8 Bay NAS Recommendations

Devastator0 on 04/04/2025 - 14:05

So, I currently have a quite old Thecus N5550 5 bay NAS which is almost maxed out storage wise and I need to get a replacement/upgrade. The 2 NAS enclosures that have caught my eye have been the Synology DiskStation DS1821+ (Although I know that they just recently announced the DS1825+ model) and also the UGREEN NASync DXP8800 Plus which, unfortunately isn't directly sold in Australia. I was wondering if anyone had/has any experience with the Synology 8 Bay NAS device and what their experience has been and/or if anyone has any other better recommendations.

The NAS will be purely for storage, I don't need to run any media servers, docker containers, VM's on it etc. I just want something that I can quickly read and/or write to.

Would genuinely appreciate any feedback/suggestions/recommendations!

Computing NAS

Comments

  • jv on 04/04/2025 - 14:14
    -4

    8 Bay NAS Recommendations

    1. QNAP TS-233
    2. Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen2 (AS6702T)
    3. Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen 3 (AS6804T)
    4. Synology DiskStation DS1522+
    5. Asustor AS5402T
    6. LatticeWork Amber X
    7. Asustor Flashstor FS6706T
    8. TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus
    • jugsy on 04/04/2025 - 14:29
      +4

      jv bot confirmed

    • sunnyc on 20/04/2025 - 20:11

      thanks clear

  • boomramada on 04/04/2025 - 14:40
    +3

    8 Bay NAS for home user, damn linux distro for whole generation.

    • BanannaMan on 04/04/2025 - 14:51
      +1

      It's not only a hobby, it's an addiction..

    • Devastator0 on 04/04/2025 - 16:36
      +1

      lol yeah what can I say, I have a lot of media. Have actually legitimately gone through a huge DVD & BluRay collection and ripped almost all of it so there are high space requirements. Also back up all of my PC's regularly to my NAS.

  • bondi on 04/04/2025 - 15:00

    DS1821 is the better one, as it uses an Intel CPU for hardware transmission decoding, not like DS1823 or DS1825… an AMD CPU. That said, you would be better off choosing other brands for cost-effectiveness when you are only doing basic storage for the NAS.

    DS1621 is the best choice, but I am not sure if you still could find one on the market, Intel CPU does everything, get a DX517 extension set and you could have extra bays

    • Devastator0 on 04/04/2025 - 16:35

      The thing is, I have a PC that acts as my Plex media server so that handles all of my hardware transcoding needs, I don't need it to be run natively on the NAS. In regards to your recommendation, due to where the NAS is going to go, I'd rather have an all in one 8 bay NAS as opposed to then using expansion enclosures. Btw, the DS1821+ NAS uses a AMD Ryzen V1500B CPU though…no Intel option from what I see.

      • bondi on 05/04/2025 - 07:37
        -1

        If money is not your concern, you should just get the most expensive one in the DS range. You found an alternative way to circumvent hardware transcoding, but it is not a proper way, as you seemed to want to keep it in one set. I thought you asked for a solution, not an argument.

  • Voldox on 04/04/2025 - 16:08

    I have a 1815+ still going at the moment, it uses software for Plex Decoding but it's been a great device. I agree re 1821 if you want synology otherwise for basic stuff yes look at others. I'm happy to pay extra for the Synology and its features etc.

  • hutsy on 04/04/2025 - 16:40
    +3

    If you're into tinkering then I'd recommend rolling your own NAS and using an OS like TrueNAS or UnRAID. For a comparable price to the Synology you could build the following which would leave the Synology in the dust. Also other than the Mobo and case these are all just the first prices I saw and could probably be found cheaper without looking too hard.

    $229 - Case - Jonsbo N3 (or Jonsbo N5 for 12 3.5" slots at $299 and more common ATX PSU)
    $50 - Case Fans - maybe $50, maybe cheaper
    $240 - PSU - SFX PSU, plenty to choose from between $180 - $300
    $639.99 - Motherboard - MINISFORUM BD795i SE (AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX, 16 Core/32 Threads)
    $139 - RAM - Crucial 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-4800 C40 SO-DIMM (you could increase to Crucial DDR5 5600MT/s Laptop Memory, 96GB(2x48GB) for around $315)
    $219 - SATA Card - StarTech 8-Port 6Gbps SATA Controller PCIe Expansion Card (plenty of other cheaper options)
    $91 - NVMe Drive - Samsung 980 PCIe Gen3 NVMe M.2 SSD - 500GB (or whatever alternative you like, it's just for the OS)

    $1608 - TOTAL

    $1695 - Synology DS1821+ (cheapest on staticice) only has a Ryzen Quad core and 4GB RAM

    Also you could decrease the cost by buying a CWWK N100 motherboard + CPU cooler combo for somewhere around $319-$389. and decrease the RAM to a single 16GB module for around $70. This is a 4 core intel CPU.
    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007160028086.html
    This would bring the total down to around $1279 and would be fine since all you're doing are a few SMB shares.

    Having said this I do like the Synology interface and if it was for SMB I would just buy that, for home use the hardware is just meh when you can get better bang for buck.

    • stratbargain on 04/04/2025 - 21:06

      Do you know if those Jonsbo case backplanes support SAS drives?

      • hutsy on 05/04/2025 - 01:01

        Yes, the backplane supports SAS drives (obviously you would need SAS ports on your ITX motherboard, or a SAS PCIe card). I believe it also supports hotswapable, again if your other components do.

        This reddit thread has a good write up, one of the things they tested was 4x HGST SAS drives in RAID5.
        https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/17eatg6/jonsbo…

  • Clear on 04/04/2025 - 17:38
    +2

    I'm patiently waiting for the Aoostar WTR Max to release. It's already available for pre-order at US$699 delivered and I have no doubt it'll be cheaper on AliExpress with codes.

    6 SATA + 5 M.2 NVMe, AMD R7 PRO 8845HSv Enterprise CPU, dual 2.5G + dual 10GbE, dual DDR5 SODIMM slots with ECC support… it ticks a lot of boxes.

    • stirlo on 04/04/2025 - 21:54

      One thing to note is when I purchased my Aoostar R1 from their webstore last year they did not know how to collect GST and it was delivered without any taxes or fees being imposed so that was a ~10% saving over aliexpress.

      • Clear on 05/04/2025 - 19:50

        How's the R1 going for you? I have been tempted by that one but I'm already running a 4 Bay + 5 Bay NAS so I think it'll be storage overload.

        • stirlo on 06/04/2025 - 18:19

          It only has 2 drive slots so I'm not running parity for my linux ISOs (1x 18tb and 1x14tb). I'm running Unraid with 16gb of memory, I've got 14 docker containers and 1 VM (running Home Assistant) and it works fine. I also have a Windows 11 VM but when I run it alongside everything else it does make the N100 chip run a bit sluggish.If a product like the WTR Max had existed at the time I bought my R1 I would have picked it instead just because it's future proof.
          Overall I'm super happy with it and it's cool that it just looks like a home router/appliance rather than a server sitting on my desk.

  • Ooops on 12/04/2025 - 08:44

    Get a HDD storage bay that you can attach to anything.

    If you have sensitive media on them, set them in a RAID and off you go.

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