Looking at purchasing a NAS server. Does anyone have recommendations?
I have a synology 220. Synology was recommended to me. If I were t do it again I would not purchase the base model (220) as it has extremely little RAM, go up one model. I think Synology is $$$ compared to some others. I have seen some say they had other brands and they did not seem unhappy. Synology has good Apps and support - can’t go wrong if you don’t mind the $$.
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I like UNRAID. You can use any spare PC & fill up with any sized HDD’s…& expand easily. You can also utilize NAS HW like QNAP, Synology etc. Plus its very easy to recover.
I am on this journey in my home right now, having setup a Proxmox Home-Lab server that will host NextCloud. I’ve been looking for a good iCloud replacement that will let me transition away from Apple to our do-googled Pixels.
I have several QNAP TS-431X (4-bay) and TS-831X NAS (8-bay) systems in good condition for sale if interested. I’d love for them to go to someone who is breaking free of digital tyranny. Please let me know if you’re interested and maybe we can discus via private message? I’m not wanting to be selling things on the forum. but I figure it is a good option for some looking to switch to NAS for less cost than new systems. If I should remove this post, let me know and I’ll take it down. Thank you.
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I’ve had a QNAP TS-851 for quite a few years, it’s rock solid for my use case(s). Until reading this thread I’d not heard of Unraid, it looks pretty sweet - esp if you lean to the geek side. 
Centralized storage in the home is a great thing. Get all of your data off of someone else’s server ( aka The Cloud ) & store it yourself.
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Synology and QNAP are both good brands.
Read up before purchasing. Will require some configuration to get working. Once they are working they stay working on your local network for a very long time (5+ years, even 10 years or more). They are made to last.
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I converted my old QNAP to UNRAID. Just boots off a USB FD. What’s great is recovery is simple. If the QNAP HW fails I can slave the drives in a Linux box & read the XFS data. Or you can move them to a PC case & boot off your UNRAID USB & be back in business. May have to rebuild the parity drive…mine takes 15 hours. Expansion can happen anytime regardless of HDD size.
Some NAS boxes you can crack open the case & expand the RAM. Usually SO-DIMM. I upgraded my QNAP to 16GB. However UNRAID isn’t very resource intense like native NAS OS’s. Mine boots up quickly & shuts down quickly. It’s very lightweight IMO. You will wake up any old QNAP/Synology boxes you have sitting around.
I have a synology 220j. I would love to hear if anyone ever ‘opened the box’ to see what is in there and/or upgraded Ram. It comes with almost nothing on board and is quite sluggish. I have found nothing indicating it can be upgraded.
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I think the big misnomer is that having a NAS is your end-all be-all backup.
The truth is that you really need to store a copy of your data in a second location. If you have a friend or family member that will let you setup a mirrored storage at their home on a NAS or computer, then you can actually escape the security and comfort of the cloud, but before then, you really don’t have data availability in the event of a disaster (home fire, attacker gets into your network and ransoms your data, thieves steal your gear, ets.).
A second option I’d recommend is a cloud storage solution that you use simply as an offsite archive that receives a replica of your data on a regular (daily, weekly) basis. Wasabi is the cheapest option, but it is not so user friendly, but there are some easier alternatives for backup purposes that will be entirely encrypted prior to being uploaded to the cloud so the provider cannot see your data. Just some additional food for thought that really needs an additional topic to do justice.
Mark2Tech
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Here’s an upgrade on the 220+. Might be similar.
Also see if you can boot off a USB does the box have video out ? VGA/HDMI… Plug in a monitor & keyboard. DL the trial USB image of UNRAID & see how it runs.
I think I am out of luck. I found this description - “The DS220j has 512MB of non-expandable memory, while the DS220+ comes with 2GB and expands to 6GB.”
Someone asked that same question on Reddit…
You might want to just grab a spare PC & fill it up with HDD’s & use UNRAID & sell your DS220j
https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/hbc4yr/ram_upgrade_on_ds220j/
I like Installable/OpenSource NAS OS’s rather than proprietary builds. Basically you can turn any spare PC in a full Functioning NAS or re-purpose old NAS Hardware & Boot off a USB Drive. You’re then able to use ZFS, XFS etc. & Recovery becomes much easier. I’m also looking into booting Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) off a QNAP box & seeing if I can setup some RAID.
. Here’s some OS options: UNRAID, TrueNAS, Open Media Vault, Rockstor, Starwind NAS, XPEnology
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I’ve sold 3 of these so far. I have several of each TS-431X and TS-831X model still available if anyone is interested. I am going to run a 4bay at my office to be a replica of my home 8-Bay.