Upgrade and Migration Advice?

[Enquiries]

Hi, love the videos, thank you for what you do! I need help in a bit more direction of what to purchase. Currently, I have a DS1513+ (purchased when it first came out) I put 5 x 3TB WD Green Drives (5400rpm). I was complete newbie to the NAS world. My Drobo had died so I just purchased the first thing that was recommended to me by friends. It’s setup in SHR-2 configuration. After 7 years, it is 95% filled, the RAM was upgraded at time of purchase. Everything is sluggish. I am beginning to receive emails of bad sectors. I figured it was time to upgrade. I was initially leaning towards the RS1221+ (I have a rack in the closet) but the video you posted gave me lots to think about spending the money elsewhere. I started looking at the DS1821+, I was debating of starting fresh with either 6TB or 8TB drives (in an SHR-2) configuration. Now after watching lots of videos, I am not sure what to buy (or maybe the DS1621+)?

Current uses for our NAS: it is the master archive of our home/home office/family/friends for the last decade. I have a backup to the cloud for the important things and a passport drive for the utmost emergency items (in case of death, etc). Lots of multimedia creation happens in the house, audio recordings, editing, photography sessions, we haven’t really focused on video at all. Mainly lots of audio and photos. Plex as well from time to time, not huge. The DS1513+ will be repurposed for either backup or anything else that I can mess around with.

Lastly, I have Unifi Router, Access Points, and PoE switch in the house. Main computer is the M1 Mac Mini. 2 Macbook Pros, and a handful of iPads, iPhones. All of which ultimately connect to the NAS and backup to it as well.

Recommendation for which Synology NAS?
How much would I benefit from a RAM or NVME upgrade?
Would you go with 6TB drives or 8TB drives? (I have a bad habit of buying all drives in one shot versus adding as I need)

Thank you for your help!

[ed]

Yes, DS1621+ / DS1821+ would be a logical next move. RS1221+ would be similar performance option, but much louder. Having a PCIe slot is a way to future proof your NAS. You can use load balancing via 4XLAN ports, but 10GbE would allow faster backups, file transfers / direct editing.I would also consider having fewer drives but bigger in size. You can then add more drives when necessary. This way you save on energy bill and also make sure drives come from a different batch and therefore less likely to fail in a similar timeframe.I hope this helps.