Hardware Synology DS212j and DSM 4.0 Review

We take a look at Synology's latest NAS and its latest DSM 4.0 operating system

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2012/05/04/synology-ds212j-and-dsm-4-0-review/1

 

Are the Synology single bay NAS boxes worth getting? I really want to get a NAS box but don't want to spend much money and I also don't need masses of storage space.

 

That is the question that I have in mind too... Actually I would consider dual-bay NAS just because you can have RAID config if one of the HDD decides to take a break...

 

Ok, I'm a Freenas user, with access to lots of old pc's, but I do see the point of having something like this now. It's easy, relatively cheap, quiet and power efficient. If I ever get 100Mbs broadband (which apparently is on it's way in a year or two in my area) then I'll move everything to the cloud, but I can see the sense...

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I've got a 4 bay Synology NAS, I only use two of the Bays at the moment (my data requirements haven't gone over 3TB yet, but I have raided up 2 3TB drive...) Bu never get a single bay NAS, unless you can back it up all the time to somewhere else!

And after a week, you'll be glad you've spent the extra money, I use my NAS all the time, I use it for music from work, photos for the family, and all my DVD's and music collection is stored on there, accesable from anywhere! For instance, if I want to carry on watching a tv series or movie with the GF when I go to hers, I just log in and can stream the content or download it to her laptop, easy peasy

 

Why don't you just move in with her?

 

I have a DS211j and have half assed tried to set that ezcloud function but have so far failed. I will be trying again today with this info, thanks.

Do you know if that function extends to the DSfile Android app? That is the main reason I want it working. I never could get that working either.

 

It takes a whole to save up for the £1,000,000,000,000 deposit for a house these days!

 

This might be a silly question, in which case please feel free to one word answer, or direct me to the answer link, but if you buy one two bay NAS, can you also connect a second one to the same ethernet network and use both at the same time? The reason I say that is I want to get this one reviewed here, and will likely want another one in a year or so - I don't want the instant expense of a four bay NAS and the hard drives, but over the course of a year or so the extra of buying two is minimal.

Cheers!

 

No no no no no no.

Having lots of useless crap installed beforehand is NOT a good idea.

The variety of usage-cases that a NAS may be used for is FAR too wide for bundling every "App" (they're packages, not apps, dammit!) in ahead of time. I don't want to have to manually uninstall Bit-Torrent DLNA, and whatever other crap that they decided people want after I buy a piece of hardware.

Again, this seems to be a case of you reviewing this with a different usage case then it's designed for. This (and NASes in general) are designed to be stuck in a closet, or up on a shelf, and basically never looked at. Franky, having USB at all is a bit unnecessary (though it's nice to be able to add an external HD at a later point).

The instructions may not be very good here, but this is actually a far better design. It means that the ONLY information Synology has about you is your IP. Everything else is stored locally. As such, it's a lot more attractive to people (like me), who are uncomfortable trusting a outside company with their data, particularly given the littany of recent security breaches.

 

I love my D's 212j. Its perfect for home use. Buy it with a to link 5 port Gigabit switch and 2 of those to link 200 or 500mb adapters and hey presto.

70mB access to my files on my PC through the switch and plenty of good connection to the router through the power line. I have 3 more for media streamers now too.

I might have a play with the audio station now

Having the same problem I had with 3.2 again now. The nas won't sleep. Hdds won't atop spinning.

 

PS. Why would anyone put their nas on an 802.11n connection in a shed? Seriously? You would cut all access to the drive back to sub 100mb cat5 networking.

 

along with DHCP capabilities, you could actually use the NAS as a wireless access point!

meaning you could just carry the NAS everywhere (after configured it) then plug in the power and USB dongle for instant wireless access to your data!


DSM 4.0 is simply awesome.

 

Actually, Scan (that would be bit-tech's "preferred partner") is listing several Hitachi 4TB drives:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-...sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-64mb-cache-8ms-ncq-oem (in stock)
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-...sata-iii-6gb-s-5400rpm-32mb-cache-8ms-ncq-oem (pre-order)
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4tb-...00-35-hdd-sata-iii-6gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-8ms-oem (in stock)

 

DSM 4.0 is quite awesome .. very user friendly
Out of all the pre-built NAS - I think Synology is the most expensive though - but worth it