Review on 💾 Diskless Synology DS118 NAS DiskStation with 1 Bay by Jon Louis

I tried several different storage solutions for home and family small businesses, but none of the solutions I tried worked as advertised and didn't meet my needs. To be honest it was my decision to go for a budget solution since $400 for a NAS and then another $4 to $500 for at least drives puts a lot of money into it. I can't describe how happy I am that I did this. This is a solid product. I can't talk about using a media server as I haven't had time to test these features yet, but for a storage solution I can. This NAS makes backup, storage and file sharing extremely easy, and not just because I'm on specialized in computer science. Even for people who are not very computer savvy, setup is very easy and the web interface is simple and intuitive. Setting up on a local network is extremely easy. While setting up remote access for multiple users is much easier than something like an Ubuntu server, it still likely requires little more than average technical and networking skills. Especially if you use an antivirus and/or firewall as you need to make exceptions for the remote IP address. Also, to create a remote network drive, you need either a static IP address or a domain name and a DDNS service. Overall I'm very happy with the product so far and glad I decided to spend the extra money and get something that works great, is easy to use and meets all my needs. I'll try to come back and update as soon as I have a chance to write some media server functions. UPDATE: Now I've had the chance to test some features by using it as a media server. I put a few movies on it and was able to stream them. My conclusion: I have good and bad news. Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Bad news: If you're a Plex fan, you might be out of luck. It seems that Synology has dropped Plex support for all NAS server models except those with Intel processors. According to the Plex forums, some of the older DS418 models have Intel chips, but almost all of the newer ones have Realtek quad-core processors. Fear not, I found an alternative solution that I will share with good news. Another thing I've noticed is that if other services are running while you're streaming HD videos, you can stutter from time to time while a download or download is running in the background. I'm not sure if this is due to the CPU or the limited amount of RAM, but I plan to add more RAM in the near future. I also recently enabled ethernet port aggregation and will check if that makes a difference. . **Note. True port aggregation only works if you have a router that supports it. You have a load balancing binding, but it's not the same as port aggregation. After these modifications I will test again and report with another update. for video streaming, which isn't ideal, but I don't think it's great considering the price compared to other solutions. The port aggregation that I recently enabled along with my RAM upgrade plan might even solve this problem. Another piece of good news: For those of you who aren't into Plex, there's a Revain FireStick app called Archos that I think works really well. You can browse all your folders on the server, view pictures, play music and stream videos. So far I've only tested this when streaming on my local network and haven't tested remote streaming with this app yet. I'll get back to you with another update when I get a chance.