9.4.2016

My decision to by a NAS was due to the fact of having a few hard drives in the PC and some external drives with files all over the place. Never being able to quickly find my music or films that I wanted or play easily.I spent a long time watching YouTube videos and reading all of the Amazon customer reviews several times before making my decision. So I hope this review is useful to anybody looking to buy. It would be nice to be able to try different brands, that's if money was no object or you knew people with various brands of this type of hardware. I did think about a Buffalo (but not for long) and priced the QNAP models. The HDMI and remote on the QNAP is attractive but if you have a Android or WDTV equivalent box would you need that.The other thing are you going to pay for functions that you do not need. I know you should not buy for looks but I think that some of the Synology products are nicer on the eye.So, the NAS had a lot to achieve. It had to stream to smart phones, a Roberts Blutune 200, WDTV Live, Sony TV, a Bluetooth speaker, I pad 2, Galaxy Tab S, 2 x laptops and a desktop PC. And of course work. But don't purchase if you expect to use PLEX.Years ago I had an Iomega single 1TB NAS. Its Seagate hard drive failed just outside of its warranty. When I contacted them for help all I got was OOW. Out of warranty so I vowed never to buy one of either of their products again.I purchased just before the newer version was released. I was going to buy a single bay DS115j but did not want to limit myself for the future so opted to pay the extra £50 for the 215j. The bonus of this is double the memory and the dual processor. I found out the day I ordered the 215j that the 216j was available in a couple of days. The extra 200mhz isn't going to set the world on fire, 2 x USB 3 and the diming panel lights aren't a concern so I decided to keep what I had already ordered. Quick and easy next day Amazon prime service with a single 3TB WD red hard drive. The lack of funds stopped a pair of drives but I do have the option to add that at a later date. I would have liked a 216 Play or even a 716+ but for what I need this does everything I require. Maybe in a couple of years I will buy another.I have little experience with NAS drives but I did get it up and running very easily. So you do not have to have lots of skills just some patience and time. Let the software do its thing and you will be away. The NAS shows up in the Windows 7 network and starts up starts up from using the desktop icon, just enter your password and ID. It is that easy.It is quiet. It sits within 2 feet of me and I take no notice of it. It is by no means intrusive. You could have it in with your TV set up or with your computer, it's just a small white box.The file transfer of course is not as fast as the stated figures but it is very good. Large movie files average around the mid 50 MB/s, so not bad and in no time they are copied over. Music files/photographs take no time at all. I did have trouble with the sleep function but that seems to be going ok now. I wanted to be able to use the NAS around the house and when I go away to listen to music via my Bluetooth speaker. It works, after playing around with it for sometime, I must say. Using the Synology app DS audio. I wakes up quickly and plays with no problem.My WDTV live has always been a bit slow but it was easy to get movies to stream to the TV from the NAS. I have a Sony HX model TV from 2012 and a 790 Blu ray player and neither will find the Synology, so if anybody has any suggestions I will be glad of any help.I have since purchased a Android box and the speed increase over the WDTV is great.I have not tried backing up, as everything I put on the NAS is on the PC, the USB file share works well with the Android box and the WDTV both finding the files. It comes with a host of apps PLEX being one which I did install and it did work but, this has not got the hardware for running that. So I deleted it. You need lots of horse power to run PLEX.I have only used this for basic functions, a small file server for use around the house and occasionally when I go away. I will try the print function at a later date because that will be useful with multiple devices, I will update when I get around to doing that.If I could I would of bought a more expensive model, the 216 Play or if you wanted to or had the need to a four bay model like the DS415 Play or DS416 with its front USB port etc you could have future expansion but like everything you can go on. For my needs, this basic model in the home is perfect.

11.4.2016

Since deciding I needed/wanted a NAS (Network Attached Storage) it has opened up a minefield of various permutations of possible solutions, which for me has ended up with the Synology DS216j 4TD. Put simply, its a "proper job", its everything from a simple NAS for file Storage/Backup to pretty much a fully featured LAN/WAN file and media Server and website host.The user interface is everything one might expect, 'all most' 100% plug-and-play (subject to other peripherals) with setup Wizards and clear instructions for everything. Out-of-the-box, working through the set-up Wizards, installing software etc. took me about an hour all in. I then transferred a few images and a few music files,added a user account for my Mrs and then a click of a short-cut on her PC gave her access to stream media on her PC with the media players that are included. A couple of hours later, I set up an account for my daughter who was then instantly able to log in and look at some of our photo albums. So if you want a box-of-tricks that is easy to use and set up, that will do as much or as little as you want, then this is probably the piece of equipment you need.Moving forward from something called "Quick Connect" which gives you effortless remote access, it took me a little bit longer to set up direct Internet access, as my dinosaur Sky Router had to be configured manually. Nevertheless its now accessible from an Internet browser via www."MyUserName".synology.me using the free DNS and sub-domain server from Synology, I have yet to set up addressing from my own registered domain, that won't be a problem, I'm just choosing to leave it out of the line for now.But before you rush out and buy one, I might offer a few tips based on my experience so far...Get educated FIRST, do plenty of research FIRST and decide what it is you 'think' you need.In the first instant I bought a "Seagate Personal Cloud", after spending 4 days setting it up, fair to say I had 'almost' all of the very few facilities functioning, only to finally discover that it is impossible to customise folder permissions! Yes that's right, you can NOT customise folder permissions on the Seagate! Anyone who has any access has full read/write/delete permissions! Just a couple of mouse clicks and terabytes of data are GONE! So I returned it as 'Totally unsuitable for purpose'.Also be aware that Broadband Routers such as the "Technicolour TG582n" (about £25) for example, comes with an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server and media server, meaning that all it needs is a USB storage device connected to it and you have a NAS that appears as a Network Drive on your network and DNLA media streaming for you Smart TV etc.So if you happen to have a router-of-suitable-type and a USB storage device (USB hard drive, USB MemoryStick etc.) setting up a NAS with remote access may cost you nothing at all. Or worst case, £25 for a new Router (with the server/remote access facilities) and about £50 for a 1TB USB HardDrive... you're all done and dusted for about £75.Personally I'm sticking with the Synology DS216j because as I said, it is fully featured for data storage, backups, media serving, website hosting, remote Internet access, Mobile Device Media Apps, and full Administration control over Users, meaning that you have FULL control of User permissions.To sum up, So far I haven't found anything not to like about it. So far I haven't had any connection issues, although I think any problems in that area will only be a set-up error or Internet issues. If you want a fully featured Internet LAN/WAN Server then I would recommend the Synology DS types. Otherwise check what facilities your existing Router might provide BEFORE you spend too much cash on hardware/software you may not need! Whatever solution you settle on, make sure that the system provides the Administrator with full control/access and fully customisable folder permissions, otherwise, as with the Seagate Personal Cloud, your data could be VERY vulnerable to either deliberate or accidental abuse/misuse!

7.11.2015

I've had the DS215J just over two weeks now. I bought it empty, and separately: 2x3TB WD Red drives (cheaper this way). Installing the drives was very easy and I had it powered up and connected to my LAN in 10 minutes. Now, this is my first minor criticism. I have no need for raid and had planned to configure to 2 separate volumes to each drive. I had even pre-empted and researched this and was aware of the steps required to achieve it. However the current start-up wizard does not seem to allow anything but SHR initially. I tried it twice and it was certainly not there to deselect as an option. Anyway I had to allow the SHR to configure, then I deleted the volume it had created and reconfigure to 2 basic volumes to each drive.Not a major issue, but a niggle nonetheless as it would be the same if one required Raid 0, JBOD or Raid 1. After that it was simply a matter of configuring the File Shares, users, permissions, backup schedules etc. and that was all very easy and intuitive to do.So, since initial installation the NAS has been running fine, sharing out to my home network devices, laptops, PCs, phones, Kodi. However, and my second issue so far, is that the DS215J would come out of hibernation every 32minutes for no apparent reason. I had the disks set to hibernate after 20 minutes, and deep sleep too. I've been researching this, but to save the constant spinning up and down I eventually had to disable hibernation. More research led to the following, which may help others:The NAS so far has no packages and is only running WFS to share out user and video folders. Things tried: Manual static IP instead of DHCP, turned off time sync through NTP. Next step was to identify external clients/devices that could be causing this wake up every half an hour or so. I isolated the NAS by disconnecting the LAN - it correctly didn't come out of hibernation, so something external to the NAS was causing it. I then brought back devices two at a time, until I got to the source of the issue, a Windows 7 Desktop PC, that runs 24/7. No drives were mapped on this PC, so I first removed it from Windows 'Homegroup' and disabled homegroup completely. Still causing hibernation issues. After some more research I decided to disable NetBios over TCP/IP on this client only and that stopped the NAS coming out of hibernation every 32 minutes. I suspect it is some service that is waking the DS for some reason using an older network protocol, but at least with NetBios disabled it works as it should now. I was concerned I may not still be able to view the SMB folders on the NAS, but though the NAS doesn't show in the Win 7 Network, previously mapped drives work fine and I can navigate to all the NAS shared folders and files.All in all, I am very pleased with the box. Read/Write is fast and there are many Synology packages for many different tasks. Outside Synology there are also community applications (look on synocommunity - e.g. Transmission, Sickbeard, SABNZBD, Python) which, though I now have them listed in the package centre, I have yet to try any. Updates to the firmware seem quite frequent and mine has updated twice already. Finally, the Synology forum is a great resource of information. It seems not to be visited by Synology themselves, but there are a lot of experienced NAS users there and answers are there for most issues.

18.2.2015

I bought the Synology Diskstation after reading a number of positive reviews. I wanted something to back up to, that didn't involve being tied to a USB cable, somewhere to store downloaded TV shows and something that was reliable and always on.I bought the DS215j with a single 3GB WD Red drive. The drive has space for two drives, but it will happily run on just one. It's a fairly small white box. It's about the size of a biscuit tin placed on its side.If you're confident with computers setting up the drive takes about 20 to 30 minutes. It's really very simple and done entirely through the browser. In fact, all management tasks work through the browser - an excellent 'OS'lets you control every aspect of the device very easily. Adding users and setting permissions is really straight forward.What's great about this product is the number of well made apps for it. Everything you could need it to do is available through the Synology app store, accessed through the management tool.If you're looking for a backup solution, it's generally better if you can get offsite backup to support the onsite solution. The DiskStation lets you configure backups for Amazon Glacier, which is very cheap, or alternatively sync with your cloud backup service like Dropbox and Google Drive. I used my Microsoft Home subscription for OneDrive to backup important folders from the drive to the cloud. This means the laptop backs up to the NAS (fast as it's on the same network), which in turn backs up to the cloud (slower, but not a problem as the NAS is always on).The Video Station is fantastic. Video files added to the videos folder are analysed and then supported with poster art and synopses. The video files can be streamed through the browser or played through the iPhone DS Video app (I think Android is available too?). The app supports my ChromeCast, so watching downloaded content on a TV is really straight forward. The Video Station doesn't allow you to convert downloaded videos, so unless they're in MP4 format you'll need to use your laptop Finder/Explorer to find them on the drive and watch them in your computer's video player.The DS215j isn't powerful enough for Plex, which was a big consideration for me but ultimately would have cost quite a bit more to find a device that would support it. The Video Station isn't as good as Plex is, but I think it's fine for general use.There's a number of other great apps, including antivirus software, photo management and an iTunes server. There's also other apps to run a VPN or web server.The language in some of the product descriptions indicate the DiskStation works on WiFi and Bluetooth. This is true, but you'd need to buy a USB adaptor to support this feature, which isn't included. I didn't think this was very clear, although I understood that it wouldn't have these features when I bought it. I used the included network cable to plug the NAS straight into my router.Very impressed so far.

11.2.2015

I was at first very sceptical of purchasing a home NAS - mainly for two reasons. 1) The upfront costs of a Synology box and a couple of 3TB hard drives. 2) What if it doesn't help me solve my problems?I needed a backup solution for my Mac and PC data. And, I wanted to be able to sync whichever folders I wanted to. I did not want a shared cloud drive, like what Google Drive and DropBox offer.I used to have a SugarSync subscription, which promised to sync my data across multiple devices and backup my data to its cloud. I tried it out for 4 months and was bitterly disappointed with its speed and, crucially, its execution.So, I bit the bullet and went for this the DS215j and a couple of WD Red 3TB drives (in a RAID1 setup).Installing the disks is a bliss,

21.2.2016

I have had a NAS at home for a few years now having got a good deal on a Zyxel NSA325 which has served me well since then. However recently I have needed to 'upgrade/replace' it as it was getting a bit long in the tooth and not quite doing what I needed. Research/Reviews showed the DS215j to be the 'best' home NAS as well as being good value for money. On both counts the reviews were correct. Out of the box the NAS is extremely easy to set up and the quick start guide is as good as its word. I installed 2 x 2TB WD red drives which it recognised and set up straight away without a hitch. The interface is very Windows like with icons that are easy to read and the help system is on the screen from the start.

5.10.2015

Setup was easy - the unit is well designed so fitting the new drives was done in minutes. The quickto addresses to auto-discover the device IP make it straight forward. It was very simple to configure and you'll be copying on all your data in minutes.It was no trouble setting up mapped drives and accessing from Mac, PC, Linux and mobile (via their Android apps). The music server was a simple install and iTunes found the media library automatically.I've moved all my photos over to be managed by this device now and it's a very well thought out interface. It makes it easy to share/view photos remotely or to allow others to upload photos directly to your NAS.You could quiet easily use it pretty much plug and play with default settings.

11.3.2015

This is a complex arena in which there are many permutations of size and feature, expansion options (adding hard-discs), and inclusive features. Synology win on price (at this end of the spectrum - if you are looking at larger than 3Tb discs, you may want to look again at prices and competitiveness. What I particularly liked about Synology is that you could specify alternative discs to include in the station. I liked the flexibility.The "out of the box" RAID configuration gives you redundancy through 1 volume (comprising 6Tb) which makes available 3Tb of storage with the confidence that if one disc fails, your data is not lost with it. If you are being very well behaved on security,

10.2.2018

What a great bit of kit; I've been using this to store my music and photos for quite some while now, and it's performed faultlessly, so I though it was time for a review - although there is now a newer model available. I bought the enclosure and a couple of WD Red disks separately (not from Amazon I must admit) and installed and set it all up myself. It's very easy to set up and Synology provide all the software and instructions needed to ensure that your NAS is secure but easy to access (and you don't need to be a techy nerd to understand what needs to be done); Synology also provides great software for all the admin tasks. I now have secure access via my iPhone to all my music wherever I am using DS Audio,

9.3.2016

This is a fantastic NAS, best that I've had so far. Other users have complained about ease of use, but it's almost Plug 'n' Play. The software is easy to use (unlike other NAS boxes), and as other users have said the interface, although driven from a browser is really user friendly and straightforward.Identifying the NAS on the network is also a breeze, and there are full instructions provided online once you've completed the initial install on your network.The help section is really good and aimed at the novice, so I can't understand why some complain about this?One thing worth noting, you need to connect this NAS to a Gigabit network to get the most out of it.

7.12.2015

Having wasted many hours fiddling around with Freenas and the like I finally bit the bullet and went for a Synology DiskStation 2 Bay NAS.I wish I'd gone this route from day one, despite working in I.T. I get sick and tired of fiddly tinkering type setups, and when you are talking backups you just want something that will work well all the time. The Synology OS does make the whole thing much more painless, although you do need to think carefully about how and what you want it to do, and shape the software, shares user accounts and the add on packages to suit you.I tried the iTunes server on it but found it could not handle the collection size I have,

20.10.2015

I bought this for my Dad along with the equivalent QNAP model (TS231) for myself. Having tested them both I would say that 95% of potential users would be better off buying this unit. On paper the QNAP would seem superior as it has more ports, hot swappable disk enclosures and a less plastic feel. In practice the Synology does at least have the one essential port (USB 3.0 to allow reasonably fats data transfer) . Where Synology wins is its software which is a BIG part of what you are buying when you invest in a NAS. In theory QNAP has equivalent functionality in its software. The difference is that Synology has spend alot of effort making its software as user friendly as possible whereas QNAP has very much a Written by Geeks for Geeks feel to it.

17.1.2016

I wish I had bought one of these the first time I looked at getting a NAS.This is the 'Apple' of the NAS world. Everything is sooooo easy to set up. It really is plug 'n play. I switched it on with just 1 2TB drive installed (it is a 2 bay unit but after the initial cost of the unit plus a drive, another drive will have to wait for some more funds!) and it did the rest.Even finding it on the network was a breeze! It has a lovely browser GUI not unlike a Windows desktop.I am no computer whiz but setting up folders to be accessible from outside the home network (ie from the internet) was pretty simple with absoloutely loads of forums and help sites a quick Google search away. No port forwarding,

25.8.2015

If you're looking for a NAS drive, and you want easy setup, just buy this along with a 4TB drive and you won't regret it. SO easy to set up. Installed the hard drive as instructed (very easy). Plugged it into my BTbox, switched it on, accessed it through my PC and it was a really simple step by step setup. Once in, it updated its software on its own. I downloaded the manual and followed simple instructions for setting up users. It's packed full of optional, and some very useful software too. It just worked. Really fast to read / write from / to. Put a movie on there and streamed it no problem at all. I haven't tried remote access yet, and probably won't, but I didn't get it for that reason.

20.1.2015

Easy to get going. Put in a Western Digital Red 3Tb, plugged it into the network, went to the supplied URL and followed the wizard. That's all there is to it. A network cable, power supply and hard disk screws are supplied in the box. It works fine with a single disk in either bay. You don't need to buy two to begin with, you can upgrade later.The rear screws on the case didn't go in particularly easily. I think Synology could do a better job there, or ideally make it screwless.SMB access worked easily and seamlessly. I was able to set-up multiple users from the supplied interface with various appropriate permissions.I had some significant trouble with NFS though.

Synology DiskStation DS215j - Reviews

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