Best 1-bay NAS — every model, every vendor, one table

43 NAS models ship with 1 drive bays across QNAP, Synology, TerraMaster and UniFi. Specs from the vendors' own sheets; the "drives listed" column is each vendor's official compatibility-list depth — our data, read daily, refreshed 2026-11-03.

43
1-bay models
4
Vendors
658
Deepest list (Synology DS111)
12
Drives shared across this class

How to choose a 1-bay NAS in 2026

Single-bay NAS boxes are pure backup appliances: one drive, no redundancy, the cheapest way to get Time Machine targets, camera upload and a small media share off the cloud. RAID is impossible by definition, so the drive you pick is doing all the safety work — keep a second copy of anything that matters.

The interesting 1-bay entries in 2026: Synology's DS124 remains the software-polished pick under $200, QNAP's one-bay units cover the same job with slightly cheaper hardware, and UniFi's UNVR Instant packs a single 3.5-inch bay plus six PoE camera ports for surveillance-first buyers.

Current-generation picks

The models you can actually buy new today — one card each, with the official drive-list depth most spec sheets never show:

All 1-bay models, ranked by official drive-list depth

CPU/RAM shown where the vendor publishes them (Synology/QNAP specs); "drives listed" = rows on the vendor's own compatibility tool. UniFi consoles follow spec-based requirements instead of a whitelist — their rows link to the requirement breakdown.

ModelVendorCPURAMDrives listed
Synology DS111 Synology Marvell Kirkwood 88F6282 DDR3 256 MB 658
Synology DS112 Synology Marvell Kirkwood 88F6282 DDR3 256 MB 645
Synology DS112+ Synology Marvell Kirkwood 88F6282 DDR3 512 MB 645
Synology DS112j Synology Marvell Kirkwood 88F6702 DDR2 128 MB 645
Synology DS110+ Synology Freescale MPC8533E DDR 512 MB 571
Synology DS110j Synology Marvell Kirkwood 88F6281 DDR2 128 MB 568
Synology DS114 Synology Marvell Armada 370 88F6707 DDR3 512 MB 496
Synology DS115j Synology Marvell Armada 370 88F6707 DDR3 256 MB 493
QNAP TS-131K QNAP AnnapurnaLabs, an Amazon company Alpine AL214, 4-core, 1.7GHz 1GB DDR3 457
Synology DS116 Synology Marvell Armada 385 88F6820 DDR3 1 GB 421
QNAP TS-131P QNAP AnnapurnaLabs, an Amazon company Alpine AL212, 2-core, 1.7GHz 1GB DDR3 412
Synology DS115 Synology Marvell Armada 375 88F6720 DDR3 512 MB 382
QNAP TS-120 QNAP — — 333
QNAP TS-121 QNAP — — 333
QNAP TS-112P QNAP — — 328
QNAP TS-119P II QNAP — — 326
QNAP TS-119P+ QNAP — — 326
QNAP TS-133 QNAP ARM 4-core Cortex-A55 1.8GHz processor 2 GB on board (non-expandable) 2 320
QNAP TS-131 QNAP — — 319
Synology DS109 Synology — — 314
Synology DS109+ Synology — — 314
Synology DS118 Synology Realtek RTD1296 DDR4 1 GB 299
Synology DS109j Synology — — 246
QNAP TS-112 QNAP — — 240
QNAP TS-119 QNAP — — 234
QNAP TS-110 QNAP — — 233
Synology DS119j Synology Marvell A3720 DDR3L 256 MB 202
Synology DS120j Synology Marvell A3720 DDR3 512 MB 200
QNAP TAS-168 QNAP — — 169
QNAP TS-128 QNAP — — 169
QNAP TS-128A QNAP Realtek RTD1295 4-core 1.4GHz processor 1 GB DDR4, not expandable 134
Synology DS124 Synology Realtek RTD1619B DDR4 1 GB 101
QNAP TS-109 II QNAP — — 98
QNAP TS-109 Pro QNAP — — 98
QNAP TS-109 Pro II QNAP — — 98
Synology DS107+ Synology — — 92
Synology DS107e Synology — — 92
Synology DS107 Synology — — 91
Synology DS108j Synology — — 89
TerraMaster D1 SSD TerraMaster — — 35
TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus TerraMaster — — 35
TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro TerraMaster — — 35
QNAP TS-130 QNAP Realtek RTD1295 4-core 1.4GHz processor 1 GB DDR4, not expandable 26
Ubiquiti UNVR Instant UniFi Quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 @ 1.7 GHz 4 GB spec-based
Ubiquiti UDM Pro UniFi — — spec-based
Ubiquiti UDM SE UniFi — — spec-based

Drives the most 1-bay machines share

Cross-checked against every 1-bay model's official list on this site — the safest part numbers when you're not sure which box you'll end up with:

DriveBrandSeriesListed on
ST31000340NS Seagate 26 of 43 models price 
DT01ACA300 Toshiba DT01ACA*** 25 of 43 models price 
DT01ACA100 Toshiba DT01ACA*** 24 of 43 models price 
ST3750330NS Seagate 24 of 43 models price 
HD502HI Samsung 24 of 43 models price 
HE103UJ Samsung 24 of 43 models price 
ST31000333AS Seagate 24 of 43 models price 
ST3500320AS Seagate 24 of 43 models price 
ST3500418AS Seagate 24 of 43 models price 
ST3750528AS Seagate 24 of 43 models price 
WD5000AAKS Western Digital 24 of 43 models price 
WD6400AAKS Western Digital 24 of 43 models price 

Other bay counts