Synology Disk Station DS209+II offers PC server equivalent performance for efficient data sharing and backup. Its high performance coupled with sophisticated Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 provides an ideal solution for cross platform sharing, secure server backup, Windows ADS integration, business mail server, and corporate surveillance. Synology Disk Station DS209+II supports large-capacity RAID 0 and reliable RAID 1 volume types, Users can also use one hard drive to create a Non-RAID volume and change it to RAID 1 at a later time or expand a RAID 1 volume with larger hard drives. When User Home is enabled, Synology Disk Station DS209+II automatically creates a home folder for every user account to provide each user with a private space to store data. This eliminates the need for the administrator to repeatedly create shared folders and user accounts. Synology Network Backup allows users to back up files from one to another Synology Disk Station or any rsynccompatible server, The Local Backup allows backups to external hard drives via USB or eSATA, both providing flexible scheduling options. Synology File Station 2 simplifies file management with a web browser by introducing Windows-style user’s interface and advanced features including drag-n-drop, sub-folder privilege settings, multiple files upload and download, and remote unzip features. HTTPS provides a secure way for Internet access. When it’s enabled, connections to the web-based Web Station, Photo Station 3, File Station 2, Surveillance Station 2, and Audio Station are all secured with SSL/TLS. FTP service over SSL/TLS encryption ensures file sharing at a high security level. Unicode, write-only and sophisticated bandwidth management are also supported. Synology Mail Station add-on provides a one step installation and enables Synology Disk Station DS209+II to be a mail server that supports Outlook-like Web mail, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP.
Features: Disk Station Manager 2.1: AJAX-Based Management Interface, Remote File Management with a Web Browser, Mail Station add-on with one-step installation, IP camera support, Website Hosting with PHP+MySQL Support, USB Printers Sharing. | Max HDD Support (Internal HDD): 2x 2TB | High Speed: 48+ MB/Sec RAID 1 Write and 52+ MB/Sec RAID 1 Read | Networking Protocols: CIFS, AFP (3.1), FTP, NFS, Telnet/SSH | Standard Memory 512MB DDR2 SDRAM
Synology DiskStation 2-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS209+II (Black)
by Synology 
1 day in the top 100
(5)
Buy new: $449.99
10 used & new from $449.99
Great Solution!
(4 of 4 liked this review)
I've been running the NAS for a week now and have been very pleased with the features and performance.
It only took about 1/2 hour from the time I opened the box to having it up and running on the network. Very simple. Install a drive, plug it in, turn it on and install the software from your desktop computer. Then start configuring what you want to use. The interface is easy to navigate to and use.
I started with a 250GB drive I had lying around and wasn't using. Once I received my 1.5TB drive, I was able to easily transfer everything to it by backing up the NAS to an eSATA drive attached, then installing the new drive and restoring from the eSATA. I have another 1.5TB drive coming in tomorrow and will be able to dynamically set up a RAID 1 (mirror# so I have redundancy.
The speed of the transfers is great. I am getting just under 40MB/sec upload and just over 40MB/sec download rates.
I'm using the Photo Station and love it. Just drag and drop the photo album to the share and it builds the online photo album. I set up a few accounts for friends and family and that's it! I am giving the albums and pictures descriptions and this will take a long time since I just put 10 years of albums on there. But users can access it now and leave comments.
I'm using the blog and like this as well. I've never blogged before but will give this a shot and see if I like posting. It is, again, very easy to set up and use.
I'm also using the Web Station to host a website. It is running on JOOMLA and mySQL and works great. I was able to uninstall php, mySQL, and Apache from my system since I don't need it running anymore. I also don't have to worry about rebooting my system.
Finally, the UPnP DMA works great for sharing my media library to other PCs, the Xbox 360 and PS3. They saw the Diskstation right away and were able to browse and play the media #video, mp3 & photo) just fine.
Backups were easy to use. I've tried both the Data Replicator and pointing my norton 360 to the NAS and both worked well.
The Download station was tried but I didn't really like that feature. If I download a bitorrent, I want more control than it gives. I don't have an IP camera so also didn't try the survelliance station..
That's about it! The only regret is that I didn't splurge another $100 for the 4 drive model. :)