Synology GUI
When I recently took a look at a NAS from Asustor I praised them on their user interface layout and simplicity as it made for easier navigation around the admin pages for more novice users. Synology’s UI is very much the same, with a simple and easy to grasp panel and windows that give clear and to the point information on how the system is performing.
Synology’s UI has one major factor about it that differs to other systems that I have seen to date and this is that it is not installed on the system until you first set it up. As opposed to other systems, the DS213j does not have any on-board storage of its own, either in a flash IC form or SOC. Instead the operating system is installed on to both the hard drives in a RAID1 fashion (irrespective of the drive configuration) so that if one of the drives does proceed to fail, the system is still accessible for maintenance / recovery if the storage is set up in RAID1.
One of the very good NAS out in the market!!
The look and the performance is awesome.
Last but not least, good review as always, Chris. 🙂
The processor is a Single Core ARM 1.2 GHz with FPU and not a dual core 1.6 GHz as stated. http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/What_kind_of_CPU_does_my_NAS_have
“Nestled beside the CPU are two Hynix branded H5TQ2G83CFR 2GB RAM ICs.
This gives the DS213j a potential capacity of 4GB, however there is only
512MB available to the system to use.”
There is an obvious confusion between bit and byte here.
does the DS213j let you format drives individually cos I’m gonna add 2 drives 1 at a time.
I bought one of these (DS213J( just before Christmas 2013.
I use it for file storage, and transferred my mail server to it soon after.
Whilst it does absolutely everything it says on the tin, the only problem is Synology itself.
I had religiously upgraded the firmware every time a new version came out, and everything was fine until 3 months ago, when , after a firmware upgrade it started rebooting itself. At first the reboot was every couple of hours so it wasn’t a huge deal. Then after another firmware upgrade it became worse until it was continuously rebooting.
I raised a support request with synology very early on, and checked their forums. A lot of people had experienced this, but synology took the line that it must be a hardware problem. I went through the various hoops they set me, but the one thing they would not consider was that the firmware was causing the problem.
I upgraded it again last night and instantly the problem improved although it didn’t go away.
I would not buy another one of these, and I am considering asking for my money back if they don’t stop being in denial.