In late August I purchased the Synology DS209 and I figured I should write a review of my experiences.
My “Test-Bed”
- Synology DS209 (Currently firmware version DSM 2.2-0942)
- 2x Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB
- Gigabit wired network; b/g wireless network, n wireless network
- One Ubuntu Linux / Windows Vista Desktop
- Two OS X Laptops
- PS3 and XBox 360 for UPnP/DLNA streaming clients
Why Get a NAS?
I record, or receive, a number of HD recordings of adult rec league hockey games which I then transcode and put online. At about 8GB an hour, and receiving up to 3 recordings a week, it wouldn’t take long to fill up my desktop’s hard drives. Because I likely wouldn’t need the full HD recordings after the initial conversion I wanted a large storage area available for storage.
I also wanted an easy solution to stream these game videos and other media to my entertainment center. Having the desktop computer on all the time, or leaving my laptop around so my roommate could have access to the media wasn’t a good option. So, a NAS with UPnP/DLNA support was a perfect solution.
Why I Chose The Parts I Did
Synology DS209 – When I was looking for a NAS box I wanted cold-hard-facts on what it supported. When I went looking for these specs on the sites of the usual suspects I found useful information like “Supports Windows, OS X, and Linux”. I read this, likely incorrectly but without information to prove otherwise, as “supports Samba”. Looking further in to the “tech sheets” and other product literature I found the same info with a pretty picture of happy people joyfully using their computer. That didn’t cut it. Then I found the spec sheet of the DS209 located here. It had all of the information I wanted and much more. (I also highly recommend checking out their comparison chart; it has info on all of their NAS devices.) This info, combined with mostly positive reviews on NewEgg, told me that this is what I wanted.
WD10EADS 1TB Hard Drives – The gigabit network was going to be the slow-link in this chain so I knew I didn’t need any high-performance drives. I had previously modified a TiVo HD with one of these drives, and it worked well for me so I decided to go with what I knew.
Set Up
Because I purchased this system four months ago my memory of setting up the system is a little fuzzy, but I’ll try to recount it as best I can. The whole process probably took about two hours (plus or minus one) from screwdriver, to starting real usage. Installing the drives was as easy as, or easier than, installing a drive in your computer. The internals were very accessible. The only potential issue I remember (at least think I remember) was that one of the SATA cables was a little more of a tight squeeze than I was expecting.
After installing the drives, getting the system configured was pretty painless (drives, volumes, users, etc). In an effort for full disclosure, I was a Linux sys-admin, and am currently a Linux software engineer so your definition of ‘painless’ will probably differ. I didn’t use the documentation much, but I’ve taken a look at a PDF copy of the official documentation, and I’m not sure that anyone below a moderately savvy computer users would understand it. That said, Synology does have a community site including a forum, wiki, and how-tos so support shouldn’t be to far away.
Using
After you install the drives, the user-interface is the first thing you see. I won’t spend too much time on this because Synology offers a demo version so you can see for yourself. The short version is that the UI is good-looking (to an engineer), well arranged (to an engineer), and functional. It is well organized with settings in areas you’d expect to find them. Some sub-menus could probably be combined, but in those situations I prefer situations where things are ‘too-granular’ rather than ‘too-combined’.
My primary use case has me accessing the NAS using Linux. When talking about Linux I usually use CIFS to access the drive. NFS is another option, but because my girlfriend and roommate could also use the NAS I wanted more access control. I won’t go in to using CIFS on Linux, but I will say that using rsync to transfer my files over CIFS on this NAS has worked fine.
The secondary use case for this NAS is with OS X. I use AFP for OS X access, and as one would expect with OS X it is painless. Once AFP is enabled the NAS shows up in your finder windows automatically. A click and maybe a password later and you’re ready to go.
I have not used this NAS with Windows Vista much, but from what I recall it was pretty easy. It showed up on ‘My Network Places’ without any special setup.
UPnP/DLNA support has been great, but not perfect. The vast majority of the time the PS3 has no problems connecting to the NAS, and no problems playing the supported media I put on there. However, I have had issues where the PS3 reported that it could not connect. A simple reboot of the PS3 has always addressed this, and this issue was rare (maybe three times out of over a hundred PS3 boots, and hundreds of videos played). Also, I have not seen this issue is a while so a firmware update I applied may have addressed this. Overall, I was very pleased with the support. It has been leap-years ahead of my experiences with MediaLink (which I used a year or more ago).
One of the only short-comings I found with the DS209 is one that was resolved with a firmware update. The original firmware seemed to have issues when I attempted to access media files over UPnP/DLNA within a few minutes of copying them to the NAS. The PS3 would report ‘corrupted data’ and would not play the file. The solution was to wait a few minutes, or manually hit the web-interface’s ‘Re-Index’ button. However, once I upgraded to the newer firmware this issue appears to have been addressed. Recently, I have been able to access media using my PS3 within a few seconds of copying it to the NAS.
Summary
Overall, I have been extremely pleased with my DS209 and WD10EADS combo. It has currently been up for 92 days, and that last down-time was due to a power-outage that was long enough that my UPS ran out of juice. As a software engineer I like things to be easy most of the time, but I also want the full power and information available just in case. I had high expectations for the DS209 when I ordered it, and it has met or exceeded them in every way. I highly recommend it. It won’t be too long before I move up to a 4-bay, and a Synology will be my first choice.