Synology DiskStation DS416j Network Attached Storage Review
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
In the modern data-centric society, high capacity storage devices are always in demand. Back in 1985 40MB hard drive was in high demand and the going price for it was around $20,000 USD. Now you can pick up a 4Tb hard drive for about $200 USD. With our growth in technology we need massive and affordable storage devices. Synology has been in NAS business since their beginning in 2000. Their first NAS, DS-101, was released in 2004 and since then we have seen a numerous growth of NAS devices in Synology’s line up. Synology offers numerous NAS products starting from home use all the way enterprise use. DS416j fall under home use / on the budget model storage device. If you are looking for just storing your file and worrying a little less about running out of space, then DS416j might be a good fit.
This little NAS has a great number of features that complement its storage capabilities. What I found helpful is the graphical user interface of DS416j and how easy it was to set up and get up and running in just a matter of minutes. DS416j offers RAID redundancy which I strongly encourage to take advantage of. Depending of which RAID configuration you pick, you may have a failure of one of the hard drives and still retain all of your data without loss.
It is worth to mention that relying on RAID alone is not ideal for data storage backup. The rule of thumb is to have your data in three different places. A good example would be having a data on laptop, NAS device and a cloud service. You already have your data , DS416j provides you a network attached storage and all you really need is a cloud service to push your data to from DS416j. DiskStation Manager (GUI that is used to manage DS416j) offers a seamless connector (Cloud Sync) to sync your files to your favorite cloud offerings. (Dropbox, Google Drive, Box etc).
Right now DS416j retails for about 290$. I strongly believe that there is a very well balanced price between hardware and the amount of features you are getting with this particular unit. Do keep in mind that if you are planning to use DS416j you need to purchase drives separately from the device itself. Depending on the hard drive capacity you may easily reach 32TB with this small unit. If you are looking for inexpensive storage device for your home or even a small office, do consider DS416j. I am overly satisfied with performance and offerings of this product.
