Price : Too low to display
Synology Disk Station DS109 is designed to provide users with a flexible solution to share files and increase productivity. Packed with the Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1, it delivers ease of use and variety of features. Furthermore, the optional Synology 2.5” Disk Holder provides an easy way for users to deploy a 2.5” hard drive on the DS109, bringing the library quietness, power saving, and higher reliability for the DS109. Synology Disk Station is designed for data storage and sharing among Windows, Mac, and Linux. Seamless file sharing across different operation systems is an effortless process. Synology File Station 2 offers an innovative user interface with drag-n-drop and right-click capability allowing users not familiar with FTP to easily access files with a web browser. Synology Data Replicator 3 allows Windows users to back up desktop data to the Synology Disk Station. Immediate, Sync, and Scheduled Backup are fully-supported. Synology Local Backup helps to safeguard data by backing up to external hard drives via either USB or eSATA interfaces with flexible scheduling options. Synology Mail Station add-on provides a one step installation and enables Synology Disk Station to be a mail server that supports Outlook-like Web mail, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. Synology Web Station with Virtual Host option allows users to host up to 30 websites on one single Synology Disk Station. The built-in PHP+MySQL provides the ability to create interactive websites without complicated settings.
This review is from : Synology Disk Station 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS109 (White)
Feature packed NAS! will not disappoint . I did a lot of researching before purchasing this NAS.My only regret, 10 days between my purchase and Amazon had dropped the price as new models have come out.
Coming back to the review, essentially NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, which is what this model is as well.You map the network drive after setting up ( its all so simple, i literally only plugged in to my router and followed the steps in the Quick Install Guide)
Features of this NAS are : File sharing, Download station,Torrent engine, FTP, Blog, Photo blog, HTTP server and Network backup, USB copy and tons more i might not even be able to write down, this would be sooo lengthy.
Prime competitors to Synology are QNAP, Thecus, Netgears' ReadyNAS
the reason i chose to go with synology is that their support forums are very helpful, support ticketing system has a very quick turn around time.And lastly their feature list is so exhaustive, i havent even used many of them, and THAT being me working in IT sector.
File sharing is done via File station 2 which is AJAX based drag and drop upload site, you can create users/ groups which are very much enforced if you need to create users with different access level/ permission.
FTP, HTTP server and can be configured with MySQL database , its almost a complete mini server;
that said i havent had any seen any noticeable flaws yet, Photo station(picture album blog), File station are really simple.
Synology beats everyone out in their wonderful user friendly UI(User Interface), which is why i choose them over QNAP, as not everyone may feel the need for iSCSI etc.
If money is not a major concern, please do buy the higher end double bay models it would be economical on the long run, as they also pack more punch having extra RAM and CPU Clock, i like the DS209 +II which just came out a month or so back.
Hope this helps you in deciding on your first NAS, always make sure you backup all data, and the whole point of backing up is to NOT just keep a single backup copy!
EDIT: looks like i am the first reviewer, although i can be sure that there must have been others here who purchased synology products,
Good luck in your NAS purchase,
Syed
***Update Feb 20 2010***
My DS109 Nas has been running awesome over the last months since the purchase, i really love the audio station.The Download station is fine, but i just dont get the same throughput of using a BT client on a PC like Azureus or BitTornado.
Recently with the new DSM 2.2, Synology has added support for iSCSI ! wow, which is great feature that is present on most QNAP devices.And, i gotta love this, Time machine support!
I had purchased a 13" macbook aluminum, and have used the time machine feature of this NAS.It shows up as an airport drive, and backups are a charm.
I am very tempted to buy some newer "black" models from synology which are really fast and furious!I am currently looking to buy another NAS, but after reading some reviews of Dlink's DNS 323/321 models i havent been happy.Synology really cuts the competition by offering so many great features packed in one neat device.
***Update March 26 2010***
Apparently while browsing on Amazon, i have come to discover that there is another synology NAS DS110J which is almost 100$ cheaper than this DS109 but specs are the same.Maybe the one that i have is almost a year + older.
**correction: there IS indeed a difference, DS109 has 1.2 GHZ ppc processor, where as the DS110j has 800 MHz, depends on your needs then i guess.
check this out:
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Attached-DS110j/dp/B002XQ3C36/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1269632405&sr=8-6
So buy the DS110j if you are looking for 1 bay cheap synology NAS
Cheers!
Syed
Synology Disk Station 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS109 (White) Reviews
Solid - with some querks . Product works solid. Worth the investment. Does what I bought it for. Some comments. Although their are a few things I haven't figured out what causes them.
Hard drive is formated with Ext2 or Ext3. Cannot format with NTFS. So you cant use NTFS file permissions if you want to use it in Windows. It was a drawback to me, since I have family and want to keep the kids out of some areas.
Beware of using DDNS and direct internet access. You are going attract every amateur hacker in the world. Although you will get messages informing of failed login attempts. I didn't put much attention to keeping these parasites away. Until I discovered somebody prevented me from deleting my own directories. Took a few hours avoidable time troubleshooting.
Now I synology volumes mapped as drive to my Server. Which I access via GotoMyPC, much safer via encrypted session.
The only issue I still have and haven't spent time troubleshooting is My server has dual boot 2003 & 2008. Sometimes intermittently I cannot access my mapped drives. No matter which system I boot too. I get a message saying network path not found. Pinging to the IP fails too (even though pings are allowed). But if I go to my browser I can still access the volumes via HTTP. Rebooting wont help. But then strangly it comes back a day or later. I dont have the same problem with my XP laptops. Haven't spent enough time troubleshooting since I still have XP or browser as a means to accesss the files.
Synology Disk Station 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS109 (White) Opinions
Feature packed powerful compact NAS . I purchased the Synology DS109 NAS and installed a Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive (WD1002FAEX). I have the Disk Station connected to a gigabit network through a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router WNDR3700 on a static IP address. I use this device mainly for backing up my 2 computers (to 2 separate iSCSI LUNs) and as a media server mostly for music (using Audiostation). I am not an expert computer user, but have a fairly high technical aptitude. I have some programming skills and use many advanced computer features often. As far as networking skills, I consider myself a novice. Fortunately, Synology DSM 3.0 software is so high level, that it does most of the advanced networking tasks automatically. I did have to manually set up DDNS rather than use the EZ-Internet feature. Since I have not used all of the features on this device, I will comment on the features I have used. But be assured, the feature set of this device is extensive. Also, important to my decision to purchase this brand, is the fairly helpful (could be better) online support, such as the Synology forums.
For those of you wishing to use WAN features, I have a fairly slow DSL connection (1.5 Mbps - tests consistently to 1.4 Mb/s Down, .4 Mb/s Up w/30ms latency) on the Verizon network and have suffered no ill effects from this speed as far as I can tell. I do not use these features much, except to have tested the File Share and iRadio features. The results were fantastic; Flawless playback on the radio; Fast data transfer for File Share. I use DynDNS.com for Dynamic DNS Hosting...works perfectly...easy setup. I noticed that I and others had no luck synchronizing the time with an NTP server except [...](we were getting a system notification that the time was not successfully updated).
I have chosen not to map the devices entire drive as a network drive because I do not want to use the entire device as a drive. Instead I use a portion of the drive using the iSCSI feature and the microsoft iSCSI Initiator. Synology's DSM 3.0 software helps you to configure the iSCSI target on the NAS. This allows me greater control over storage space on such a large drive. For instance, I can allocate storage space in the form of drive letters for the specific needs of each machine I have on my network. Right now I have allocated 2 iSCSI LUNs and have 1 connected to my desktop and 1 to my laptop...each LUN has a drive associated with it and an associated volume name such as BACKUP helping me keep track of the purpose of the network drive. One note of importance...do not rely on the Network Places feature of Windows to connect to the NAS, as Windows does not always "see" all devices that are on the network, and even if it does, the connection speed and transfer rates are too slow for practical purposes. This must be why Synology does not mention connecting to the NAS this way and speaks only of mapping the network drive.
As a media server, this device has an awesome app., Audiostation. I basically use it as an MP3 player. It has all the features of a typical MP3 player, such as track info, random playback, album art, etc. I have a Network Audio Video Receiver (AVR), the Onkyo TX-NR708 7.2-Channel Network Home Theater Receiver (Black) attached to my network. It sees the DS109 as a server. If you enable the DS109 as a media server (enable DLNA/UPnP) and use top folders on the named Music, Photo, or Video on the NAS, your computer or media player (such as my AVR) will recognize the DS109 as a media server and play back the files within those folders. I can tell you the playback feature works flawlessly and the quality is on par within the digital audio spectrum. I tested using Audiostation over the net and even on my slow upload connection, the playback feature worked, once again, flawlessly.
There are many other features of this NAS that I have not used or rarely use. Look on the Synology website for more info and read or use the forums for specific questions or needs you may have. I feel the value of this machine is exceptional and the ease of use is fantastic. Its more fun than pain, once it is set up, its all go from there. You will spend little time tweaking and more using.
Great NAS . This NAS has lots of features besides file storage: FTP, Web Site Hosting, SMTP, Photo Album hosting, media server, remote file access and others.
Set up was very easy, however configuration for internet access through the firewall and a DSL router is not for amateurs. If you are only looking for a file storage device, this certainly fulfills the need although it is probably overkill. If you want more advanced capabilities, this is the device.
NAS and much much more! . I bought this because I wanted NAS. I wanted to back up my Macbook Pro 17" uni through Time Machine wirelessly...which it does(but is not recommended for the first TM backup).
Buuuuut, this little piece of greatness does so much more. It has a built in bit torrent client, a file manager, and you can set it up where you can log in to it from anywhere. It's pretty much a fully functioning Linux server. I don't use a lot of the features, mainly just the Bit Torrent and Media server.
What makes this thing really special is the low energy usage. It does what I would normally use a desktop pc to do while using 1/10th of the power.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't recommend trying to back up more than about 10-15GB at a time through wireless, it takes way too long. You're better off wiring in with ethernet, which I find to be about equivalent as USB speeds in a gigabit environment. Other than that, you can back up to an external hard drive, plug it in to the diskstation, and then use the file manager to move the files over.
-Adam
P.S. This machine pairs up with a Patriot Box office or any other media player very nicely. All you do is turn on the dlna/upnp media server, set the Bit Torrent client to save the files under the "video" folder, and when they're finished it will automatically show up in your media player. I played a 1080p mkv movie flawlessly the other day through a wired gigabit ethernet connection through my Patriot Box office...never skipped a beat.
Works great with mixed environment . I was looking for a shared drive I could use in our mixed computer home network. I have a macbook, my wife and daughter are using PC's. I did some research on what product to use in setting something up but frankly got mixed advice even from the Apple store about how to do this. I took the plunge on this device and it does everything I wanted. I'm using a Seagate Barracuda HD and the airport extreme router and set up was a breeze. There were some other reviews about lengthy setup and tech know-how which almost steered me away since I am not an IT guy. I can tell you setup is easy and I've been thrilled with it.
Awesome NAS unit . I bought this for use as a simple NAS device and it works great. I also bought a 1TB SATA disk and have already filled that close to half full. This unit really has a lot of great features. I highly recommend this unit but I wish I would have gone with the 2TB drive. Shipping as always is awesome using Amazon Prime.
Nice NAS . This is my 2nd NAS. The first was a QNAP but it broke. The customer service was horrible otherwise I would have bought another. This box has been great so far. The interface and features are really nice. I have had no trouble setting up or using it.
Best Cost X Benefit Ratio in NASes . Absolutely easy to set up. Excellent management software. Lightning fast. And, to top it all off, very inexpensive.
Product Image
Feature Synology Disk Station 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS109 (White)
- AJAX-Based Management Interface
- Max HDD Support (Internal HDD): 2 TB
- SATA/SSD using Synology Disk Holder Type A and External HDD Interface
- Networking Protocols: CIFS, AFP (3.1), FTP, NFS, Telnet/SSH
- Standard Memory 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM
Product Details
EAN : 0846504000418
UPC : 846504000418
MPN : 4711174720415
Brand : Synology
Weight : 4 pounds
Height : 6 inches
Length : 11 inches
Width : 10 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Format : CD
Hardware Platform : Pc
Manufacturer : Synology America Corp
Model : DS109
Operating System : Windows
Platform : Windows
Publisher : Synology America Corp
Size : 0 TB
SKU : 228931FR
Studio : Synology America Corp
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