Synology Disk Station 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS209+II (Black)
From Synology
Synology Disk Station DS209+II offers PC server equivalent performance for efficient data sharing and backup. Its high performance coupled with sophisticated Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 provides an ideal solution for cross platform sharing, secure server backup, Windows ADS integration, business mail server, and corporate surveillance. Synology Disk Station DS209+II supports large-capacity RAID 0 and reliable RAID 1 volume types, Users can also use one hard drive to create a Non-RAID volume and change it to RAID 1 at a later time or expand a RAID 1 volume with larger hard drives. When User Home is enabled, Synology Disk Station DS209+II automatically creates a home folder for every user account to provide each user with a private space to store data. This eliminates the need for the administrator to repeatedly create shared folders and user accounts. Synology Network Backup allows users to back up files from one to another Synology Disk Station or any rsynccompatible server, The Local Backup allows backups to external hard drives via USB or eSATA, both providing flexible scheduling options. Synology File Station 2 simplifies file management with a web browser by introducing Windows-style user’s interface and advanced features including drag-n-drop, sub-folder privilege settings, multiple files upload and download, and remote unzip features. HTTPS provides a secure way for Internet access. When it’s enabled, connections to the web-based Web Station, Photo Station 3, File Station 2, Surveillance Station 2, and Audio Station are all secured with SSL/TLS. FTP service over SSL/TLS encryption ensures file sharing at a high security level. Unicode, write-only and sophisticated bandwidth management are also supported. Synology Mail Station add-on provides a one step installation and enables Synology Disk Station DS209+II to be a mail server that supports Outlook-like Web mail, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP.
Amazon Sales Rank: #5673 in Consumer Electronics Size: 0 TB Brand: Synology Model: DS209+II Dimensions: 6.50" h x 9.61" w x 10.04" l, 2.16 pounds
Intermediate Users Delight 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. Great Solution! 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. :) Great for home users with some networking experience 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.
