Review on 💾 Diskless Synology DS118 NAS DiskStation with 1 Bay by Robin Williams

I've used Western Digital MyCloud products for TimeMachine backups on our Macs - WD products have never been particularly stable as a network backup destination. When one of the WDs died I decided to invest in an (admittedly more expensive) Synology DS418 and I'm very glad I did. Setup was easy and TimeMachine backups from multiple Macs run very smoothly (Tips: SHR volume. A shared TM folder. A "user" on the Mac with quota. Make the first backups one at a time!). The only thing to note is that adding/replacing a drive isn't fast - adding a third 4TB drive to my setup took a couple of days for the DS418 to drain, but it did it with no difficulty . Overall, I'm *very* happy with how little fiddling I have with this server. It just works. UPDATE May 2020: I've been using the DS-418 consistently for about 2 years and thought I'd add a few additional comments. (1) I originally chose DS-418 as my device. to secure our family laptops. As mentioned in the original review, it was easy to set up and works seamlessly with Mac OSX TimeMachine on all laptops. Two years of backup on the DS-418 has been flawless - TimeMachines laptops silently and automatically back up any laptop whenever they are on our wireless network without the user even noticing. (2) I had a platter failure (an old repurposed platter - no surprise) in a 4 platter configuration and was very impressed with how easily the DS-418 recovered. A beep and light alerted me to the failed drive, but the DS-418 continued to run in "degraded mode," giving me time to order a new drive. As soon as the new drive arrived, I pulled out the old drive, plugged in the new one, and started the rebuild. The conversion took place completely in the background for a few days. Net result: ZERO downtime. Slight/complete overhaul. ZERO data loss. I'm VERY happy with the recovery and data integrity of the device!(3) Synology does a great job with software fixes and reporting potential security issues. A few clicks in the web interface after the email notification is enough to update it manually. In addition, you can check for updates one or more days per week and apply them automatically. Again, EXTREMELY happy with this feature! (4) At the time of writing, there are 104 packages (Synology and third parties) that can be added to DS-418 to configure services and functions such as audio/video server, home security. Camera integration, photo organizer, web server software and more. Packages are installed with one click. Very easy. I use a few add-on packs and the DS-418 still runs very smoothly. (5) Resource monitoring tools and memory analysis tools are very good. Simple enough to be useful for beginners, with enough data and detail to satisfy advanced users.