The best 2-bay NAS & hard drives to buy

I’ve written quite a few posts on this site about my Synology DiskStation DS411j, a 4-bay NAS. I’ve had a few friends ask me about a smaller option. What should they get if they just want a 2-bay NAS, ideally for setting up RAID mirroring for easy backup?

Synology again to the rescue, along with some fantastic 3 TB NAS-specific hard drives from Western Digital:

• Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS212j

• WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD30EFRX (get 2 of these!)