Western Digital NAS HDD Red available to order

1) The main difference between the 3 models is the speed. Even 212J is fast enough for home use.

2) 212 & 212+ have an extra USB port as compared to the 212J & are USB 3.0.

3) USB copy & SD copy means that you can insert your SD card (from the camera for example) or flash drive directly on the Synology & press "copy" to directly save pictures, files, videos etc. onto Synology without having to switch the PC on.

4) Why do you need hot swap HDDs? Can understand its use in a business situation where you may need a NAS to be working all the time. At home, you can always switch it off before swapping HDD.

I was considering the 212 over 212J because I could use the extra USB port to connect my printer & make it wireless. But now I'm considering the QNAP TS-212 which has 3 USB ports (although all 2.0 ) & is far cheaper than the Synology products. 

One of the main things I've liked about the Synology is the packages you can install on to it - the one I use most is called CloudStation and allows me to synchronise local documents in a home drive to my NAS. I use this quite a lot for work, but also personal documents. Basically, it allows me to work on something locally on my laptop when I'm out and above and, as long as I have an internet connection (even just a tether through my iPhone's 3G connection), it will sync this back to my NAS at home, so automatically backing things up as I work. Having suffered a hard drive failure and lost a week of work before, this is something that makes me feel a safer! It also lets me sync documents between laptops really easily (if you have both a work and a personal laptop like me).

With the iPhone apps, I can also access all these documents through this - this has come in very useful as it means I can access all my documents when I'm out and about - really useful tool. It also works for all my photos and music - essentially, it's a private cloud as I can access everything held on the NAS from the internet, even just through a web browser.

Not sure if the QNAP has things like this, but it's worth investigating before you choose between them if things like this would be useful for you.

QNAP does all this as well:

http://web.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=192

I really need to find a place where I can compare Synology & QNAP. Don't think there is any!

Reviews suggest that Synology has a superior web interface than QNAP. I'll check a few YouTube videos of the products.

Thanks a lot! I definately do nto need the usb/sd copy, definately can live without hotswap, and speed is probably ok. 2 usb ports also likely to be sufficient (1 for printer and one vacant for occasional connections).

But what about wake on lan? isn't this very very useful for home use? or essential? does not having it means that the nas will not go to sleep? or if it does go to sleep will not wake when an SB touch wants to play music???

agree, this 'private cloud' functionality is very useful and I too would like to have it.

1) QNAP TS-212 has one touch copy feature as well.

2) It also has "private cloud" functionality & does everything Synology does.

3) It has 3 USB ports.

4) It's cheaper than even DS212J, leave alone DS212.

I'm increasingly finding it difficult to justify the extra premium Synology demands.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LOANJ4/ref=s9_simh_gw_p147_d0_i1?...

Decisions decisions! 

Details here:

http://www.synology.com/support/faq_show.php?lang=us&q_id=437

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=43282

I don't think it'll automatically switch on when your SBT wants to play music off it. Probably someone else can confirm it.

To be honest, I'll prefer to leave my NAS switched on all the time, rather than pay the extra premium DS212 demands. The extra premium will pay for the extra electricity many times the life of the NAS.

Bb, thanks for the links, excellent info and from it I understand I do not really need wol as even 212j will hybernate and wake and this is what i need, rather than wol from the off state which only the 212 and 212+ can do.

Just to confirm that the Synology 212J will wake up automatically as soon as the SB Touch wants music (a very slight delay before the music starts to allow the disks to spin up)

I spoke to a few friends & colleagues. Synology software is a bit more streamlined & polished than QNAP although both can do same things.

Something else to throw into the mix......My NAS is now over 2.5 years old but quite happily runs the latest software - DSM 4.0 and will support the next version - 4.1 which is currently in Beta.

I'm not saying QNAP don't have long support cycles for their boxes but it's reasuring to know any new features Synology release I'll be able to take advantage of without a tiresome/expensive hardware upgrade

Indeed - another of my main reasons for choosing Synology is they are almost legendary in their support of Macs and OS X, whereas with my Buffalo, my old NAS essentially became useless to me as Buffalo refused to update it to allow OS X Lion to connect to it as it was "out of support".

Oooo, look what just turned up...

(NAS build blog to follow just as soon as I have time)

Mine's arriving tomorrow.

Already received my Synology NAS on Saturday. Will set things up tomorrow.