Synology Diskstation DS220j NAS Review

[Jola]

An easy-to-use private cloud for everyone
DS220j is an entry-level 2-bay NAS designed for home and personal users to store and share photos, videos, and documents. The private cloud solution is powered by the award-winning DiskStation Manager (DSM) OS, providing an intuitive user interface and safe data protection approaches for easy digital asset backups from computers and mobile devices at no additional cost.

Ok, those are the claims for this product on the Synology website, so let us see how it measures up.

First, some images :










Important specifications :

1) 1Gbps Ethernet

2) Quad core 64-bit CPU

3) 512MB RAM

4) Two drive bays (not hot swappable) (Default Raid 1, but can be set up as Raid 0)


Not many local offers for this product as yet, the one that I found is :

Synology DiskStation DS220j 2 Bay NAS - Personal cloud solution for data sharing and backup

DS220j is an entry-level 2-bay NAS designed for home and personal users to store and share photos, videos, and documents. The private cloud solution is powered by the award-winning DiskStation Manager (DSM) OS, providing an intuitive user interface and safe data protection approaches for easy...

www.loot.co.za

That gives some indication of local price.

This unit is quite attractively priced for what it offers, but as you go up the Synology ladder the features of the NAS units improve quite rapidly, however, so do the prices.

But bear in mind your requirements, a pair of nice 12TB drives for this unit could cost R15 000, so if you are spending that much on drives, you may want to consider the faster Synology Diskstation DS220+.

You really have to do your homework up front and decide what you need.

On Amazon :

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-DS220j-Diskless-2-bay/dp/B0855LMP81/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=synology+ds220j&qid=1596790670&sr=8-1

Of course, that does not include Shipping and Taxes.

 

[Jola]

First, unboxing :



So most things that you will require are included :

1) All the screws, plus one or two spares.

2) Power cord with European plug.

3) Ethernet cable.

4) Power Supply, 12 volt 5 Amp.

5) Main Unit

What you will need :

1) Suitably sized Philips screwdriver

2) Adapters for 2.5" drives, if that is your preference.

But the installation is very simple.

The main unit, when opened (two screws and a slide movement), looks like this :




And I had two unused drives on hand :



And 8 screws later the installation was complete :



Note that you do not need any expertise to perform the above installation, it is quite simple,and even inexperienced computer users can do this.

And now we get to the sad part (for me), I had purchased these two 6TB drives from Takealot over a year ago, but hadn't gotten around to installing them, so they were still sealed in packets. So initially everything went fine, however the DS220j did report a few bad sectors during the preparation of the one drive. Things went downhill quite rapidly from there, and the drive is FUBAR.

I contacted Takelot, but of course their warranty, as well as the manufacturer warranty is over, so I am out of pocket by R3000.

Just a warning, try to get drives with a slightly longer warranty, I see that many drives have two or even five year warranties. For myself, my replacement drives will have five year warranties.

So the rest of the test was conducted with a pair of 2TB WD Green drives (5600rpm) that I removed from my Drobo-FS.

 

[Jola]

Ok, so now we get to the software installation side.

I managed to find the unit immediately, both with my phone and with a Desktop on the network, so no problems there. For no good reason, maybe just because it is easier to do screenshots, I decided to set the unit up using my phone :













So the installation and update of the Synology Operating System onto the installed disks is quite simple, and it automatically defaults to Raid 1 when you have installed two hard disks.

The Updated OS version is DSM 6.2.3-25426 Update 2.

If you have only one disk it obviously uses Raid 0, and it will automatically set up Raid 1 if you install a second disk

And, to change a two disk installation to Raid 0 is not trivial, you basically have to do the normal Raid 1 installation, and then :

1) Uninstall a number of Apps (Audio Station, Video Station, Moments, Synology Drive Manager), and then go to the Storage Manager and delete the Storage Pool and Volume).

2) Recreate the Storage Pool as Raid 0, and create a new Volume.

3) Re-install Apps as required.

The DS Operating is a fully fledged OS, and Synology provide a number of Apps, including Photo Apps (Moments), Audio Manager, Video Manager, etc, etc.

Those are not Apps that I would normally use, I have software for most of that, including Adobe, etc, but I am sure that they could be valuable for many users.

I tried the Video Manager, but ran into a Video Format incompatibility problem so gave up.

There are also a number of third party Apps that could be useful, for example a Python development App.

 

[Jola]

Performance Tests :

The first one is a performance test with the DS220j with two 2TB Western Digital Green Drives in Raid 1 mode :



Now a performance test with the DS220j with two 2TB Western Digital Green Drives in Raid 0 mode :



Ok, so the Raid 0 and Raid 1 tests give similar results,with the Raid 0 read tests being slightly faster.

The following is a test with a Drobo-FS with a mix of WD 5600 rpm drives (single drive defect tolerance) :



So the DS220j, in Raid 1 mode, is more than twice as fast as the Drobo-FS on file reads.

It is important, however, to note that the Drobo-FS is a previous generation NAS, the newer models like the Drobo 2N3 would be significantly faster. Even now, though, the Drobo devices have never been considered to be fast.

So I would have expected a greater performance difference between the Drobo-FS and the DS220j, especially in view of the claims as to the 512MB RAM and the Quad core CPU, it seems that this is not quite enough.

Copy and Paste of a large video file (6GB) resulted in Read/Write of 92.4/36.8 MB/s with the DS220j, and 34.7/9.20 MB/s with the Drobo-FS, so a significant speed advantage to the DS220j. But no surprise there, the Drobo-FS has always been very slow.

 

[Jola]

Conclusions

This is a good value-for-money NAS, and it is easy to set up and use.

The operating system is quite sophisticated, and once you get into the Apps, and what they can do, this could be a very useful tool indeed. However, the 512MB RAM could become a limitation if you get too enthusiastic with the use of Apps.

The Quickconnect feature,which allows you to set up the DS220j as a cloud storage device, could be invaluable for users that require this feature.

IMO it would be valuable as a home server for important files, and also for media and photo storage.

However, as many of us are now using larger and faster hard drives for storage, I would tend to recommend that the typical MyBB power user should rather get the DS220+ (or better) NAS.

Most of us are now using SSD's, at least for the system drives, in our computers, and a NAS would need to be a little faster than a DS220j. Maybe 1GB of RAM would have been a better specification. Note that the DS220+ comes with 2GB of RAM, and is upgradeable to 6GB.

Something small that irritated me is the positioning of the power plug with respect to the USB ports : I was unable to use my 128GB fast USB3 stick, because it is a bit wider than usual, and I can't plug into either one of the USB ports while the power is on. I am sure that there will be similar issues with other USB devices. This can be avoided by using some type of USB extension, but a better design would have obviated this problem.

Of course, it is horses for courses, and a DS220j with a couple of 4TB or 6TB drives would make a very useful home storage and media server device.

 

[rustypup]

Please also provide:
i) Performance gap RAID 1 to 0
ii) How long you've run the drives for. I've had Synology units burn through drives pretty damned quickly. Maybe plan a report-back for drive lifespan.

 

[Jola]

Please also provide:
i) Performance gap RAID 1 to 0
ii) How long you've run the drives for. I've had Synology units burn through drives pretty damned quickly. Maybe plan a report-back for drive lifespan.

OK, will do the Raid 1 v Raid 0 test, that could be useful.

As for the longevity test, that may be more difficult, but I could certainly provide later feedback. I plan to put two large drives into this unit running Raid 1, so I can provide feedback once those are installed.

 

[rustypup]

Ooo... also:
iii) OS/Firmware update/upgrade process

 

[Jola]

Ooo... also:
iii) OS/Firmware update/upgrade process

The OS/Firmware update process can be automated, and is really quite simple.

 

[Alton Turner Blackwood]

Nice review

 

[Jola]

Just some feedback.

I purchased a Seagate Barracuda Pro ST14000DM001 3.5" Hard Drive (SATA III)(14TB)
with a 2 year Rescue warranty, and a 5 year limited warranty. It was R7467 from Loot, but seems to have gone up since I ordered it.

I am running this in the DS220j in Raid 0 mode, it works very well. I may get another drive later so that I can run it in Raid 1, but as the drive is rather expensive I will leave that for later.

I also spent some time testing the Quick Connect feature to access files from my phone, I was thinking that I could use it to replace DropBox. It works well enough, but does not have all the slick software support that DropBox has.

However, I will spend more time testing Quick Connect, this feature interests me.