Build a media server at home with the Synology DS218+ DiskStation down to $255

Time to bring all your media together! The Synology DS218+ 2-bay diskless NAS DiskStation is down to $254.99 on Amazon. That's a huge drop in price since it normally sells for around $299 and hardly ever goes on sale.

NAS systems let you create your own media server at home. If you have a lot of digital music and movies, you can use a NAS like this one to put all those files in a central location and access it from any system in your home. It's also a good thing to have for small businesses where multiple people might need access to the same files. If you do collect a lot of media but you have them stretched out in mutliple folders and on several drivers, using an NAS is a great way to consolodate all that and put it in one easily accessible spot.

The DS218+ is a two-bay NAS with 2GB DDR3 memory that's expandable up to 6GB. It has a dual-core 2.5 GHz processor, hardware encryption, and encrypted sequential read and write speeds up to 113 MB/s and 112 MB/s respectively. It also has live transcoding for up to two concurrent 4K streams. It also has three USB 3.0 ports.

Use the NAS and its transcoding capabilities to stream your videos to high-definition TVs, mobile devices, computers, and more in the right format. You'll be able to watch your shows anywhere without the need for entirely separate player.

This is a diskless station, which means you need to get one or two hard drives to fill those bays. Those drives are where you'll store all your media. Lucky for you, the WD Red 4TB hard drive is on sale for Black Friday. It's down to $89.99 and is a very popular choice for network-attached storage.

J.D. Levite has been in the deals game since 2012. He has posted daily deals at Gizmodo, The Wirecutter, The Sweethome, and now for Thrifter. He was there for the first Prime Day and has braved the full force of Black Friday. If you cut him, he bleeds savings. But don't try it for real. That's a metaphor.