Synology Disk. Station DS2. Review Expert Reviews The Synology DS2. NAS device with 5. MB of RAM and a 1. GHz Marvell Armada 3. Games Psp. It can accept two 3. Entry level it may be, but it still comes with the same high quality DSM operating system as Synologys more expensive NASs. View and Download Synology DiskStation user manual online. DiskStation Network Storage Server pdf manual download. Synology DiskStation DK213j This relatively lowcost NAS enclosure is faster than youd expect given its price. Network Attached Storage NAS for home and business, Synology is dedicated to provide DiskStation NAS that offers RAID storage, storage for virtualization, backup. Synology Disk Station DS418play is a 4bay NAS designed for ultrahigh definition multimedia enthusiasts. Powered by a new Intel Celeron dualcore processor. Forum rules 1 This is a user forum for Synology users to share experiencehelp out each other if you need direct assistance from the Synology technical support team. Full Changelog history Downloads. All installers always install the latest version unless stated otherwise. Windows installers NEW singleuser installer. Gb11qMyzIkI/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' title='Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' />Your NAS devices operating system has a major impact on its usability and, by extension, its usefulness to your business. If you dont have dedicated IT support, its especially important to choose hardware thats as clear and simple to manage as possible. The DS2. 13j certainly falls into that category. Clipboard04-1024x680.jpg' alt='Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' title='Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' />It takes a little more effort to install hard disks in the DS2. Synologys more expensive models, as you must open the DS2. Devices such as the Synology DS2. Once the hard disks are installed and youve connected the NAS to your router youll have to locate it on your network and install its operating system. You can install the operating system from the supplied CD or by downloading it from the Synology website. If you choose to install the supplied version of the firmware, you can always update it to the latest version later, either through the DSM operating system or by downloading it to a USB drive. Synologys Disk Station Manager interface gives you easy to use windows and icons. Synology has expanded the DS418 line with the introduction of the new DS418play. The NAS, which joins the DS418 and DS418j in the consumeroriented fourbay range, is. Forum rules This is a user forum for Synology users to share experiencehelp out each other if you need direct assistance from the Synology technical support team. Synology Inc. was founded in January 2000 when Cheen Liao and Philip Wong left Microsoft to pursue an independent project. Liao was a development manager in the. Wish you could play games meant for other, older platforms on your PC Dont worry, you can play your games without having to buy a console for each one. How Simple. The DSM interface is excellent. It has a helpful quick start wizard that guides you through critical settings and prompts to help you configure the most essential features. Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' title='Install Linux Software On Synology Ds' />If you go directly to File Station Synologys file manager, for example, but havent yet created any shared folders, a prompt gives you the option of going straight to the shared folder configuration screen, also accessible via the Control Panel. Setting up SMB shares is a simple matter of hitting the Create button, naming the folder and then setting its permissions using tick boxes. You can enable guest user access so that everyone on your network can read or write files stored on the DS2. As well as sharing folders locally via SMB, the DS2. FTP access, while additional apps from the Synology Package Centre can be installed to provide features such as mail and media servers, or even internet or intranet sites with full content management systems. The DS2. 13js DSM installation feels a little sluggish compared to models with more powerful processors, but its still responsive and clearly designed. Indeed, if youre familiar with a Linux window manager or Microsoft Windows youll feel at home with DSM. As this is a two bay NAS, Synologys default RAID system is Synology Hybrid RAID SHR. Effectively, this builds you a RAID1 array, mirroring your data between two disks to ensure that you lose no data should a drive fail. You can also configure the DS2. RAID0 to create a larger combined storage volume, but we strongly advise against this, as it means that your businesss data will have no protection against hardware failure. At the rear of the DS2. Gigabit Ethernet port, are two USB ports to which you can attach USB drives. You can then use attached drives for additional storage or use them for storing backups. The DS2. 13js Backup and Restore menu makes it easy to schedule regular backups so that vital data is copied from the DS2. USB drive. You can then detach the USB drive and store it securely. You can also use the DS2. USB ports to turn the NAS into a print server, or attach a Wi Fi adaptor or Bluetooth dongle to increase the NASs connectivity. We tested the NAS using two 3. GB Western Digital Red hard disks. When configured in Synology Hybrid RAID, the disks gave us a storage capacity of 2. TB. Every generation of Synology NAS enclosures brings a bit of extra power, which means youll see faster throughput speeds than previous two bay j series NAS enclosures. In our SMB transfer test, the DS2. MBs and a read speed of 5. MBs, which makes an average 6. MBs. Small file speeds are always slower, and the DS2. MBs and a read speed of 1. MBs for an average of 1. MBs. When a NAS is set up as i. SCSI target it looks and acts like a local hard disk, even though you access it through a network. SCSI targets tend to provide faster transfer speeds, and that was the case with the DS2. It provided a small file write speed of 4. MBs and a read speed of 2. MBs, producing an average transfer speed of 3. MBs. It wrote large files at 5. MBs and read them at 5. MBs to produce an average transfer speed of 5. MBs. The Synology DS2. DS2. 13j outperformed the DS2. The DS2. 13j is one of Synologys cheapest NAS enclosures, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that its transfer speeds outperformed more expensive rivals such as the recently reviewed Qnap TS 2. An excellent interface and surprisingly fast throughput makes this a great buy for shared storage. It wins our Budget Buy award. Basic Specifications. Price1. 70. RatingAward. Budget Buy. Storage. Capacity. NAFormatted capacity. NADefault file systemext. Price per gigabyte. NAInterface. SATA2. Free 3. 5in drive bays. RAID modes. JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, SHRInterface. Ethernet ports. 1USB direct access ports frontrear00. Other USB ports frontrear02e. SATA ports frontrear00. Other portsnone. Networking. Ethernet connection speed. Mbits. Universal Plug and Play supportyes. UPn. P media serveryesi. Tunesyes. Print serveryes. USB disk serveryes. Web serveryes. FTP serveryes. Protocols supported. TCPIP, SMBCIFS, AFP, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, NFS, SSH, Telnet, Web. DAV, i. SCSIMiscellaneous. Size. 16. 5x. 10. Vertical positioningno. Ethernet cable includedyes. Additional featuresnone. Power consumption active. WBuying Information. Price1. 70. Warrantytwo years RTBSupplierhttp www. Detailswww. synology. Synology Disk. Station DS2. Review Trusted Reviews. What is the Synology Disk. Station DS2. 16 In Synologys huge range of network attached storage NAS devices, the two disk DS2. Its more expensive than Synologys home orientated DS2. NAS. Related Buffalo Link. Station 5. 20. D review. Synology DS2. 16 Specifications and Design. This is a two bay NAS, so your data is protected if one disk fails, and it supports 3. SSDs. Since its an office model, it has a quick processor to help with fast file transfers a dual core 1. GHz model, compared to the 1. GHz chip in the DS2. Youll also find one USB on the front and two USB 3 ports on the rear, to plug in hard disks, TV tuners or wireless dongles, along with Gigabit Ethernet. The DS2. 16 runs the latest DSM 6 operating system, which provides a friendly, mouse driven interface that you can access through a web browser. Its a plain looking NAS, with a no nonsense matte black case this is in contrast to the shiny white plastic of the home orientated models. It does feel like it wont pick up scratches too easily, and the shiny faceplate adds a touch of style. Synology DS2. 16 Setup. The provided quick start guide is pretty minimal, but the NAS does make life easy for you during setup. For a start, theres no screwdriver needed here just pop off the front panel, slide out a drive tray and clip your 3. Everything is labelled, too, such as up printed on the drive tray so you get it the right way around. Screws will only be needed if youre fitting 2. SSDs into the trays. Once the disks are fitted, simply plug the NAS into your router with the supplied 1. This will search for and connect to your NAS, and you then just click the big disk icon to download and install the latest version of the DSM operating system directly to your NAS. A wizard will then take you through setting up an administrator account, and asks you to choose a Quick. Connect ID. This is particularly useful for accessing the NAS from mobile apps, since you dont need to remember its IP address on your network. It also lets you access the NAS interface over the internet, away from your home network. Theres was no fiddling with the router required to get this to work, either even with UPn. P disabled. Synology DS2. Operating System and Apps. By default, the NAS sets its two disks as a Synology Hybrid Raid SHR array, which can tolerate the failure of one disk without data loss. It also sets up shares for music, photos, videos and a generic home folder. You can access these with the NASs IP address, but its much easier in Windows to just press Windows R to bring up the Run box and type the NASs name as a network share, such as ds. Its also possible to map any of the shares as network drives in Explorer. The NAS interface makes it easy to tweak this setup. Even those who arent familiar with NAS drives will feel relatively at home with the windowed interface. Everything is made simpler with a series of wizards that set up new shares and users, assigning them appropriate read and write access and, if you wish, disk space quotas. Theres no need for any knowledge on Linux file permission flags, which is a blessing. The DSM operating system is immensely powerful, with a bewildering array of apps that you can install from the Package Center. These cover anything from running your own mail server or Drupal CMS, to your very own personal wiki. Synology does have a selection of its own apps that it recommends you install during the initial setup process. These apps cover the standard home or office NAS tasks of backing up your files and sharing photos, video or audio around your network. I installed Cloud Station for backup, along with Audio Station, Photo Station and Video Station. Cloud Station works in conjunction with an application on your Windows or Linux PC or Mac. It was easy to set up and synced new and changed files straight to the NAS. Audio Station provides a simple web interface to play your audio files from the NAS, but is really designed to be used with the Android or i. OS apps. I found the Android app to be fast and it worked well with large music collections, but I missed the ability to sort albums by artist name. Photo Station works well through a web browser, providing a slick interface to view your photo collection, and I didnt have any complaints about the Android app, either. Video Station is a different matter. Unlike Photo and Audio Station, you cant just view content in your Video folder straight away. You first have to add a shared folder to a library, such as Movies. Each time I added a new file to the Video folder, it took around 1. Video Station, and a 1. GB rip of a DVD wouldnt play back smoothly through the Android app, even when I was next to the router. I didnt get on with Video Station, but the NAS has a UPn. P media server enabled by default. This means you can use an alternative mobile app, such as the excellent Bubble. UPn. P, to stream audio and video from your NAS. With Bubble. UPn. P, I exxperienced smooth video playback on my phone and a more fully featured music player than DS Audio. Synology DS2. 16 External Storage. If you plug a USB hard disk or flash drive into the DS2. You can also use the DS2. File Station app to copy files to and from the disk using your web browser. I found this a super quick way to load hundreds of gigabytes of data onto the NAS after initial setup. The DS2. 16 also has a button marked c on the front, which will automatically copy the contents of any drive plugged into the front USB port to the NASs internal storage. I found this worked fine, but bear in mind that if you want the NAS to read ex. FAT disks a popular format for high capacity flash drives then youll need to buy a 4 Synology app. Annoyingly, the front USB port doesnt use USB 3. USB 2 speeds. This is a faff when you want to transfer a huge number of files quickly. Synology DS2. 16 Performance. The DS2. 16s interface ran far more smoothly than that of my home DS2. This proved to be the case. My speed tests used the Windows command line Robocopy tool to copy three sets of test files between the NAS and a RAM disk on my test PC over a Gigabit Ethernet network. The test files were 5. MB of mainly sub 1. KB documents, 5. 00. MB of JPEG photos between 2. MB and 5. MB, and a single 5. MB video file. Small files were written at 1. MBsec and read at 2. MBsec. Next, the photos were written at 5. MBsec and read at 6. MBsec. The large video file was written to the NAS at a huge 1. MBsec and read at 9. MBsec. This is a very quick NAS indeed, even when writing tiny files. Trusted. Reviews testing methodology has changed since we reviewed the DS2. Play, so these results arent completely comparable. However, the Play model appears to manage small files slightly faster than the DS2. Should I buy the Synology DS2. The DS2. 16 is easy to set up and use, has a polished operating system and sky high file transfer rates. Youll need to think carefully about whether youd be better off with a different NAS from Synologys own range, however. The home orientated DS2. DS2. 16 but its clocked at a lower 1. GHz speed. As a result, file transfers wont be as quick, and youll lose the direct USB copy function and hot swappable disks. Otherwise, the NAS devices are highly similar, and the DS2. Theres also the DS2. USB 3 port but it features a storming 1. GHz processor, 1. GB of RAM and support for hardware video transcoding. Verdict. The DS2.