How to Choose a NAS for the Office: Synology, QNAP or DIY
Practice4 minInnovialabs editorial team
In short
Choose a NAS by usable capacity with a growth margin, the number of bays for RAID, and the software you will actually maintain: Synology for simplicity, QNAP for hardware flexibility, DIY when you have in-house expertise.
The short answer
For a typical office, the decision comes down to three questions:
- How much usable space do you need now and in a few years, after RAID and a free-space margin?
- How many bays are needed to get that capacity with redundancy and room to grow?
- Who will maintain it? If there is no administrator, ready-made software matters more than hardware specs.
Synology is usually picked for a polished, simple interface and a coherent set of apps. QNAP offers more hardware options — expansion slots, faster network ports, more models in each class. DIY on TrueNAS, Unraid or OpenMediaVault gives full control and freedom of hardware but requires someone who understands storage.
Bays and RAID
The number of bays defines how you can protect data:
| Bays | Typical layout | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | RAID 1 (mirror) | Survives one drive failure, half of raw capacity is usable |
| 4 | RAID 5 or RAID 6 / RAID 10 | RAID 5 survives one failure; RAID 6 and RAID 10 offer more resilience |
| 6–8+ | RAID 6, room for hot spare and expansion | Better for larger volumes and growth |
Synology's SHR and similar flexible modes simplify mixing drive sizes. For large drives, many administrators prefer two-drive redundancy (RAID 6 or equivalent), because rebuilding a big array takes a long time.
RAID is not a backup. It protects against a drive failure, not against deletion, ransomware or fire. Plan a separate backup from day one.
CPU and RAM
- File sharing for a small team runs on modest hardware.
- Virtual machines, containers, video transcoding, many simultaneous users, encryption need a stronger CPU and more RAM.
- Prefer models where RAM can be upgraded. For ZFS-based systems, ample RAM and ECC memory are widely recommended.
- Network ports matter: if several people work with large files, consider 2.5GbE or 10GbE and check that your switch supports it.
Drives: HDD, SSD and cache
- NAS-grade HDDs are designed for 24/7 operation and vibration in multi-bay enclosures. Prefer CMR drives; SMR drives can perform poorly and rebuild slowly in RAID.
- Check the vendor's compatibility list. Some NAS makers restrict or warn about third-party drives on certain models — check this before buying.
- SSD cache speeds up random access for databases, VMs and many small files. For plain document storage it often adds little.
- All-flash volumes make sense for VMs and heavy workloads, not for archives.
Software ecosystem
| Synology | QNAP | DIY (TrueNAS, Unraid, OMV) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | Simplest | Simple, more options | Requires knowledge |
| Apps | Backup, sync, photos, office, surveillance | Similar set, plus virtualization and containers | Plugins and containers, more manual work |
| Hardware | Vendor models only | Wider range, expansion cards | Any compatible hardware |
| Updates | From vendor | From vendor, install them promptly | Your responsibility |
Whatever you choose, install security updates, disable services you do not use and do not expose the admin interface to the internet.
How to size the NAS
- Measure current data: shared folders, mailbox exports, project files, backups of laptops.
- Estimate growth from the last one or two years of real data, not guesses.
- Add space for snapshots and versions — they keep old copies of changed files.
- Keep free space: filesystems slow down and snapshots fail when the volume is nearly full.
- Subtract RAID overhead to get from raw to usable capacity.
- Leave empty bays or choose a model that supports expansion units.
Also count users and workloads: ten people editing documents and ten people editing video need very different hardware.
Common mistakes
- Buying a 2-bay NAS "for now" and filling it within months.
- Treating the NAS as the only copy of company data.
- Desktop or SMR drives in a RAID array.
- Opening the NAS to the internet for remote access instead of using a VPN.