I've taken another look at the recent review of the Synology DS1812+ NAS server over at PCMAG.Com. The Synology DS1812+ is an 8 drive NAS device that supports adding a 10 drive expansion bay to go up to 18 hard drives. Each drive can be a 4 TB (or smaller model), so the possible storage on the drive is in the range of 72 TB - this is big storage indeed!
The device runs the standard Synology Disk Station Manager software which is now up to version 4. This software is quite polished and allows for many server functions to run on the NAS without the need for any hacking of the underlying Linux software.
Configuring the DS1812+ is just as easy as setting it up on a network. Synology’s latest management software, the DSM 4.0 is its finest interface yet. It’s not changed much in appearance, but it has expanded help documentation since I looked at DSM 3. It's a clean and uncluttered UI with excellent workflow. If I was configuring a feature and the instructions advised that some service on the DS1812+ had to be enabled to use the feature, for example, the window or a link to enable that feature opened up without me having to hunt for it. Synology's dedication to delivering an excellent user experience with DSM is clear throughout.
The NAS runs cool and quiet:
I had the DS1812+ running non-stop for about four days. The NAS remained cool and quiet, despite having dual fans (which are replaceable).
The RAID software is quite robust and survived even an inadvertent power outage while the volume was expanding:
I witnessed how well the DS1812+ can perform drive and system recovery. I initially had two 1TB SATA drives installed and I connected three more 1TB drives. I began the process of expanding the volume, and, in the middle of the process, I lost power and the DS1812+ shut down. I have seen such interruptions hose lesser hardware, but not the DS1812+. The system resumed the expansion, performed a parity check and verified disks without any negative impact on the drives.
Performance was excellent:
As mentioned earlier, the DS1812+ provided the fastest Write speeds to date in our testing SMB NAS devices at 83MBps performing an upload of a 1.5B file through the DSM 4.0’s File Station interface.
All in all, another rave review of a Synology NAS.
Related articles
- Review of Synology DS1812+ in real life (nas-pro.com)
- Synology DiskStation DS1812+ Review at PCMAG (nas-pro.com)
- Synology DS1512+ Review (nas-pro.com)
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