit is connected to a UPS. My Itunes library is now on the shared storage so it is always available to play music from my media servers. It also hosts Logitech Media server. I use the Synology media server for video. Accessing files is fast and responsive. Easy to administer the disc shares. No issues accessing folders from windows, From the mac I occasionally get directory not found messages on the mac when viewing folders which can be got around by restarting the finder application from the Apple Menu. Hence the three stars for ease of use
7.2.2019
I like the easy access to the interior to install the drives. The software works perfectly, although like most peripherals which are really just computers running more software, sometimes opening the applications can be rather slow. That said I found it better than some I've tried. I bought this as a replacement for my Synology NAS single drive. The replaced unit was still working perfectly fine but I wanted the peace of mind of having a mirrored backup on the second drive. I should have bought this in the first place. I would recommend spending the extra on a twin drive NAS every time.