Synology DS210j DiskStation 2 Bay NAS Enclosure

This is the review I did for the previous model, the 209j. I'll explain the differences afterwards:
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The great thing about the Synology drives is that they all use the same software (virtually - variations in e.g. number of IP cameras that can be connected).
Although this is the lowest power drive in their line-up, it still has all the capabilities of its larger siblings.
I bought this when my old Western Digital NAS died. It was a fully enclosed unit, so when it died I couldn't access the data that was stored there. In comparison, this has removable drives (2 set up in RAID-1 format). This does everything for us: we've plugged USB speakers into it, and it is our primary stereo (it can also stream music, so I listen to it through headphones at work). It backs up both laptops continuously, and acts as a mini web-server, hosting our photos for family to see.
The one down-side is that this is just a little under-powered: If playing music it can't do much else without starting to stutter. In theory these boxes can be used to stream hi-def video to a TV. No chance with this one.
My other complaint with Synology is that they seem to assume a little too much prior knowledge in their user manuals - sometimes they seem to be along the lines of "The DNS configuration tool is used to configure your DNS settings." without actually telling you what that means or why you might be interested.
In short, I have become a fan of Synology, but next time I'll get a slightly higher-powered one, and use this a back-up.
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So, the 209j is slightly underpowered, but is still a great piece of kit. Since I wrote the above review, new firmware has been released which goes a long way towards improving the helpfulness of the menus.
Now the comparison:

Memory:
209j: 64MB
210j: 128MB

Processor speed:
209j: 266MHz
210j: 800MHz

Perfect!

This is my 2nd NAS Drive, the previous one is just really not used a NAS but a extra hard drive.

This time around my aim is to move all my docs, meda (photo's, audio and video) to a shared area that everyone in the house can use.

The Synology DS210j was recommended by friend and I thought about this for a few months, but eventually order along with 2x2TB Western Digital Caviar 2TB SATAII 64MB Cache 3.5-inch Green Internal Hard Drive OEM. The physical install is really simple as opening case and plugging the drives in, then screwing the case back. For someone like me who hates fiddly stuff it was easy.

Then the setup, was as easy as insert CD and installing the software on to the DS210j. Once done I could navigate to it using a browser and start to configure, first option is choose raid options and then it goes away for a while to configure the disks with that. Once done youre good to go!

I quickly managed to create a few extra shared folders on top of the pre-configured ones and then some new users. Went to my other Macs and PC's and easily hooked them up. So all the shared docs are in one place. The hardest part was copying all the data to it in the first place,

Also its got a great download manager feature, I can connect remotely to this disk, again there was wizard to guide me thru.

I think the product is great but what makes it 5 stars is the great software to manage so quickly and easily!!

I bought this to replace a Netgear Stora device that failed in less than a month. It cost more than twice the price but it was worth every penny. It does everything the Stora ought to do and with a lot more flexibility.

Installing the disk was easy - you need a screwdriver but it takes seconds.

The best thing was the Synology DSM 2.3 software with which you set it up. Formatting and allocating the disk was simple, creating user accounts and fileshares took seconds. Then it was just a case of turning on the functions I wanted - Media Server, File Manager (for remote access from the Internet using no-ip to map the IP address to a URL) and photo station in my case. There is more if you want it - Download manager, iTunes server, backup software and probably other things I've yet to find.

The only issue I had was in setting up my router to unblock the right ports. If you have a "main stream" router like Linksys, Netgear, Belkin, D-link etc then it is probably a doddle (there is a management tool to select these routers). Mine is a generic version not listed and as such I had to set up the port forwarding myself. Not difficult - the web site tells you the port numbers you need to open. The thing that took me a bit of time to work out was that you need to map external port 80 to internal port 5000 on the device's internal network IP address to get access over the internet. Once that and the no-ip registration was done it worked beautifully.

I can now stream my music to my Pure Sensia, Intempo GX01 and even to my desktop at work. At its most basic you can simply map the drive from Windows as standard networked drive. You can set up multiple users and allow them to see some or all of the file shares (including the standard Video, photo and music directories) and even apply disk quotas to prevent one member of the family filling the disk !

To sum up - the device is well made, seems robust and has the best setup software for this type of device I have ever come across. At the moment I can't fault it.

I can't recommend it highly enough.