DS1825+

well - Synology has removed the DS1821+ from their website, so I cannot tell you what is the largest supported drive. On the current models - DS1823xs+ and DS1825+, they are only officially supporting Synology drives, not Seagate or Western Digital or Toshiba. There were some drives that were suppor

Exactly. See comparison between UGREEN NASync DXP8800 Plus and DS1825+ here. You can use Xpenology on Aoostar NAS. Or on your own build/hardware. Whatever you choose. I would highly recommend ARC loader since it's modern, versatile and easy to use. Take a look at it's FAQ and you'll see. IMHO whatev

Have the N5 non-pro and use Xpenology to emulate Synology. Works perfectly fine. All hardware is recognized and RAID sets are available. The N5 thinks it’s an Synology DS1825+ 👌🏼

Thanks for the advice! I'll make sure be specific about where the costs are coming from to make sure we get the right speed for the price. Our onsite guy has 2.5Gb ports on his current rig so the DS1825+ would be a good fit with its 2.5Gb ports, I just got spooked by Synology locking down what HDDs