Pros: Trivial drive installation, true plug-n-play cable-less HD installation with a pair of "SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM" drives. NAS unit has an appealing design, the internal bays are precisely sized, and it has expandability (eSata port & 2*USB2) and seem well engineered overall. Came with the latest firmware revision (959) on disk -- installed from the PC using "Synology Assistant" very easily [only took an extra minute total to find the latest firmware on the CD after I found the "browse" option they mentioned]. The NAS firmware itself is amazingly full featured (see their website) and extensible -- plus there are EVEN MORE optional packages you can download for free. For the price, the unit seem like a VERY complete package and likely to satisfy the needs of anyone wanting some shared storage, a DLNA server, iTunes server, a webserver, a mail server, SMB shares, Active Directory storage, a network backup device, FTP, P2P client, or ... ALL of that at once.

Cons: Doesn't come with a free booth babe :) Only thing that bothered me was, after Installation had completed all the steps except "2. Format hard drive, [ ] (2) Formatting data partition", the Synology Assistant app gave no further feedback except "Applying system settings.... It may take over 10 minutes, depending on hard drive size. Please wait patiently..." Well... that 10 minutes might be true for some very small drives, but for a pair of 1TB drives, it took a very very long time to finish with no status bar or progress indications. The only clue that it wasnt hung was that the "Status" light on the NAS kept flashing yellow and the "LAN" light showing constant traffic. I would very much have liked it to show me some sort of ongoing feedback and a real time estimate.

Overall Review: Be sure to attach this to a Gigabit 1000baseT LAN, since 100baseT connectivity wont be enough to keep up with this server. Especially if you put a pair of Samsung F3 drives into the unit(even in mirrorored mode) -- each can do about >100MB/second sustained sequential access!

Pros: -Easy to install my two 1TB drives. -The web base management is very well designed -The file transfer speed over my Gbit network was comparable to what they stated in their spec sheet -The free iphone app + music streamer is really cool. can access my entire music & picture library from my iphone over a 3G network. -Large community with a lot of topics on their forums. Just about every question i had was found by searching their site.

Cons: -Transfer speeds were what they claimed, but it's not close to being 1Gbit worth, more like 300-400Mit. You have to buy their much more expensive models to get 1Gbit speeds. -Takes a very long time to setup RAID1 on my two 1TB drivers. Least you only set it up once, but don't plan to be using it for a while. -All of their on board services like ftp and web hosting just don't do enough for me to use them. I appreciate they exits, but i need a bit more configuration options out of my services. I'll stick to running most my services on computer.

Overall Review: This is a nice NAS. I think you get what you pay for even if it is a little steep. There are a lot of extras on this NAS that basically make it a small web server. You'll read other reviews on other NAS models claiming that their network speeds didn't match what the company claimed. I'm very very happy this company clearly stated the x-fer speeds of this model, and that I was able to get those speeds. You can't underestimate a good support site or community. You see users posting topics about how they do very advance operations with their NAS. It's almost fun to browse the forums after you get on. I'll say it again, that iphone app is really cool.

Pros: * Excellent performance (getting ~30MB/s upload to box from Windows 7) * Does much more than just hosting files as a NAS (web server, IP cams, FTP server, media server, and more! * Excellent design and high quality construction * Virtually noiseless! * Small footprint

Cons: * The initial volume creation (RAID 0) with the drive check took several hours. But I suppose that's normal for 2 x 1TB HDD??

Overall Review: I agree with everything Sorbe said in his review. This unit does so much more than just host files. I love the free iPhone app (DS audio) they have to use in conjuction with their AudioStation application. Also, check out their live demo of the DS-209 which you can access/administer (http://www.synology.com/us/products/demo/index.php). According to Synology, the DS-209 performs about 30% better than the DS-210j. If I had known that earlier, I would have paid the extra $70 for the DS-209. I got two SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ (item #N82E16822152185) for this unit. Works great.

Pros: Easy to assemble, slide off the cover, slide in the drives, add the included screws, slide the cover back on and add it's screws. The HD connectors are built in and don't require cables. Plug in the cables and your ready to go. Installed the Synology Assistant and it found the unit no problem. I used the SAMSUNG EcoGreen F2 HD154UI 1.5TB drives without problems. Running them in Raid1 "Mirror". The firmware on the disk was not the latestest, so I downloaded the latest firmware and went for it. It takes quite a while to format the drives at this size, but the latest firmware gave a readout in percentage of job completed. Basic setup was easy enough with plenty of help info on the Synology website. Merge it into your workgroup, create some home folders, set permissions, etc... Your ready to go. Large data copies take quite awhile, but the process is plenty stable once started. I found that it's best to do it from admin & leave the process running & switch back to limited user.

Cons: No real con's.. It's a great little unit for the price. Lots of functionality through the built in GUI interface. If that is too limiting for you. Then with some studying you can do much more through the command line to get specialty stuff done. There is lots of help for this out there, but it's best to study it carefully before messing with the command line stuff. It's running Busybox Linux which by it's nature has been trimmed a little here and there slim up the required installation size. The OS is not truly embedded as it gets loaded to the hard drive. (I had hoped that it would get loaded entirely as firmware to a physical memory chip & be drive independant, but it's not)

Overall Review: I have not tried, and am not using any of the specialty features on this unit. (Ftp, mail, bit torrent, etc...) It's a data vault only for me at this point. There are two options for this. Sharing and mapping network folders, and, "Filestation" which allows straight web browser based file management. For my initial large volume data transfers. I used the network folder system. However, I noticed that the unit kept waking up every time I brought my Windows computer out of sleep. (Other times too) Once my major data transfers were done. I disabled the network folder access, and went to using the Filestation web browser management for my casual access. Now the unit stays asleep all the time unless I am actually using it. Remeber that you need to access it this way with Firefox if you enable HTTPS. IE is not compatible with HTTPS on this unit. Also make sure you have complete functionality for using it this way tested, before you disable the network folder systems.

Pros: A friend of mine recently mentioned Synology NAS drives but at first I was a bit worried to buy something I never knew anything about so I decided to gamble and I must say this product is worth every penny and I highly recommend it. I use it as my back up (raid-1) and it is loaded with features. I use my IPhone to stream music while I am away from home. Very nice web interface...

Cons: Nothing major. I think if you are a novice it will take some time to figure it out

Pros: ease of use

Cons: none for me

Overall Review: bought this more as a backup device for my family than to use as a server since i have different OS's running in the house. 2 PC's, 1 Mac. didn't want to move an external HD from room to room nice features - e.g. photostation that allows me to share photos with family members at different locations. the download director allows me to run torrents when my main computer is turned off. as i play with it, i get more comfortable it, accessing and tweaking some of the more techy features - especially to allow outside access (e.g. WebDAV, FTP) and really use it as a server. i do recommend you do get a UPS. also, check their list of peripherals that will play nice with the nas (UPS, HD, etc) their support forum is very helpful especially for newbies. currently running 2 1TB WD Black drives in Raid1. i like the security if one fails. the new UI (DSM3.0) is a great improvement over DSM2.3 that came with the system. the one time i had to call tech support, they were very helpful.

Pros: Good transfer speed for the price. Easy setup. Feature-rich web-based management software and suite of applications. Works well with Windows and Linux. Excellent and thorough documentation, which is rare these days.

Cons: None yet.

Overall Review: One of the hard drives I purchased with this was defective. I set up a single-drive volume. When the replacement drive arrived I simply installed it and upgraded to RAID 1 with a couple of mouse clicks. Easy.

Pros: Easy Setup - both hardware and software Quiet Very flexible configuration with good UI Reasonable price Not a single glitch so far Active user forum for support

Cons: You do have to hunt a bit for written support info (such as manuals) but they are there.

Overall Review: Arrived in perfect shape, mounted 2 2 TB Caviar Black drives, fired it up and off it went. You do want to be aware while configuring the volumes since the default choice ends up installing the Synology Hybrid RAID, not the classic RAID setups. Researching on the web took care of my reservations about this, and I have not gone back and done the RAID 1 setup manually. Have connected 5 computers to it and setup of everything went smoothly. Am not using all the applications, but tested most of them and they worked fine. I am really happy with this product and would recommend it -- you get what you pay for, and for the minor price difference with other products, it is a no-brainer.