Synology 2-Bay NAS Guide - 2021

[Music] hello and welcome back and today i want to talk about synology 2 by nasa's let's be honest if you are making the jump from cloud services like dropbox and google drive and you've looked at synology nas and you've kind of liked what you've seen there chances are the first nash you go for is going to be a two bay two bay nazis provide a very low level amount of raid support they also give you a lot of features and functionality but it has to be said that there is actually quite a lot of different now systems in the synology portfolio so today what i wanted to do is focus straight on the currently available two bays from synology i did want to make this video a little while ago but with the way the release schedule goes with synology i'm always worried that i'll make one of these and they become instantly out of date because synology releases a new range so i'm making this now but bear in mind i am recording this here in uh july 2021 so chances are now with my luck that as soon as i've done this synology is going to launch a bunch of new two-bays i'll have to start from scratch again but today we are going to look at the two base series and although i have two units physically here look they are here this video i am going to use a lot of on-screen graphics because there's going to be a lot of information on screen to compare these devices against one another and things are just going to get cloud so just to show you that i have tested every single two-bay nas that we are going to talk about today along with lots of ones that came before it and to give you some idea about what one of these looked like in terms of scale now another thing i will highlight before we start the video is that a lot of tube analysis from synology although they seem very very similar they have a lot of differences in terms of software and a lot of people hear about a feature or functionality that synology offer like synology hybrid raid or synology photos or virtual machines and stuff like that and then assume that all the systems have it and it's just simply not true and throughout this video i'm going to be highlighting not only the differences between these systems in terms of hardware but i'm going to be touching a lot of the software differences in the hope that i can highlight to you why spending an extra 50 to 100 might be good for you but without further ado let me tell you about the things they've all got in common okay so all of the two bays that we're talking about today arrive with dsm 6.2 and with dsm-7 now launched all of these systems do allow you to upgrade to dsm-7 next all of them support synology hybrid raid that's a mixed raid configuration where you can have two different raid drives inside and the system will still be able to take advantage of both of them and there's a little bit of scalability there but it's far less appropriate in two raised and larger ones next they all support i photo recognition whether it's within technology moments in dsm 6.2 or using synology photos they both sorry all of the two bays allow you to use ai recognition it's thing recognition whether it's objects like food and landmarks and stuff like that that is more too bad appropriate that's not available on all of them but facial recognition is most certainly available on all of the two bays also all of them arrive with support of sonology's surveillance platform surveillance station 8.2 at the time of recording and they all arrive with two camera licenses inside they've all got external psus as well they also arrive with support of a lot of the synology apps there are exceptions that i'll talk about later in the video but on the whole if you want synology drive if you want synology office if you want synology uh video station so logic vpn server that sort of thing all of these systems have got that along with uh the photo music tools as well and download station as well um so they've all got those options built into every single two bay they've even all got support of hyper backup as well so you've got hyper backup which is their backup tool for managing lots of different devices all at once and having your backup system or making sure your cloud is backed up to you now in your nas for your usb and all of that stuff so all of these devices do arrive with a lot of synology software and support but let's talk about the differences let's talk about other things one reason why you might choose one two bay over another so right now in summer 2021 there are five mainstream two bays from synology the ds220j the ds218 play the ds218 the ds220 plus and the ds-720 plus it's worth highlighting there are actually two other two bays that we're not going to talk about in the channel because although they are still technically available floating around they're not really as highly supported they're not really that widely available and that is the ds216se one of the most underpowered nazis i've ever seen and the nvr one two one nine are dedicated surveillance now so we're not really going to talk about those but they are other two bays that maybe you can google and you'll find out in the other videos so let's talk about what these five have got in common uh in terms of hardware and what they've got in difference because there's a lot of similarities between them you can definitely see that the newer generation of nazis and the older generation of nazis have kind of closed the gap a little bit and those units have got one eight in the title you can definitely see how dated they may have become first and foremost it's the cpu now the 220 j the play and the standard two one eight all of those arrive with that real tech processor the real tech rtd 1296 a quad core 1.4 gigahertz arm 64-bit processor that means that it can handle um a lot of processes and get you know quite a lot done is able to support dsm but it should be highlighted that because it doesn't have embedded graphics or that it's not an x86 64-bit processor the performance and the amount of cpu utilization when it's in operation will indeed be a little bit lower also on top of that it's worth highlighting all three of those systems although they arrived with memory which is ddr4 in architecture 2 400 megahertz i believe samsung or hynix memory that memory cannot be upgraded with the 220 j arriving with half a gig of memory and the play and the two one eight arriving with one gig and two gig respectively so not a huge amount of memory on these but it's the idea you can't upgrade them and the other two devices they're arguably more prosumer grade devices they have got 2 gig of memory but they are upgradable so the architecture of those more affordable nas systems will limit and you'll see how it limits things later on in terms of software when it comes to the other end of the table the 220 plus and the 720 plus these arrive with intel celeron or celeron processors and there you go getting corrected in the comments again those cpus they are x 86 64-bit processor they both got embedded graphics uhd hd 600 graphics even and they arrive at 2.0 gigahertz respectively but with the 220 um cpu being a dual core that can be burst up to 2.9 gigahertz and a quad core being a 2.0 cpu that can be burst up to 2.7 gigahertz for core so lots to be getting on with there with ai level encryption and all the kind of real um extra oomph that you want from a nas to run the gamut of synology applications you're very much gonna have to be at this end of the table and as already mentioned they arrive with two gig of memory respectively both of which can be upgraded to six gig weird number and also it uses two thousand six hundred and sixty six megahertz memory at that none of them use ecc or anything like that but the upgradability and the core day one strength of those other two systems it's how they're able to do so much more on day one and if you are looking for a nas that can really show you all of synology's applications at the very best you definitely want to go to this end of the table i'm going to keep mentioning that throughout the video but i do think it's worth highlighting and of course when i'm talking about buying i of course should talk about price if it's not already on screen the price difference between these devices is actually quite peculiar because of the changing release pattern of all of these systems being so diverse with the um the 218 series devices coming close to three years old now the result is that when you go through all three of these systems what you find is that the price isn't the same stamp jump between them so the 220 um ga arrives at around 170 and i am going to talk about dollars because the majority of my audience seems to be you guys in the us hello um if we look at the play the play knocks around for about 199 dollars so a very small difference there and the only difference between these nasties from what i can see is that memory it's just twice the memory at 512 versus one gig so it's worth it going for that it's the same cpu next up we can look at the 218 on its own and that arrives at 250 dollars so again we've done another jump now of about 50 and for that you get twice the memory and then after that we go into the pros humor grade ones and then we see arriving at two nine nine dollars and three nine nine dollars respectively and that's because that top-end box has got some extra features that we're going to talk about later on but ultimately the price isn't really a nice even glide is it it's quite jumpy and jerky all the way through and that's because the way these two baits have been released i think if you've got the money the best one for value is that 220. i've got to say i really do think the 220 plus is by far the best value device between all of them obviously the 720 is the most powerful but the best value definitely that 220 for price now after that we can talk about storage capabilities what you have and how they can be connected and all of them as you would expect being two bay nasa's they support sata hard drives up to the very latest sata hard drives currently seagate is not knocking around at 18 tb and 20 tbs on the horizon and wd red as well in both their red and pro series it's worth highlighting although they all support two bays of storage and they both have raid support only the 720 at the end there can be expanded and by that i mean you can attach another five bays of storage to this system in its lifespan and increase your storage you can spread the raid across it or have it as a parallel running system or mirrored together and that expandability for those of you that are trying to buy a nas now that you want to upgrade later that 720 is going to get ever more appealing throughout this video for other reasons because not only does it have that storage there um the storage expandability it's also the only nas on this list that has nvme ssd caching bays built into the base all the other devices i've only got two bays of storage and that is your lot but the 720 at the end has two m2 nvme slots that allow you to install super fast ssds inside and you and leverage that higher performance towards the storage and move more commonly accessed files not move copy i should say copy more frequently accessed files onto the ssd and therefore the more frequently accessed data can be accessed that bit faster so i also mentioned access there another thing i will talk about my god i hate seagulls is to do with network connectivity and general ports and connections because although these are all two bays they're all slightly different in terms of connectivity you may have already noticed by the graphics on screen that the three more affordable devices arrive in a slightly different enclosure they use a closed non-hot-swappable enclosure you have to remove half the chassis to put the drives inside and put it back together that system will make a little bit more noise when it's in operation but also the ports and connections available on them are a little bit more scaled down it has to be said so if you go for the more affordable one at the other end there the usb sorry the ds220j this device arrives with two usb 3 ports doesn't have a usb copy button it doesn't have a little bit more interactivity and it's got one network port there which is one gigabit so 100 to 109 megabytes per second we go up the rung it's the ladder to the play the ds218 play that system arrives with two usbs as well and a single lad exactly the same as the device that came out three years later you know that's crazy for me and then after that we can look at the dst one the ds218 is kind of meant to be like the standard class series and that system arrives with one usb 2 port two usb 3 ports there but again a single one gpe port that is a consistent trend throughout sonology now systems that they always arrive with just one gbe you have to go really enterprise into the xs series to get 10 gbe on board or even upgradeability as an option in some of their plus series we look at the last two two bays there the 220 plus arrives with two times usb 3 ports and two 1gb ports so link aggregation is supported and you've got more connectivity to a usb external drives you can't really do a lot with usb drives on a synology you definitely can't attach peripheral devices there aren't that many network upgrades like the 2.55 gbe network upgrade from qnap but having those extra ports you can add more expandable um you know edible storage you know extended storage even you can even use them for like printers and scanners and stuff like that but i know the usb compatibility list has been quite trimmed down in dsm-7 so really we are just talking external storage and finally you've got the ds720 plus at the end there with that device arriving with two usb 3 ports and two lan ports there and because it got the expandability because it's got the nvme ssd caching base having the increased network capabilities on that box and the one before it to link aggregate and get twice as much external performance and the ability to improve the internal performance and overall storage makes the 720 definitely the best connectivity option in two bays and definitely the more future proof but of course you're paying more money for early doors so you would expect that now this brings us quite neatly onto that subject of software at the start of the video again all five of these arrive with dsm 7 or dsm 6.2 depending on your own taste and preference and they all arrive with support the base level features but after that things differ slightly so the 220 j is kind to your base it doesn't really play 4k i tried doing it in plex testing and although that cpu with the right amount of memory that real tech can handle 4k at half a gig of memory i wouldn't advise it the next two rungs the 218 the two and eight play can support 4k transcoding thanks to the amount of memory they've got they can transco 4k hevc high highly efficient video codec but again that's natively forget about doing that in plex because although plex media server can be used on all five of these plex performance at that end of the table is pretty bad the play it's not so bad you definitely can't transcode much and although you can play back the majority of 1080p you're really going to struggle there with a lot of 4k and particularly dense hdr hevc stuff the same can be said for uh the 218 with the near identical hardware architecture to do devices before it's just more memory memory is not really a bottleneck when it comes to multimedia playback it's always going to be the cpu and whether it's embedded graphics and more capable and that's something you're not really going to get any kind of benefit from in that increased memory however the two at the end the 220 and the 720 not only do they handle multimedia great deal better but they handle everything better they'll use less resources doing it and they'll allow more instances of people doing it as well so they both arrive with support to btrfs as a file system of choice it is also available it should be said on the 218 but you will use a lot more resources to do that but the btrfs with its fast sorry less resource intensive snapshots file self healing easier shared folder duplication there's a lot to be said there for btrfs in a more um evolving storage area on top of that 4k support as mentioned the 1080p transcoding as well but they both arrive with support virtual machines and containers in docker so again a huge amount of scalability and kind of bespoke playtime stuff there with those two devices um you've also got more of the synology suite of application support so mail plus and you've got thing identification in queue and not you may um synology photos and of course getting even more enterprise than that you've got a greater support of cameras a larger range of simultaneous cameras in surveillance station and then you have access to that wonderful wonderful tool active backup suite that allows you to create a far more tailored a formal enterprise led a backup operation with a single um user user interface that allows you to backup all your differences with your pcs your laptops your tabs your linux service your cloud services all of that into that single migrated cloud system with your nas and then have your nas backing up onto other areas using hyper backup there that's you've only got half of that in the other three devices and it's something that they've really provided in a big big way not only on the 720 which is what i would expect at that price point but the fact that the 220 supports a number of these features albeit in a slightly slim down form because of that cpu is still very good for me and i think that's why just like i said at the top of the video of all of these devices the 220 plus for me is the pick of the litter it's not the most aggressively exciting and by no means the most powerful but i think it's the best value for features for software for hardware and overall and i should also highlight that all of the devices bar one arrived with two years of warranty with that one on the end there the 720 having three years of warranty that can be expanded up to five years so um again all five of these devices are available now and no doubt now i've made this video so knowledge you're gonna release some other two base just to wire me up let's hope they don't do that at least for a little while so this video can remain relevant for a bit more if you have enjoyed this video do let me know click like if you haven't subscribed to learn more i'm going to be going through some more four bays and eight bays and of course i'm gonna be looking at other brands as well so do watch out for those but do take advantage of the free advice section over on nas compares it is completely free it's manned by two guys myself and eddie the web guy we answer all of your storage inquiries big or small network inquiries the best data storage practice and more and of course we do it completely for free there's some donate buttons we might use the amazon affiliate link or something on there but we don't do it abund above anything more than just to help this um whole industry for data storage and of course subsidize the platform for as long as we can to help as many people as we can so if you do need free advice do take advantage of it but otherwise thank you so much for watching i shall see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 9,049

Keywords: NAS Server, NAS Drive, NAS Guide, Synology Guide, Synology NAS, Synology 2021, Synology 2022, Synology DS920+, Synology NAS Drive, Synology NAS Server, Best Synology NAS, Synology NAS Drive Guide, Synology, Synology Mac, Synology Windows, Synology 2 HDD, Synology 2-Bay, Best Synology 2-Bay, Synology 2 DISK NAS, DS720+, DS220+, DS220j, DS220, DS218PLAY, DS218, DS218j, DS222+, DS722+, DS222J, DS222play, DS222, DS 220+, Synology New 2-Bay, Synology 2-Bay Guide, Synology Buyers Guide

Id: gvLkSw30ZUY

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 10 2021