If you hold the device in his hand, one understands why such a large fan is required: White plastic is thermally natural disaster. Just as the appearance. The plastic is similar to a yogurt cup, embarrassing for such a reputable manufacturer.
The installation of the hard disk is rather old-fashioned, any other NAS does not require screws, Synology already. This is perhaps not so bad, because you do not often do that, but falls but negative on. The housing is closed with screws directly in soft plastic. Tighten carefully, which does not hold 5 times.
The system installed in the DS214 is very well done, because you realize the professional finite. No client software needed, I installed the station with the iPad. Brilliant!
Then it gets dark again but: The station has no default configuration, everything must be done manually. Partitioning, Creating a User, Create Directory, release. That would not be so bad, but the developers have focused on the design of the surface, as its intuitiveness. The manual is not really helpful. And unfortunately, not searching the internet. Obviously Synology has repeatedly changed the surface in the last few years, that do are mostly for an older version.
If you have the configuration then finally managed to go to the performance's. Synology specified 58MB / s write and 102MB / s read. Very high values for a "small" NAS. My writing test: 61MB / s, reading 41MB / s. I would expect the reverse. Huge difference in reading. But Synology are also not the terms of this specification to.
Connected via SSH to the NAS, dmesg gechecked: Loud error in the partition table. Well, I wrote to the support, but which is also not the fastest. The plate is a WD Red, which is on the compatibility list for the DS214.
My favorite is and remains Zyxel: Easy installation, good standard configuration, the performance is worse than at Synology, but since I use my NAS to stream all, I do not mind that, within certain limits. And the support of Zyxel is exemplary. In addition, these NAS are considerably cheaper.
I will not probably give the Synology back, but my sympathy stops is very limited.
