Coming back to the review, essentially NAS stands for Network Attached Storage, which is what this model is as well.You map the network drive after setting up ( its all so simple, i literally only plugged in to my router and followed the steps in the Quick Install Guide)

Features of this NAS are : File sharing, Download station,Torrent engine, FTP, Blog, Photo blog, HTTP server and Network backup, USB copy and tons more i might not even be able to write down, this would be sooo lengthy.

Prime competitors to Synology are QNAP, Thecus, Netgears’ ReadyNAS

the reason i chose to go with synology is that their support forums are very helpful, support ticketing system has a very quick turn around time.And lastly their feature list is so exhaustive, i havent even used many of them, and THAT being me working in IT sector.

File sharing is done via File station 2 which is AJAX based drag and drop upload site, you can create users/ groups which are very much enforced if you need to create users with different access level/ permission.

FTP, HTTP server and can be configured with MySQL database , its almost a complete mini server;

that said i havent had any seen any noticeable flaws yet, Photo station(picture album blog), File station are really simple.

Synology beats everyone out in their wonderful user friendly UI(User Interface), which is why i choose them over QNAP, as not everyone may feel the need for iSCSI etc.

If money is not a major concern, please do buy the higher end double bay models it would be economical on the long run, as they also pack more punch having extra RAM and CPU Clock, i like the DS209 +II which just came out a month or so back.

Hope this helps you in deciding on your first NAS, always make sure you backup all data, and the whole point of backing up is to NOT just keep a single backup copy!

EDIT: looks like i am the first reviewer, although i can be sure that there must have been others here who purchased synology products,

Good luck in your NAS purchase,

Syed

***Update Feb 20 2010***

My DS109 Nas has been running awesome over the last months since the purchase, i really love the audio station.The Download station is fine, but i just dont get the same throughput of using a BT client on a PC like Azureus or BitTornado.

Recently with the new DSM 2.2, Synology has added support for iSCSI ! wow, which is great feature that is present on most QNAP devices.And, i gotta love this, Time machine support!

I had purchased a 13″ macbook aluminum, and have used the time machine feature of this NAS.It shows up as an airport drive, and backups are a charm.

I am very tempted to buy some newer “black” models from synology which are really fast and furious!I am currently looking to buy another NAS, but after reading some reviews of Dlink’s DNS 323/321 models i havent been happy.Synology really cuts the competition by offering so many great features packed in one neat device.

Cheers!

Syed
Rating: 4 / 5

Asus has an excellent reputation for its quality products. This one also has lots of nice things that I was looking for, such as all kind of ports (the usual USBs, Firewire, Ethernet, 7.1 audio HD plus an external e-sata) and overclocking features.

However, the overclocking really let me down. Whatever I overclocked, there’s always the cold boot problem. Form time to tome I had to press the reset button to light the screen if it was a cold boot. If you google it, thousands of people owning the same motherboard have the exact same problem and do not have an solution.

In short, if you are not going to overclock your CPU, this is a good choice. Otherwise, try another one.
Rating: 3 / 5