I am looking for a suitable NAS. I'm wavering between Synology and QNAP. As a designer, I often work with very large Photoshop files ( 300 MB) and video data (4K), so I'm a bit unsure which direction I should take here. My considerations are:
- Operation with SSDs only, as they are quieter in operation, but more expensive than 3.5" HDDs
- Synology is much cheaper than QNAP. Does Synology generally offer fewer features and connections?
- QNAP has Thunderbolt 4 connections and that should be sufficient in terms of data throughput, but the NAS can only be 2 metres away from my Mac (due to the maximum cable length of 2 metres for Thunderbolt 3 and 4)
- Or should I go for 10GbE, as longer cable lengths are possible here and I don't have to place the NAS directly at my desk? But do I have to accept slower speeds?
- 25GbE can be retrofitted on Synology (and QNAP), but the adapters for Mac (Sonnet) are too expensive
- In general, I think Synology has the slightly more user-friendly interface with the DSM
- QNAP, on the other hand, allows more technical settings for RAID (storage pool etc.)

What are your experiences? Thank you very much for your input.

Question

I am looking for a suitable NAS. I'm wavering between Synology and QNAP. As a designer, I often work with very large Photoshop files (> 300 MB) and video data (4K), so I'm a bit unsure which direction I should take here. My considerations are: 
- Operation with SSDs only, as they are quieter in operation, but more expensive than 3.5" HDDs
- Synology is much cheaper than QNAP. Does Synology generally offer fewer features and connections?
- QNAP has Thunderbolt 4 connections and that should be sufficient in terms of data throughput, but the NAS can only be 2 metres away from my Mac (due to the maximum cable length of 2 metres for Thunderbolt 3 and 4)
- Or should I go for 10GbE, as longer cable lengths are possible here and I don't have to place the NAS directly at my desk? But do I have to accept slower speeds?
- 25GbE can be retrofitted on Synology (and QNAP), but the adapters for Mac (Sonnet) are too expensive
- In general, I think Synology has the slightly more user-friendly interface with the DSM
- QNAP, on the other hand, allows more technical settings for RAID (storage pool etc.)

What are your experiences? Thank you very much for your input.

Accepted Answer

If you plan to work with SSDs anyway and above all need fast access times for your files, I would go for a DAS rather than a NAS. an 1821+ will not be fast enough even with SSDs in Raid 0 over 10Gbe. Either a DIY solution with significantly more data throughput or rather something ready-made like PROMISE Pegasus with SSDs or similar.

Answer

I am very satisfied with Synology, not so much with the hardware as with the software. If you know that access times are a problem, you could copy the data from the NAS locally before starting work, work with it there and copy it back to the NAS at the end. If you actually have a 25gbit LAN at home, copying back and forth is no problem.

Your data. Your choice.

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