I along with 4 x 1TB drives from WD bought the NAS (Scorpio Blue 2.5) and am so far impressed by the small force dwarf. But one after the other:
Although clear, (then or in RAID 5 almost 3 TB) for a NAS with 4TB spend about 580 euros (as of mid-July 2011) is more expensive, but it has everything I need. DIY NAS and other solutions with 3.5 inch plates are indeed cost-effective, but usually not to save space or use more electricity. Who can be NAS in the basement, then he does not need to resort to this solution. But the NAS fits in my palm! In the living room I hear it at any time, and it consumes just about 16 watts in normal operation. With power-saving feature, the plates without problems go eg after 20 minutes to sleep. A fan is installed, my records are never more than 42 degrees Celsius (under full load).
The housing is made of plastic but with high quality though and makes a stable impression. A little piano-gloss finish is also there. Nothing to complain about.
Well, attempting to unpack, with boards with components (hot-swappable) and successfully placed. Device is switched on, looked at my router which IP has got it, and tries to get to the web interface ... Nope! Sometimes you have it in the manual look :-) The device is delivered without pre-installed NAS OS, you have to push the enclosed CD into the PC and using the Synology tools the OS "DSM 3.1" (is also available on the CD) to install. Okay, DSM 3.1 was installed, now create a volume ... that then first so took 5 hrs. (Have created with parity check, even if it takes forever), have chosen a RAID 5.
Then I looked at the Webobefläche which is very good, however, and self-explanatory (the DSM 3.1) to know the system a little. I've been using Windows shares, Media Server (DLNA), web services (File Station) and Photo Station. The device also provides a lot of other things like Mail Station (own mail server) VPN server (you have to download the package separately, not tested), Time Machine (not yet getest), AD integration, firewall, web server with MySQL and so on. .. the exact functions are available on the Synology web site, and even a demo access to the DSM 3.1 to look at times. It is worth it!
The Help on the web interface is very sparse, a layman does not help this documentary. But luckily there are an English and German-language wiki by users, also a forum with lots of tips and it has already helped me a lot! You can also activate the terminal or SSH access to the device and Linux enthusiasts can then change much on command line level / optimize. This is in some wishes but also necessary: eg you can automatically send a user an e-mail containing his data. The text, however, is determined by the device only through SSH access, you can change this. In addition, you can a certificate request and integration (eg for HTTPS so this certificate error messages no longer appear) make only via SSH. Well, not everyone has a static IP from your provider and your own domain. With DynDNS allows the slightly resolve but persist the certificate error. However, it is definitely possible to make even deeper settings here and this is mainly in the wiki or forum documented.
For the modem speed: I use a dual band N wireless router, ie 300 Mbit / s over 5 GHz frequency band. In 3 out of 5 bars I transfer with maximum nearly 10 MB per second via radio to NAS, which I find very neat. On LAN probably much faster, but I now could not test to.
Otherwise I have not notice any problems, so full marks. The long-term test is just outstanding. But who somewhat small, powerful, silent, smart, solid ... :-) NAS is the right place, provided you want to spend so much money.