Synology DS1618+ NAS Review: A Great Way to Store and Access Data

Data is everywhere, a current study says 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day at our current pace. Now the question is where it's storage server that handles such amount of data. By the way that’s a different story altogether, we can talk later, but what if you have some huge data and want to keep it within your premises!

A high-speed NAS could be the right device to store data of a small or medium business as well as a tech enthusiast. Synology has a great history, with various network storage servers and they are one of the leaders in the industry. We got a chance to review it's latest offering Synology DS1618+ NAS, which provides storage scalability.

Synology DS1618+ NAS Review: Solid Build

The Synology NAS looks like a box in black colour, the front holds all the LED indicators along with NAS ON/Off button, LAN connectivity, Status and Alert. While the back side holds all the ports including two fan vents. If you want to RESET the NAS then a small hole with a reset button is also provided on the back side of the NAS which you need to press for around 4 seconds and a beep will appear as a feedback.
To add a drive into the NAS; just push the button and a pop door will appear, slide it out and then put the drive in it. The HDD casing has the locking option to hold the drive securely.

Synology DS1618+ NAS Review: Easy to Setup

To set up the 6 bay NAS first add drive or drives to the device and then insert the LAN cable to the Ethernet port. Now add power adapter and then switch on the box by pushing the on/off button on the front. It will take some time to booth up, one the LAN and Status LEDs turn green, mean the box is ready for the next step.

Now go to the PC to run the browser and type find.synology.com or diskstation:5000  to find the Synology NAS on your local network. If this won't help you to locate the storage server, you can download the Synology Assistant from Synology website. This will help you to find the NAS box plus will show the IP address allocated to the box.

Now Double click on the IP address given on the Synology Assistant or type it manually in the browser with port 5000. The web interface lets to proceed further to complete the setup, click on to setup button. Now you need to download DSM OS manually from Synology website and then select that to install.
When you proceed further, it asks for your existing data, in case you have any data then please remove from drive else you will lose all. Once you are done with the drives, process to install Synology OS.

Once the installation is done, you need to create an admin account by adding server name, username and password etc.

Synology offers QuickConnect option that lets you create an ID to connect quickly from anywhere as like cloud storage at your home or office.

Synology DS1618+ NAS Review: Whole lot of Accessibility

Synology’s NAS OS, DSM (DiskStation Manager), has plenty of features including real-time resource monitoring and health check-up. It has quite clean and easy to understand interface. On screen, there are only four icons on the screen- Package centre, Control Panel, File station and DSM help.

Package Center: It lets you install various apps to make your NAS box more than just a storage box. You use install iTunes server, DBS Server, WordPress, Web server, e-commerce, Media server apps and more.

It has plenty of choices from the Synology family as well as third-party apps are there to set up your server as per your needs. There are apps to create backup over the cloud in real time from different PCs to the NAS box.

Control Panel: It has two modes – basic and advance. Where basic one offers limited access, the advance one let to you plat with the box in all four sections: Files Sharing, Connectivity, System, and Applications.

Main Menu: The main menu consists quick access to Storage Management, Resource Monitor, and more. Using the Storage Management, one can manage attached drives to the box and their RAID configurations.  And the Resource Monitor helps to track the consumption of the NAS such as CPU, Memory, Network Disk, Process, Connected users and more.

Synology DS1618+ NAS Review: Performance

The NAS box is powered by a 64 bit Intel Atom C3538 Quad Core 2.1 GHz processor, has 4 GB DDR4 System Memory that can be expanded up to 32 GB (16 GB x 2). The box has 6 bays and each supports 14 TB drive (Capacity may vary by RAID types). You can install hard drives with 3.5" SATA HDD, 2.5" SATA HDD and 2.5" SATA SSD size. Also, it has Dual M.2 SSD adapter card for SSD cache. And boasts four RJ-45 1GbE LAN Port, USB 3.0 Port, eSATA Port, etc. meaning you get a lot of connectivity options.

To test the NAS box, we installed an 8 TB drive in it and connected to our network using the LAN. After configuring it on the network, we transferred assorted data of 5 GB from PC to NAS and NAS to PC. It delivered excellent transfer speed of 118.6 MBPS when PC to NAS and 121.7 MBPS when NAS to PC. However, speed can differ depending on your connectivity through the router and the connected drive in the BOX.

We also created a Cloud storage space to test the cloud performance, where it took about 15 min to upload the same 5 GB data from PC to NAS and 12 minutes from NAS to PC.