I purchased this DS1520+ as a diskless system. I also purchased Ironwolf drives along with it and later followed up with an Ironwolf M.2 cache card that I installed a few days later.
Setup was simple and fast. Install the drives, let it format and run it's integrity check. While the check is running, you can use it. I come from a much older NAS, a ReadyNAS NV+, that was definitely showing its age, but served well for over a decade.
1. It's quiet. I assume a lot of this to do with the drives, but the ones I chose and this unit are whisper quiet. It sits less then 3 feet away on my desk, and the most noise it makes is a barely perceptible rumbling noise when the disk access is heavy.
2. It's fast. Compared to my old system, it's probably 10X faster on file transfers. Yes, it's noticeable that it's not a local disk, but I cannot complain at all about the speed.
3. Easy to setup and use. A basic install of disks and initial setup of the DSM software on it is pretty easy to manage - and it's a tool less install too. For setup, you can dig into it and make it much more complex, but setting up a plex server was simple enough and docker - well that depends on what you are installing. Only warning I have here is be careful how you set up networking. They have a tool that does a security check that warns you of potential problems, but you do not want to expose it unnecessarily to the Internet.
4. SSD Cache helps. It learns eventually what files are most accessed. It's useless for streaming movies - the disks are adequate enough for that - but the metadata comes quickly off the system. Make sure to tell it in the SSD configuration to stream large files off the disks to preserve cache space. I installed this about a week after getting the unit. Since I only have one M.2 card, the cache is for NAS reads only - you'll need two cards for a read-write cache. Turn it off, flip it over and plug it in. Flip it over and turn it on again. Then tell it you want to set it up a SSD and a few clicks later, it's done.
5. Plex: Runs like a champ on this system. I use it to stream media to iOS devices and the AppleTV.
The only complaint I have is that perhaps I should have ordered larger drives to put in it, but that's on me. 2 drive fault tolerance takes huge chunk out of your storage space. After migrating all my data, it was about 40% full. That's about 10+ years or so worth of accumulated data, so it may not be that bad.
My setup:
Synology DS1520+ w/stock 8GB RAM
5x Seagate Ironwolf 4TB drives, formatted SHR w/2 drive fault tolerance. 3.64TB (formatted space) x5 = 18.2TB, 10.9TB useable for storage.
Seagate Ironwolf 480GB M.2 cache card.
| Brand | Synology |
|---|---|
| Series | DS1520+ |
| Item model number | DS1520+ |
| Item Weight | 9.8 pounds |
| Product Dimensions | 12.5 x 11.8 x 11.6 inches |
| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 12.5 x 11.8 x 11.6 inches |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR4 SDRAM |
| Voltage | 100240 Volts |
| Manufacturer | Synology |
| ASIN | B08FT1SFKY |
| Date First Available | August 14, 2020 |
