Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

Product Category: Network Attached Storage

Manufacturer: Synology

Where to Buy: Amazon [Affiliate]

Price: $1,360.80 USD

System Requirements: Gigabit Ethernet for maximum throughput

Specifications: Holds up to 5 3.5" or 2.5" SATA drives with connectivity for two further 5-drive bays. Size: 157mm x 248mm x 233mm. Weight: 4.25kg. LAN: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet. More specifications available.

Pros:

• Very fast;
• Very flexible;
• Very capable.

Cons:

• Quite expensive;
• Doesn't completely go to sleep if unused.

Summary: A solid unit delivering up to 45TB of network attached storage, with some additional functionality that makes it useful to both home and business user alike. Read more...

"Synology is one of the rapidly rising players in the SMB (Small to Medium Businesses) / SOHO (Small Office & Home Office) NAS market. This market is a highly competitive one with many players like QNAP, Thecus, Netgear, Drobo, LaCie, Seagate and Western Digital. Consumers with a necessity to store and backup their home media collection are also amongst the customers in this market."

The way I see it, with Microsoft ceding the SMB and SOHO NAS market to other businesses (Yes, that is what you did when you got rid of Drive Extender, Microsoft.) the market just got much more interesting. While a two-drive system may not seem like a lot at first, keep in mind that three TB drives are becoming more accessible. Unfortunately, while hard drives are cheaper than ever, it seems that the cost of a well performing NAS is not cheap. While power consumption is always a concern, it has often made me wonder, where for the cost of one of these performance NAS devices, you can purchase a low end desktop computer and load it up with NAS software like FreeNAS. Doing so would not be that much more work than setting up something from Synology or Drobo either. Anyone think these are worth the price?

"Just how low will your jaw drop if you know that the Synology DS1511+ DiskStation is capable of storing up to 45TB of data? That is right, this five-bay NAS is capable of accepting up to two DX510 expansion units for a total of up to 15 drives, and if you decide to go all out with 3TB drives, that can yield up to 45TB of storage - a figure that should send you into orbit."

I get strange looks of bewilderment from my friends and colleagues when they find out I have 5TB of storage for my home server. Even I think that's a lot, but with approx 400 DVD and Bluray copies being 20-40GB each, the space soon mounts up. However to fill 45TB of space I would need to have an astonishingly big movie collection. That said, I remember thinking 1Gb was a huge amount and I would never fill it. How times change.