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Steven O.

Steven O.

Joined on 07/28/07

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 9
Most Favorable Review

Very cool product

Synology DS211J Diskless System DiskStation 2-bay NAS Server for Small Office and Home Use
Synology DS211J Diskless System DiskStation 2-bay NAS Server for Small Office and Home Use

Pros: The software works great. It was easy to set up. Looks good. Lots of options. Reasonably inexpensive.

Cons: It is a little slow, especially when moving large number of files. The initial backup (moving about 3.5TB of data to it) went very slowly, even over USB, and took a few days. But once the data's there (and it is now), I don't need to do that any longer since I'm using it primarily as a backup device. The USB drives I used to transfer the data were NTFS formatted which slows it down a lot. Using a native format would probably be faster, but I didn't try it. The plastic housing feels a little cheap, but given that it's just going to sit on a shelf I think it's fine.

Overall Review: I wasn't sure what to expect with this. I knew I wanted a NAS with FTP capability so I could load a back up of my data on it and then move it off-site (to my in-laws house) where I can push incremental backups to it over the net. It does that, and more. I've now got online access to my media collection from just about anywhere on the planet. It's got far more features than I'll ever need to touch. I almost gave it 5 stars, but went with 4 because I do have a couple of cons listed. I think it's a good, solid product with great features at a good price, it's just a little slow (which is probably never going to be an issue for most people).

Most Critical Review

Bad quality

Western Digital WD Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital WD Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Cheap, but you get what you pay for.

Cons: I've now had three of these, and two were dead within a year. 8/13/10: Bought two of these from Newegg. One went into a USB housing that doesn't get turned on very often (for backup) and the other went into my very well ventilated PC. 8/21/10: A few days after having one in my PC, it died. Clicking and couldn't been seen by the OS. Spinrite couldn't save it. 9/1/10: Western Digital sent me a replacement ("Recertified", not new). 3/19/11: The replacement started slowing down and getting read/write errors. It started clicking and the OS no longer sees it. Again, even Spinrite can't fix it. This is not a good drive. I know 2.0TB is tough to do, but they've got some real quality problems on these. I'm going to get yet another replacement from WD, but I certainly won't be putting anything important on it.

Died after about 6 months

Seagate BarraCuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Was pretty fast and a good value for a 7200rpm, 1.5GB drive.

Cons: Died in less than a year. Click of death just kept getting worse and worse...

Very nice little camera

Canon PowerShot S90 Black 10.0 MP 3.8X Optical Zoom 28mm Wide Angle Digital Camera
Canon PowerShot S90 Black 10.0 MP 3.8X Optical Zoom 28mm Wide Angle Digital Camera

Pros: Shoots in RAW, small, decent image quality. A very good value for good quality. This is a "point and shoot", but it's quite advanced.

Cons: Don't expect miracles. It's a small sensor. High ISO (800 or higher) is quite noisy, but I've found the noise to be very controllable in post-processing (I use Nik Dfine 2.0).

Overall Review: I shoot with a Canon 7D normally. I'm not a pro, but a very experienced amateur. It's great to have a small camera that has controls I understand that I can just slip in my pocket anywhere I go. I've been very pleased with it so far.

First SSD... very happy

Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/64GB 2.5" Desktop Bundle 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/64GB 2.5" Desktop Bundle 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: Very fast, low power, and easy to use. A good value. The speed makes it feel like I've gotten a brand new system. Boots quick. Apps load quick.

Cons: None that I can think of right now.

Overall Review: This is my first SSD boot drive. I loaded a fresh install of Windows 7 on it along with all of my apps (including MS Office, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.). I'm really impressed with the speed. I understand that there are faster SSD's out there, but for the money this one is a real bargain. So far I'm very impressed and I won't ever be building a system again that doesn't have an SSD boot drive.