And that's definitely one reason why Synology is my first choice when recommending a NAS. Then boot the system up again, and choose Repair Volume. So just how easy is it to upgrade a drive? Simple: pull one out, and replace with something of higher capacity.

In a standard RAID array, the extra space on those drives would've been useless until every single drive had been upgraded. However, each subsequent drive upgrade immediately gives you proportionally more space. Upgrading a single drive has no benefit – because the extra storage offered by that drive has nowhere else to be duplicated, so it would be unsafe to store data there. (Note: you don't need to start with four drives, and they don't need to all be the same size, but this is the simplest way to explain the Synology advantage). Your total capacity is therefore 3 x 500GB. The benefits of SHR begin after upgrading just two of the current drives. To explain the diagram above: at the start of your array, you've got 4 x 500GB drives, with one used for data redundancy. DS918+ uses twice as much power during hibernation, so running costs will be higher.DS918+ can be expanded with DX517 (5-bay storage enclosure).Celeron J3355 with 2GB memory (expandable to 6GB) on DS418play, vs J3455 with 4GB (expandable to 8GB) on the DS918+.No MVNE m2 SSD expansion slot on the DS418play.Pro users: you may also be considering the DS918+, which is around $100 more expensive. Here's the difference: The CPU is x86 based, and can handle up to 2 different full 4K h.265/h.264 stream transcoding sessions, which is likely more than you'll need in a single family home.

The Synology Play series was created specifically to address this concern. In these cases, it's still possible to play the media file, but only if the heavy lifting is done by the server – transcoding it down to a bitrate, resolution, or file type more suitable for streaming on the client device. However, mobile processors are a lot more limited, and often unable to play back certain file types or extremely high bit rates, like a 4K movie.

Plex media server synology dsm 6.1