One Synology NAS can be your office file server, your team's shared drive and the backup target for every PC — if Synology Drive is set up with a plan instead of by default. Here is the complete setup, in the order that makes teams actually use it.
Most offices buy a Synology NAS, create one shared folder, and stop there. Then the same old problems continue — files living on one person's desktop, no way to recover yesterday's version, and remote staff sending files over chat. Synology Drive is the package that fixes this: it turns your NAS into a private Dropbox-style system with team folders, PC sync, PC backup and file history. This guide sets it up properly — structure first, clients second, habits last — and the full live setup is in the video above.
Synology Drive Server is a free package in Package Center, and it installs three things you should know by name.
Install it on the NAS first, before touching any PC. Everything else in this guide hangs off these three parts.
Drive does not invent new storage — it upgrades the shared folders you already have. Create one shared folder per department or project (Projects, Accounts, Design Files), then open Drive Admin Console > Team Folder, select the folder and click Enable.
At this moment, also set version control: enable it, keep up to 32 versions, and choose Intelliversioning rotation so the version budget is spread across days and weeks instead of being eaten by one busy afternoon. Turning this on later means the history you needed yesterday was never recorded.
Every staff member gets their own DSM account, and accounts go into groups — Accounts Team, Design Team, and so on. Team Folder permissions are then given to groups, not individuals.
This feels slow on day one and saves you on every day after: when someone changes department or leaves, you change one group membership instead of hunting through twenty folders. A shared office login means you can never answer the simplest question — who changed this file?
On each computer, install Synology Drive Client (from Synology's Download Center) and sign in with the NAS address and that person's own account. The client is what does both jobs of this guide — syncing shared work and backing up the PC — so install it once, correctly, per person. In the office, the local NAS address is fastest; remote staff connection options are covered honestly in the remote-staff guide in this series.
This is the step most setups get wrong. Inside the same client there are two different tools:
Desktop, Documents and other local folders. Files go up to the NAS and stay there even if deleted on the PCOne task type cannot do the other's job. If a PC's only protection is a sync task, a deletion or a ransomware attack syncs faithfully to the NAS too.
Drive lets any user create a sharing link for a file — handy for sending a large file to a client, risky when it becomes the default way of working. Set the house policy in the Admin Console: internal sharing freely, public links password-protected with an expiry date, and link sharing disabled entirely on sensitive folders like accounts and HR. Work shared as links escapes your folder structure and your permissions, so links are for sending out, not for working in.
Technology is half the setup; the other half is three rules the whole team hears on day one:
Follow this order and Drive quietly becomes how the office works. Skip the structure steps and you have simply bought a faster way to make the same mess.
Installing the package is the easy half. Watch the video for the complete live setup — Drive Server, Team Folders, clients and backup tasks, step by step.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. Synology Drive Server is a free package included with DSM on Synology NAS — there is no per-user licence fee. Your real costs are the NAS and its drives, which is exactly why it suits small offices that find per-user cloud subscriptions expensive.
For normal files like Word, Excel or design files, Drive does not lock the file or merge edits — if two people save at once, one version wins and the other can become a conflicted copy. Work one-at-a-time on shared documents. Only documents created in Synology Office support true simultaneous editing.
Inside the office, yes — the client syncs with the NAS over your local network, and files open at full LAN speed. The internet is only needed when someone works from outside the office.