I am the owner of two Western Digital NAS; 1) a PR4100 w/ (4) 6TB WD Red HDs in RAID 5 and 2) a DL4100 w/ (4) - 6TB WD Red HDs in RAID 5. I max’d out the RAM in both NAS.
I also own a similarly priced Qnap TS-453Be w/ (4) 4 TB WD Red HDs in RAID 5 w/ 8 GB RAM and an old Synology DS213 w/ (2) 3TB WD Red HDs in RAID 1.
I find the Synology NAS to be about on par w/ my WD NAS. It has been rock solid reliable since 2013. Although, with its weak CPU and 512 MB of RAM is really only good for storage of files and “maybe” one server app. The only thing Synology has done that really irked me was to redesign their forum. Once it was arranged neatly by topic, software and hardware product but now it is just a free for all.
My Qnap is heads above either WD NAS I own. It has so many more ports (HDMI, speaker, microphone, AND a PCIe slot)! My slot happens to be populated with a 10GB-capable Ethernet port with two NVMe hard drives (for either caching or storage). Qnap’s weakness is their firmware upgrade process. Sometimes they come fast and furious and I NEVER update right away as they are invariably many bugs. They sort of use their customers as FW beta testers. However, once you get a stable FW, their NAS is so much more capable of running additional software. They also have a very active forum and Reddit group.
The web interface management of both the Qnap (the best) and the Synology are, sad to say, light years ahead of the WD interface.
I mainly have resorted to having my WD NAS act as pure data storage with the DL4100 performing scheduled automated backups to the PR4100 and to an attached USB HD. This works beautifully. My DL 4100 is now out of warranty so we will see how long the hardware lasts.
If asked for my advice on purchasing a NAS knowing what I know now, I would only recommend a WD NAS to a consumer that had very little computer knowledge. Even then, I would also tell them to be sure to attach it to a pure sine wave UPS and use only WD hard drives. MY WD hard drives have always been great and reliable. (I have several over a decade old now.)
The WD NAS are not enterprise-ready and user/account privileges just do not work out in the real world with my particular WD NAS.
