SYNOLOGY DS725+

Excellent performance and upgradability make this a great choice for power users and micro businesses

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Anyone familiar with NAS naming conventions might find the Synology DS725+ confusing. It’s a 2025 model, but clearly only a two-bay device – the “7” comes from the fact you can upgrade it with the DX525 five-bay expansion unit, giving you up to seven disks. In its standard form it supports the usual RAID0, RAID1 or JBOD configurations possible with two disks. Add disks in an expansion unit and you can configure larger arrays. With the expansion unit it supports RAID6 and RAID10, offering greater data redundancy, and you can allocate a drive as a hot spare if needed.

This enclosure looks similar to the more affordable DiskStation DS225+, but in truth it’s a significant upgrade. Look closely and you’ll notice a less polished front panel, with two lockable drive bays and only three indicator lights. The connectivity isn’t much to shout about, though, with only a single USB-A 3.2 Gen1 port at the front and a USB-C expansion port at the rear.