Anyone here familiar with Synology products?

[barney]

I've an old WD WorldBook NAS that has become unreliable.  I've moved everything off it to a Fantom GreenDrive, but I need to replace it with another NAS - the Fantom will not fill that requirement.  I've looked at HP, Iomega, WD, Drobo & Synology.  Synology seems best fitted for my needs, if I'm reading the information correctly.  It'll allow wireless access as well, I thimk, as provide wireless printer access.  However, this is a brand foreign to me, so I'd like to get outside opinions, if any, from someone who's used the product(s).  There's a forum - couple of 'em - on their site, but I distrust vendor-sponsored forae - I've seen more than one that was, uh, cleaned of critical posts.

I'm looking at either a 3TB single drive or 6TB double drive.  Not looking for a RAID configuration if I get the 2-drive model.  My interpretation of the docs implies that I can use a USB dongle for wireless access, and that I can use a 2nd USB port for a printer.  Since this will be across the room from the router, that's gonna be a critical element.

'Preciate any reviews or suggestions.

[phitsc]

I've been using a two bay Synology 207+ with RAID for more than three years now and am very happy with it.

Pros:
- Very reliable
- Feature rich
- New features and fixes about twice a year, also for old products if technically possible. Extensive beta period. Serious bugs that slip beta are usually fixed within days with a hotfix.
- Company support is ok (could be faster). If you have a serious problem, they will even offer you to access your device and fix it for you. If you know how to search a forum, you'll usually solve problems using the forum faster than with the official support.
- The forum is actually quite good. Plenty of information. Lots of users using it. Moderated. The company seems to listen to user complaints in the forums quite well.

Cons:
- I'd rather they spent their development effort on more powerful backup features instead of more web cam features.
- While the 207+ will automatically power on after a power outage, it can't be started by a schedule. I think all the newer models support this though.

I can't comment on the WLAN feature your after, but I'd assume that if Synology advertises it and you can't find any serious complaints in their forum, it will work reliably.

I'd consider QNAP (same price range, feature set as Synology) as well.

[justice]

I have used a Synology DS207+ that I won on donationcoder ever since I got it a few years back! Thanks Perry Agree with the pros phitsc mentioned, no cons at all it's on all the time and used by all our pcs as nas storage (and backing up onto it using CrashPlan).

* Stopped using the download manager back in the day because it would slow my connection to a crawl, this might have changed now.
* Started playing about with it with shell access and installing all kinds of crap, it uses dpkg as a package manager, there's good hacking documentation on the net.
* When things went wrong, just apply the latest firmware or do a reset from the admin menu and it will restore to a working condition which was a bonus
* It works as a UPNP server and masquarades as itunes so if you have an xbox /ps3 or internet radio you can stream all your media from it.

I'm not sure what the price was/is but can't fault it personally, I've not had a similar product before though so it's hard to compare. Haven't used it for printing. Haven't used any other Synology products.

[phitsc]

I guess you know the SmallNetBuilder web site. Has reviews for many NAS' including performance comparison charts.

[barney]

Nope, wasn't aware of that site ... thanks for the reference.

Looked at the QNAP line, but Synology seems a bit more appropriate for my usage.  Ordered the DS211 with a WD 2 TB Caviar - I'll add another drive later, of course, and may have to order the wireless printer bit separately if the DS211 doesn't have that capability.  The docs I've seen are a bit ambivalent on that point.  But the Web server capability is important, particularly if I can get remote access to it.  Oh, well ... we'll see <sigh />.