Legacy NAS's, failing HDD's, and time for upgrade?

[Enquiries]

Hi Gents! I have a Synology DS212J (2012) and doing rsync/hyper backup jobs to a QNAP TS-231 (2015). Running an SHR volume in the DS212J with two 3TB drives. QNAP, been running each disk as separate volumes, each receiving a Hyperbackup rsync weekly, and then a multi-version backup as well nightly. I keep the TS-241 in other location in house and pop out one of the drives to keep off site and rotate them periodically. Mostly family photos/videos, family documents like financial/medical. I have also been considering cloud backup for an easier off-site backup. Synology C2 might be the easiest thing and cost about the same as Backblaze for 2TB storage, with backups approaching 2.5TB. 1 drive failed on QNAP, and 1 drive getting read errors now in Synology, seems like time to consider upgrade, to take advantage of snapshot replication/ransomware protection. Looking at ds923/5+ ds423/5+. Would like to backup kids PCs as get to college, iphone photo backup, and do Synology photos. Thoughts?

[ed]

Hi there,

Thanks for the detailed breakdown — really helpful to get the full picture. Sounds like you’ve done a great job building a resilient setup over the years, and I agree, now’s a good time to modernize with the hardware starting to show signs of failure and your needs evolving.

Based on your $1200 budget, here’s what I’d suggest:

Main NAS Upgrade

The Synology DS923+ is a great choice for your use case. It brings:
• Support for Btrfs with Snapshots for better ransomware protection
• Active Backup for Business for your kids’ PCs (great for full-system backups)
• iPhone photo backup via Synology Photos (auto uploads work well)
• Expandability via NVMe for caching or fast storage
• Support for 10GbE if you upgrade your network later

If you want something quieter and slightly more compact (but still with similar software functionality), the DS423+ is also a solid alternative. You’d be trading the upgrade path (no 10GbE) and a bit of performance, but for pure backup/photo/media tasks, it’s still very capable.

That said, avoid the DS423 or DS223 series, as those lack the Plus series features like Docker, full PC backup, and virtual machine support.

Drives

Since one of your goals is reliability and off-site rotation, I’d recommend:
• 2x 8TB WD Red Plus or Seagate IronWolf to start with in RAID 1 or SHR-1
• Add more later as your needs grow
• For hot data or frequent access, consider adding NVMe SSDs later as a separate storage pool if needed

Cloud Backup

You’re spot on: Synology C2 is the most seamless if you want easy integration. It works natively with Hyper Backup, and you can encrypt the backups client-side. Backblaze B2 is a bit cheaper per TB but requires a bit more setup. Since you’re hovering around 2.5TB, Synology C2’s 3TB tier might be a comfortable fit without much overhead.

Bonus Option — Use the QNAP as a Cold Backup

If the TS-231 still works (after replacing the failed drive), you can repurpose it as a second backup target. Just push encrypted Hyper Backups from the new Synology to the QNAP every week. You already have your offsite drive rotation strategy dialled in, which still applies here.