Customer Reviews

Synology Disk Station 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS209+II (Black)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased my Synology NAS about two months ago, having followed the guidance of reviewers at Amazon and elsewhere, as well as tech-bloggers who wrote about the various abilities of an NAS. I found this model to suit my needs.

I do a lot of work at home, and--slowly--my PC has begun to fill all of my multimedia needs (from movies and music to comic books). So I needed something that I could access from several computers like an external hard drive, but something that could also serve my other devices as well (PS3, XBOX360, etc.)

It took some time for me to get the Synology working. The Synology's software is simple and elegant, and can have you connected to this drive with lots of menus and options--but to plan a transfer of all of your files, to get a smooth, solid connection and learn how to really harness the power of the sucker will take beginners time.

The software that the Synology comes with worked well. Within an hour or so I had mirrored two terrabyte drives, was happily transferring data between my computer and my server, and had scheduled a back-up. I had also plugged my old external in and was accessing that from another computer. It took me fifteen minutes to hook my printer up--very plug and play. I already save every file I save directly to the server now instead of my desktop. Now I rarely use the software, opting to use Windows 7 to manually move files around and back up. Instead of using the torrent manager, I simply set up bittorrent to download to the server like a file location, which is much easier than starting some other program and dropping torrent files in.



The software (and the managing options you can use in your web browser) won't get you through some of the more intricate setting-up. I still haven't been able to figure out how to get the DS209 to run as an ftp server. You will need to be familiar with your router to even begin changing the settings to get it right. The Photo-blog component is the same--I imagine it will take an hour of internet-searching and question-asking to get these two things going.

The amount of support (pdfs, tutorials, etc.) is lacking for such a powerful machine with so many functions. Most of the time when you search the available help sections for how to get a desired option working you'll get a poorly written description of the app and nothing more. I was on the message boards pretty quickly after plugging my DS209 in, figuring out the little things that I was missing.

The DS209+ is a stable NAS that works well as a primary storage device and media server. A beginner will find no major difficulty in setting up and using the major functions of this equipment, but will likely struggle in configuring the more advanced options available to them. As the on-line collection of knowledge is broadened by other users, the problem of lacking literature and help should resolve itself, but Synology themselves should provide more quality assistance and tutorials for their customers. Otherwise, the product is quite literally sold short--as users may not be able to use the more advanced components without becoming more advanced themselves.

I've been running the NAS for a week now and have been very pleased with the features and performance.

It only took about 1/2 hour from the time I opened the box to having it up and running on the network. Very simple. Install a drive, plug it in, turn it on and install the software from your desktop computer. Then start configuring what you want to use. The interface is easy to navigate to and use.

I started with a 250GB drive I had lying around and wasn't using. Once I received my 1.5TB drive, I was able to easily transfer everything to it by backing up the NAS to an eSATA drive attached, then installing the new drive and restoring from the eSATA. I have another 1.5TB drive coming in tomorrow and will be able to dynamically set up a RAID 1 (mirror# so I have redundancy.

The speed of the transfers is great. I am getting just under 40MB/sec upload and just over 40MB/sec download rates.

I'm using the Photo Station and love it. Just drag and drop the photo album to the share and it builds the online photo album. I set up a few accounts for friends and family and that's it! I am giving the albums and pictures descriptions and this will take a long time since I just put 10 years of albums on there. But users can access it now and leave comments.

I'm using the blog and like this as well. I've never blogged before but will give this a shot and see if I like posting. It is, again, very easy to set up and use.

I'm also using the Web Station to host a website. It is running on JOOMLA and mySQL and works great. I was able to uninstall php, mySQL, and Apache from my system since I don't need it running anymore. I also don't have to worry about rebooting my system.

Finally, the UPnP DMA works great for sharing my media library to other PCs, the Xbox 360 and PS3. They saw the Diskstation right away and were able to browse and play the media #video, mp3 & photo) just fine.

Backups were easy to use. I've tried both the Data Replicator and pointing my norton 360 to the NAS and both worked well.

The Download station was tried but I didn't really like that feature. If I download a bitorrent, I want more control than it gives. I don't have an IP camera so also didn't try the survelliance station..

That's about it! The only regret is that I didn't splurge another $100 for the 4 drive model. :)

This item is well packaged, and is great for adding centralized storage to your home network. This item ships without any firmware installed, and at first is a bit confusing on getting setup. The instructions imply that you can do the initial setup by connecting to the devices home page. You will have to do the initial setup using the Assistant, and install the firmware. After doing this step, and assigning an IP address on your network, the disk station will be able to be further administered via the web interface. All features are fairly self explanatory for basic use. However, customizing features such as the blog site and photo station can be somewhat confusing.

One other small caveat is that if you plan to use the disk station's streaming ability for audio with an iPhone is that it will only play music that is not DRM protected.

This is a great little device -- create some storage, add some apps, it does the job. The hacker/fiddler types among us have a number of options to extend the DS209+II, including pre-built packages and extensions, and the option to break out a toolchain and built something new (if you don't know what a toolchain is, suffice to say it's fairly "open" to creativity).

One limitation I found: this device won't let me create two hard-partitions on the disk(s): for example, one for TimeMachine backups, and one for updates. I wanted to put my backups on 700G of one disk (backups don't need RAID1 in one location), and bittorrents on 700G of the other disk (which tends to wear down the disk), and RAID1 across both disks for archives that don't have another copy.

Another issue: the "size" of this device is a bit off: typical to this genre, there's an additional external power-adapter brick to add to total size -- to on a shelf or glue onto a wall.

On the positive, this device does the right thing rather than just the minimum: such as MDNS: another common issue with "internet Toasters" -- special-purpose devices -- is support for MulticastDNS, which is now assumed present on home/small-area LANs. For example, my printer "works with Apple and Windows" but it fails utterly if there's no MulticastDNS. "tcpdump" implies this device is advertising itself. This is the general feeling of this device: does the right thing, not just the bullet-points that can be advertised to Joe-Sixpack users who aren't experts in the field. The manufacturer has detailed feature lists to compare models, but even those don't mention every little good thing.

Fourth, after losing some precious content, backups are key. I'm currently backing up remotely by rsyncing onto a Dreamhost unlimited-disk account. This little device accomplishes this easily.

I'm sold on this device, so long as it doesn't burn out quickly (I'm looking at you, LaCie, you know your hit-or-miss MTBF... and overheating history)

This is a great little device, especially for computer geeks. I've had it for a few months now, and I haven't experienced any serious problems yet. This item is probably better for intermediate to advanced users. The web-based admin interface is awesome, and the overall performance of the device is as well. Will definitely buy Synology again.

If you're looking at this product you already know at minimum what it does. Having had a Thecus NAS for the past couple of years, I was surprised at how much all these new NAS products have evolved. I chose Synology as many of the reviews I've read indicated the read/write performance of their higher end NAS was the best on the market.

Performance aside, I do agree their documentation is sparse. However what they've done is rolled all that information into help screens via their web interface. The information and details are definitely not geared for a newbie so you will need to be familiar with the terminology used in each area of a given feature. This lack of "FAQ" for the beginner is likely what turns off some people thus giving it a lower rating. I'm afraid to say that learning about these features is really what allows Synology to offer a product a decent price point rather than raising the cost by spending additional money on technical writers and documentation that could just as well be learned by reading up on the web.

I am currently using this product with two Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TBbyte 3.5" drives in a RAID1 configuration for the past 2 months and have no hiccups except one. I had some financial information which I wanted to keep private in the event the NAS was ever stolen. There is a feature which allows any given folder to be encrypted on the hard disk(s) and decrypted on the fly when data is requested. I used this feature on that one financial folder, backed up my data to an external USB drive and all was fine for about 1.5 months. However, shortly after that, all the data in that encrypted folder was garbled. MS Word/Excel files unreadable. Zip files corrupted. Even plain text files were mangled beyond recognition. Thinking I had corrupted data on the RAID1, I restored the data from the external backup USB drive. No change - same corrupted data. They obviously have a bug in their software encryption/decryption algorithm and it appears to be easily corrupted when something goes wrong. Fortunately I had the financial data saved on the local hard drive of a networked computer and restored 98% of the data from 3 weeks prior to the incident. I no longer have any encrypted folders on the NAS and just live with the fact that if the NAS is stolen, my computers which have the backup data will be stolen anyway.

A few tidbits for those who pick up this product or any similar follow-on product (like the DS210, etc). If you use 3.5" drives, the fan speed is somewhat loud enough to be audible at about 6 ft away. Reconfigure the Synology for 2.5" drives which lowers the fan speed but still keeps the drives fairly cool. The highest I've seen either drive in my setup is 110F. As of DSM 2.3 - external hard drives can be NTFS as well. You may come across reviews that say the external drive can only be FAT32 but that was prior to DSM 2.3 I will say it is very nice to be able to back up your NAS by simply plugging in an external USB drive instead of leaving a computer on and backing up over the network (as I've done with my old Thecus NAS). Lastly if you have a height restriction like I do where there is not enough room to have the NAS standing (as typically shown in the all the photos), there is nothing wrong with leaving the NAS on its side. Since there are no feet for putting it in that configuration, I just put a nice thick mouse pad under it which offers cushioning as well as acoustic isolation from the floor.

This device is amazing at all levels. The user GUI is solid and for most basic network types easy to understand. All the features they list here (and then some) are real and very functional. This is like no other NAS drive you have ever owned and once you buy one...you will never go back to the others. It's pricey and worth every penny. I gave it 5 stars but would have given it 7 had I been given the option.

This truly is an amazing machine. Does everything it's supposed to do, reliably, safely, swiftly and in a very classy manner. The interface paradigm was completely new to me but I mastered it by tinkering & by reading the manual and the on-screen Help. The ability to reach the machine and its files & applications from anywhere in the world will be SO helpful. I did find it necessary to contact Tech Support one time, via e-mail, and got a perfect answer to my question within hours.

Great product once you learn how to manage it, which could take a little time. I'm still learning all its capabilities but the tech support has been very good. Some difficulties once I upgraded to windows 7. The product wouldn't go into hibrinantion, but I believe it will be resolved with some setting changes in windows.
I'm quite satisfied with its speed over my wireless network, I was able to transfer 8GB in about an hour.

Overall it does what it is supposed to very well. The only problem I have I think it is too noisy. Its not like a jackhammer but in a living room you definitely cant ovehear it. Its the noise level combined with the strange humming, really annoying. I returned it an upgraded to teh DS410. Bigger unit, more space inside, 2 bigger fans. Much more quiet.