QNAP TS212 vs Synology DS212j

[africanleopard]

Hello

I did check existing threads - but the other person asking a similar question bought something else

So....this is my first foray into buying a NAS. I have been doing a bunch of research, and I think the above two fit my requirements [read budget]. They currently cost exactly the same price, and I am struggling to determine which is better for me.

Requirements
1. Streaming media - at the moment only music, but I do have all the toys like Wii, XBOX360 and PS3 and a HD 1080p TV - so video streaming may be an option later
2. I have 2 PCs and 2 iPhones [with a laptop and/or tablet in the near future]
3. Back up

My understanding is that running in RAID 1 will give me a back up - but reading elsewhere this is actually just a redundancy disk and I would still need to back up my data. If that is true, then would a 1 bay suffice? The following are all priced similarly QNAP TS-112-US and Synology DS112j . This one has a 1.6 processor QNAP TS-119P+-US, has the most memory at 512 MB and is priced the same as the 2-bays above.

Comments? Advise?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[stevech]

For a modest home NAS, on a budget, I over-analyzed the offerings and chose a Synology DS212 (not 212+). Runs two 2TB disks, each as separate volume. Not RAID1. Volume 1 is the working drive. Volume 2 (drive 2) is used as a separate file system backup for drive 1/volume 1. Synology automated backups and time machine does the work.

Once a week I copy important shares/folders to a 2TB USB3 drive that is normally stored elsewhere. That's the primary backup

I also auto-backup the really important files to a 32GB SD card plugged into the DS212.

Arguably an overkill, but I think I'm more vulnerable to theft or my mistake (oops, can you undelete that folder?) than anything else. I'd of course never think that RAID is backup. But, hey, backup paranoia is healthy? Losing family photos, financial and other records, etc. is a no-no.