Synology DS212J Diskless System DiskStation Budget-friendly 2-bay NAS Server for Small Office and Home Use

Pros: Lots of features in the diskstation OS provided by Synology and third parties, and there are new features introduced every time software is updated. Photo Station, Music Station, Cloud Station are my favorites.

Cons: I actually own two Synology Diskstations, but I bought this one for off site backup of another Synology diskstation. So while I love all the features the Diskstation provides, the backup services (there are plenty) are all problematic with it's offsite, and I haven't gotten one method of back up to work more than a week without returning a "back up failed" message. We even hired a IT person to figure it out, and he couldn't get it working either, and concluded that our router just doesn't like the diskstation... the problem is still lingering.

Local network backup works perfectly

Other Thoughts: Cloudstation is great because you can have a huge Cloud... downside is that you can only have two folders with cloud service... managing the Cloud on several computers can be quite cumbersome... and inviting others to the Cloud is not a simple email password link like Google, Dropbox, etc...

Pros: I bought this for our home network that has 5 laptops and a single iMac. The management software was outstanding. I setup the Diskstation as a Time Capsule for the Macs and used Windows 8 file backup too.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: This machine has been thought out, tested, and revised with incredible attention to detail. I have owned it (bought here) for more than a year. At first I thought it was too loud, and said so in my review. But upon closer examination, the DiskStation itself is quiet. It's the two WD black disks that make all the spinning sounds, not the fan. So, hardware great. Software, great and always getting better. The latest improvement (I don't know when they added it (perhaps last year?) but the DiskStation's DSM 4.2 supports AirPrint! So what? It means that my 8 year old brother printer now works with my IOS devices. [I found I needed to set it to "socket" instead of IPP]. Now that is added value: turning an old printer into a new one.

Cons: It could take a novice a while to fully active and use all the features. On the other hand it works right out of the box and is useful as soon as the disks are installed and formatted.

Other Thoughts: This review supersedes my earlier one and the Newegg mgt is welcome to delete the earlier review in which I complained about the noise level.

Pros: Unit is great for making incremental backups and file copies.
Has a suite of interesting products (others may use)
stable
sleeps and does not use a lot of power
always available network storage (no need to go find/plugin my external drive)
ability to access files remotely

Cons: Setup does take some time to tinker with everything and get right.
To assist on the setup, each computer accessing should have a windows user acct & password and these shared user accts setup in the Diskstation (or unit will have issues with automounting and permissions on reboots)

Fell little short (for me) on many other features, such as CloudStation and iTunes server.
The speed/performance just wasn't there, so things like the iTunes server were just too sluggish.
Most all of the supplied apps work, but they run better using my Home network instead.
Could NOT get Cloudstation to work well with large/rapidly changing files (such as Outlook .pst files) returns failed messages?

Would recommend using faster drives 7200rpm or SSD for better performance.

Other Thoughts: This unit is great for the price and what it delivers, but performance is lacking for realistically using a lot of these features.

Someday when the price of SSD's drops, I may buy a couple and retry a lot of these features.

For now, it's just network storage for me (not using any of the other features)

Pros: Compact size, low power consumption, fully integrated Linux environment through your remote browser, complete documentation, application library for add ons keeps growing, excellent disk management, ability to format drives in EXT, NTFS, three USB ports, 1 in front, 2 in rear allow for connection of backup drives or printers. 1 GB ethernet connection. OS update easy and over the internet. Intuitive graphical user interface easy to navigate.
My system has been up and trouble free for 6 months connected to Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac Mountain Lion and Android Phones, PS3 and Sony HDTV. I am configured with Seagate 3TB raid 1 EXT4 and 1 External Seagate 3 TB via back USB housed in a Thermaltake Silver River 5G. The external drive is used to backup the raid 1 files. Done by creating real time (other options available) jobs.
Now, if you are a Linus pro or fairly good with Linux, then you will adapt quite easily to this box. If you are a newbie to Linux, expect to spend 1-2 weeks getting things all nice and pretty and then small amounts of time tweaking. But this is easy. After physically installing your TESTED hard drives and connecting to your network router, boot it up. Then access via your web browser. If you cannot, check your firewall, router and network settings. Make sure to download and install the helper software from the Synology website. They will locate the NAS on your network for you. Update your NAS to the latest OS version (simple and essentially automatic). After being able to connect to your NAS via your browser, it is time to split screen between your browser and the Synology User Manual (pdf). This manual is complete, easy to use, is formatted to show you exactly how things appear in the browser and is step by step and chapter. Keep notes of your settings (accounts, passwords, quotas, etc.). Set up dynamic DDNS through Synology or another such as NO-IP.org and you are connected across the internet. This unit is close to fully featured compared to the much bigger costlier beasts. If you don't go through the manual and discover all of the features and benefits, you are cheating yourself.

Cons: ARM processor limits some third party applications (no plex at this time) that are available for the Intel CPU NAS units. Does not do my wash or make my coffee.

Other Thoughts: This unit supports MAC Time Machine, streaming media photos and video and music with built in application servers. Works great with my PS3 and connected Sony HDTV. works with Windows 7 and 8 Media center to stream music, photos and supported video formats. Supports Windows 8 File Backup, but not imaging (my discs are formatted EXT4 and Windows will not write an image to a Linux formatted disk!). I use Synctoy from Microsoft to immediately backup and synchronize files with this device from my Windows machine separately from my windows 7 and 8 file backups. Takes only a second and works great. You can create your own encryption certificate within Windows (no trusted source of course, but who really cares since it is free) and install it onto the NAS for use in accessing the device remotely via HTTPS. You can encrypt the raid array and the backup disk for protection if stolen. You can backup your raid array to an external drive or the cloud through supported services. In short, there are so many features and benefits that if you take the time to learn them and set them up the unit will pretty much automate a lot of your life. I believe some of the poor reviews are the unwillingness of people to learn a Linux based computer and set up the tasks they need and want done. They should be cloud people.

Pros: I don't usually spend more money if I don't have to. I tried other NAS systems and having lost valuable data, I thought I will try a higher priced (well-reviewed) NAS like Synology.

I have not been disappointed. I've set this up as web server, NAS, download station, file storage, printer and putting this through hell and it is standing up to my tasks without a hitch.

I've put in two WD RED 2TB drives.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I should've purchased two 4TB instead of two 2TB drives.

Pros: Easy to set up. Fast, GREAT software and features. Really easy GUI to use. Cool monitoring tools and the phone/iOS apps are nice!

Super Quiet!

Its nice for a home user (like myself), or a small business owner for multiple employees with the easy user account setup/provisioning.

Cons: White case. Eww.

I wish some of the apps were better described. Some are nice, but others are pointless. It all depends on how you will use it.

The GUI layout takes a little getting used to, but not very long. (I'm really digging here for cons)

I do wish it was a hardware RAID (not software) so I could remove the drives and read them, but that's an OK compromise for the apps and pros of this array.

Other Thoughts: It was really easy to set up with the instructions. I had a couple bad WD Red drives so it wasn't working. I thought it might be the NAS, but it was the drives.

--- IT PAYS TO SCAN YOUR DRIVES WHEN YOU GET THEM!! :) ---

I got my NAS set up and files copied over. It automatically sets the drives up in a RAID1 which is what I wanted. I set it up with Crashplan and Plex so now I'm set. Transfer speeds on a Gigabit network are about 25-35 MBps. Not bad, I didn't think. A lot faster than my old RAID 5 array and twice the capacity.

Pros: I'm really enjoying this NAS. The Synology DS212J does what I need and it does it well.

Cons: No cons so far.

Other Thoughts: I have a small Home network, do video streaming, using XBMC and it works real well. I would recommend this NAS to anyone.

Pros: Amazing Features for the money. SMB,NFS,FTP support. It is a mini-linux box rather than just a NAS.

Cons: Initial configuration assumes you have Internet/Active X access. I'd prefer just to be provided with the default IP address and configure it directly rather than going to a vendor site.

Other Thoughts: This has more features than my $2,500 NAS by NetGear. The NetGear is much better professional-grade build quality (rackmount, etc), but for home use, this is really a pretty powerful simple RAID-1 NAS.

Pros: Relatively easy
Relatively inexpensive
Many features
Good software

Cons: Underpowered to pull off some of the features

Other Thoughts: Like many I wanted to centralize and RAID my files, photo and video, and become independent from any single PC/Mac of which I have several. So I wanted also to put my iTunes library on it as well. With some minor hiccups I was able to do this. I was also able to setup to FTP which was nice. Built-in Photo app is nice in theory, but this unit is woefully underpowered to generate the required thumbnails - like taking on the order of a week to do a thousand or so photos. They say to use the PC/MAC app to do so, but is also too slow and interferes with workflow vs just putting the photos on and forgetting the Photo app. It's too bad, the Photo app would allow you to look at your stuff on any remote PC/Android/iOS device. So I had to uninstall this feature. Perhaps a higher end model wouldn't choke so badly. If I had to do it all over I'd probably get a 213+, maybe a 413