This was posted 5 years 5 months 4 days ago, and might be an out-dated deal.

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Synology DS218J 2 Bay DiskStation NAS $203.15 + Delivery @ Computer Alliance

280
EOFY15

Possibly the historical low for a DS218J in Australia.

Delivery cost to metro areas:

  • Sydney: $16
  • Canberra: $17
  • Melbourne: $16
  • Brisbane: $10
  • Adelaide: $17
  • Perth: $18
  • Hobart: $18
  • Darwin: $18

The deal is part of Computer Alliance's 4-Day, 15% off store-wide sale which started on 14/06 and has been extended for another 24 hours (see highlights here). Use the coupon code.

Also, the bigger, 4-bay brother of the DS218J, the DS918+ is selling for $696.15 with 15% off, which is not a great deal, but it's certainly not terrible, given there have been scant few deals on the DS918+ since the start of the year (last cheapest deal was back in May).

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  • Ive got an older Buffalo Quad nas that i was thinking about upgrading….this might be an option. Thanks

  • does it support VPN and basic media center ?

    • As far as I know they all have them baked into DSM.

    • Yes it does both.

  • I have this exact model, works great for Plex + VPN, direct-play works awesome, don't expect any transcoding on an ARM CPU. (using 2x4TB drives)

  • +4

    For anyone thinking of getting this, throwing drives in and installing plex:

    https://forums.plex.tv/t/synology-ds218j/366162

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac…

    • +1

      Good find. Strange that didn't come up on a StaticICE search.

    • Thanks, grabbed one. My two 1TB buffalos not doing so good

    • I decided to post your deal separately, as it deserves its own entry for being what is now the cheapest price ever for a DS218J in Australia and the fact that Mwave's promotion on it runs until 30/06, whereas the this deal is expiring tomorrow.

  • I'm becoming more of a n00b with this sort of stuff on a daily basis, is it as simple as installing 2 x $100 msy special hdd's, plugging it into my router and configuring via a web interface then mapping it as a drive on my pc's?

    I've been a little lazy in my backup schedule to a portable hdd and my kids are starting to get older now so using the computer more and more likely than my wife and i to click on a link for free movies… I need to start taking a more serious approach to backup.

    • I'm becoming more of a n00b with this sort of stuff on a daily basis, is it as simple as installing 2 x $100 msy special hdd's, plugging it into my router and configuring via a web interface then mapping it as a drive on my pc's?

      Pretty much what you've described. It's all managed from a web-based interface that is no more complicated than your modem-router's management interface (in fact, the DiskStation Manager UI is a lot nicer to use than most modem-routers). The actual DiskStation Manager OS is installed on a small partition on your HDDs in the NAS.

  • Any suggestions on NAS hard disks for these?

  • Why are these so expensive?

    There doesn't seem to be much to them, yet i'm meant to burn off $200 + HDD's for a decent backup.

    • Because it's more than backup
      if you want something cheap for backup, external HDD is your choice

    • +1

      Why are these so expensive?

      The same reason laptops are expensive compared to an equivalently-specced desktop.

      You pay a premium for the small form factor and miniaturisation of components.

      Even then, most entry-level NASs are bargains compared to some MacGyver NAS you cobbled together from old PCs, especially for the less tech-savvy.

      The cheapest you could build a real sh*tbox PC to use as an inexpensive file server would be around $500 and even then, it would be rather unwieldy as a dedicated NAS, consume a lot more power annually, be nowhere as compact or silent and you'd have to run something like FreeNAS, Ubuntu Server or another home server OS, which for most laymen, is going to be a giant obstacle to user-friendliness and nowhere near as much of a simplified, fire-and-forget process as configuring Synology's DiskStation Manager OS.

      DSM is also extremely well-supported, regularly-updated, has a huge community behind it for power users to leverage in customising and tweaking the hell out of it and has a truckload of add-on packages to turn a Synology NAS into everything from a fully-automated media server, personal cloud server, automated torrent box, a CCTV surveillance DVR, a basic web server; you name it.

  • +1

    I suggest anyone who doesn't have a NAS buy this one as your first basic NAS. You'll have resilience by putting it in raid and when you do finally decide to upgrade to a 4 bay, you can use this one as a device to backup to.

  • +2

    FYI, it's cheaper at Mwave $198 + $10.95 delivery.

  • Currently I and a few family members have most of our data only on Google Drive. Would getting one of these be an effective method to create a local backup of all that?

    Probably deciding between this and a cheap PC.

    • +1

      Yes but the way you would access the files would be different and limited by your bandwidth, you could keep Google drive and automatically sync to a local copy on your NAS.

      Synology will give you a DDNS kind of service so you can access remotely by a xxx.synology.me style URL.

      If you wanted to access those files remotely, you could, but it would not be as convenient as communicating with google drive. That being said you can sync your google drive using the cloudsync app: https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/Cl…

      The good thing is you can install Synology apps to do all sorts of cool things, the limiting factor of this box is 512MB Ram, non upgrade-able, which means the number of apps you can run is limited.

      I have both Synology and Qnap 4 bay NAS's they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

      Both have a bunch of decent free apps to make the best use of your NAS across Android and IOS.

      Make sure you invest in NAS HDDS in some sort of RAID / mirrored, auto backup kind of config if you value your data.

  • Can I use different brand of hard drives with this? I have same size Seagate and WD.

    • +1

      Technically yes if you intend to not use RAID, but it is not recommended if you do, because there will be subtle differences in performance, actual usable size, seek and access speeds and RAID features.

  • +1
  • +1

    Amazon is cheaper if you have Prime. Also some info on different version of 2 slot nas https://nascompares.com/compare/ds216se-ds218j-ds218play-ds2…

    • Thanks for that.

      Some of those top-level ones are quite expensive…

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