- 5 Drive Bays
- Easy Setup thanks to DSM
- Quad-Core Intel CPU
- No 10Gb Ethernet (or abilty to add one)
First Impressions
If you are familiar with Synology and their DiskStation products, then you will feel right at home with the Synology DS1019+. It has a similar look and feel of their other models that are 4 drive bays and larger.
As like their other models, the exterior of the DS1019+ is of a textured black plastic, which to me does not take away from the aesthetics of this design. With its relatively small footprint, it would still look good in pretty much any home or small business office setting.
You can clearly see the 5 drive bays, along with the status LEDs, the USB 3.0 port and the power button.
Each drive bay can be locked with the provided keys, though they are not designed to stop really determined thieves. The locks are more for a deterrent or even a little bit of a safeguard to ensure no one walks by and somehow accidentally pops open a drive bay that could be in use.
The right and left sides of the DS1019+ have the Synology logo displayed as a vent. These can collect a fair amount of dust as I’ve experienced in previous models but it helps keep the air flowing over the drives when in use. Of course, there are dual exhaust fans for venting out the heat.
The back of the Synology DS1019+ shows the dual exhaust fans, the dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, eSata port, Kensington Security lock slot, USB3.0 port and of course the power input. I’m not a big fan of the 4-pin power cable as I have seen similar cable pins’ become bent or broken off.
A unique feature of the Synology DS1019+ is the SSD Cache. When you flip the unit over to look at the underside, you can pop off the two covers and install two (or one) M.2 NVMe SSDs and then log into DiskStation Manager (DSM) and enable the SSD Cache. With SSD Cache, you can help offload some of the more frequently requested files to an SSD which of course is faster than NAS-type hard drives.
When you remove the drive bay caddies you can peer into the side where the RAM is located. The Synology DS1019+ comes loaded with 8 GB (2x 4GB) DDR3L memory which is the maximum amount of memory the Intel Celeron J3455 CPU can handle. Previous models I have looked at have had smaller amounts of RAM installed but some of them have had the ability to be upgraded. This DS1019+ so far has the most RAM I have personally used in a DiskStation unit.
With some of the drive bay caddies removed, peeking around you can see one of the installed 4TB Seagate Ironwolf NAS drives connected to the SATA header board. The caddies just slide right up and are tucked in nice and snug.