When I reviewed the Synology BeyondCloud, I quite liked it. If anything, the one issue was that it was locked to the original two 3 TB drives. This is perfect for the home user, but if you’re a power user you might feel constrained. Thankfully, Synology makes more than one device.
The DS216+ features a far more powerful chip than the BeyondCloud, and two open drive bays. I used some store credit and chose two Western Digital Red 3 TB drives (which, ironically, are the drives that ship in the BeyondCloud). Installing the drives was simple. I chose to install them in the same mirrored configuration as my BeyondCloud, and comparative performance was like night and day. The DS216+ did everything faster than the BeyondCloud.
In fact, it did everything so well that I could forget it was there. It was a seamless swap-out and a perfect media and backup server.
Source: Synology.com
Let’s not forget the best part—the DS216+ is $50 cheaper than the BeyondCloud. Sure, that’s before the cost of drives; but if you’re anything like me you have existing hard disks laying around. That means you can make a more powerful home server, yet run the same software (with the updated version 6 of their OS), and pay less. It’s hard to make an argument against buying it.
Note: We received a free Synolog DS216+ to review. We have named it Cindy. Cin for short.
I like my Synology NAS a lot, but be aware, you don’t want to, and often can’t, just use any HD you have lying around. You need drives rated to use with a NAS and with recent firmware. Synology will have a list of compatible hard drives. Don’t just assume your old drives will work.
I’ve told many people that two devices literally changed my life: 1. Smartphone (duh) 2. Synology NAS. I had a DLink NAS before my Syn but the DLink was just old and basically mirrored drive storage. The Syn basically converted my home computing to all thin clients since the OS on this NAS does so many things. I love the fact I can open the photos app and find any digital photo I’ve ever acquired. It’s also awesome that these photos are automatically backed up weekly to AWS Glacier and it costs me <$1 a month. Download Station is the real life changer (for reasons I need not have to mention) and being able to cast videos from the video app on my iPad to my Samsung TV is flipping stupid easy. I have recommended these to just about every friend of mine.