Online Accounts 2025: The First NAS is on the Way (Premium)

After going back and forth on this more times than I can count, I finally ordered a NAS. And, yes, I went with the safest choice: A two-bay Synology DiskStation DS224+, with a RAM upgrade and two 12 TB hard disks. If it works out, I'll buy a second NAS--which may or may not be identical to this one--and leave one here in Pennsylvania and bring the other one to Mexico City.
? Specs
The DiskStation DS224+ specs seem somewhat laughable, but this is a NAS--a device--not a PC or server, and in some ways, I feel like the storage is more important, assuming a certain level of real-world performance. It's based on an Intel Celeron J4125 processor and 2 GB of DDR4 non-error correcting (ECC) RAM. This is humble, of course, but the processor supports hardware transcoding, which is useful for streaming video, and Synology supports upgrading the RAM to 6 GB, so I also got a Crucial 4 GB memory module.

Synology has somewhat infamously tightened its restrictions on third-party storage, but I didn't spend much time thinking about that. What I was more concerned with was how much storage I should get. And in the end, the small price difference between its 8 TB and 12 TB HDDs solved that problems: I got two 3.5-inch Synology HAT3310 12 TB Plus Series SATA HDDs.

Those disks will be configured in a RAID 1 or Synology Hybrid Raid (SHR) configuration, which seem functionally equivalent on a two-disk system. But the end result will be a total of 12 TB of usable storage space either way.

What's missing here is backup. More on that below.

Other key specs include two 1 Gbps LAN ports, which should be sufficient, and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (which I assume are 10 Gbps, also sufficient, though faster is always better). It supports 2.5-inch SSDs in addition to 3.5-inch HDDs, but what it doesn't have is the ability to add SSDs as cache, as some more expensive Synology NASes do. Compared to my out-of-date and out-of-service WD NAS, however, this should be at least decent overall.
❓How and why
I know some of you have strong opinions about these things, and while we could debate the relative merits of different NAS configurations, devices, and so on, my key goal with this first NAS was to get something small and quiet enough that it can make sense in our tiny, 700 square foot apartment in Mexico City. Because of the building's thick concrete-based construction and where the Internet connection comes in, I can't hide this thing away in a utility room or whatever, it has to go under or next to the TV in the living room. That limits things nicely.

My original plan was to simply get two identical NASes. I may still do that, depending on my initial experience with the first unit. But I might also get a beefier Synology NAS to leave here in Pennsylvania. That could take the form of a 4-bay unit, for example, in which I might use additional disks for backups or other purposes. I could also simply use an external disk for that. We'll see...