Synology or Qnap NAS, which model?

[Attonine]

I currently have a FW800 Drobo, which is about 5 yrs old and has been passed onto my parents, so I'm looking to replace it with a NAS box. I have narrowed my search down to 2 models; Synology DS413j and Qnap TS-412.

I like the Drobo, it has served me well and I've had no problems. It is used exclusively to house my iTunes library, and this is what the NAS will also be used for. The features I really like are the ability to mix and match drive capacities and brands, and to increase the capacity of the Drobo by simply adding a larger capacity drive. I would very much like to have these features in the replacement NAS.

I have looked at the spec sheets for the Synology and Qnap, they clearly have many, many more features than the Drobo, but I have not been able to establish whether they have the features I want to maintain described above. Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks.

 

[rhett7660]

I think it will depend on what type of Raid setup you want to have will determine what kind of disk/disk size etc you would be able to use and if the whole disk would be used.

 

[Bauer24]

The synology will have the hybrid raid which will give you the ability to upgrade the space without upgrading all drives to the same size.

The qnap does not have that feature.

Also, you'll want to grab WD Red drives for the synology.

 

[r0k]

I'm using two Synology drives: A DS 112J and a DS212J. I manually "mirror" things between the two NAS drives. I really like Synology. Frankly, two separate low power NAS drives beats any kind of RAID because if something goes wrong, chances are it won't happen to both at the same time. You can take your sweet time replacing the one that's down and mirroring everything back over again. For a while, I operated with a DS212J (one drive installed) and a LaCie NAS drive as backup. When the LaCie died, and I was faced with sending my data to LaCie for repair, I decided I wanted another Synology for my backup.

 

[Attonine]

Looks like I should investigate the Synology more.

I am planning to use the WD Red drives, if I can get hold of them. Their availability is not as ubiquitous as other models atm.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

Just make sure to check the compatibility list often NAS and look for the disk. Sometimes they re not fitting well (physical dimension, firmware, sector size).
Ps: I'm very happy with my QNAP.

 

[phillytim]

Synology tends to be the more favored one by Apple people. It appears to be the only one that includes the AirPlay feature. Given a choice, I would go for the Synology.