The Best 2 disk NAS for about £200

[aeonf242]

Ebuyer, was in today's mailshot.

Yes typical crafty ebuyer...it's £209.98 after cashback.....a truly low form of advertising.

[aeonf242]

Synology all the way. DS212j. Can't find anything against it. Specially with the free smartphone apps

Had Dlink before. Apparently the late models (I had a DNS 323) are perfectly fine to for the money. DNS 325 or DNS 320.

But if you can, go Synology. Don't go for the DS213air or DS411slim ! The DS213air is soo much slower that a DS212j + any slim supported WiFi USB adapter (in my case it was a Edimax EW-7722UTn and numbers compared to Synology DS213Air page 2). And the DS411jslim got issues, or at least it had back when my DS212j was freshly purchased.

Compared to the full metal bodied DNS 323, the DS212j HDD temperatures are slightly higher but still reasonable 28-36 (lowest to highest what I remember, but it is literally always a unchanging 31 and 34 degrees, info from S.M.A.R.T.). Can't hear anything really but that could be down to the 5900RPM HDDs. The software is the best I think what you can find for this kind of money.

Good luck with choosing If you are not sure, buy something from a place where you have 7 day return option, try it and if you don't like it, return and buy something new.

Thanks, just a quick last question...does this NAS interface handle folder copy function? As in copying a whole folder rather than file by file.

[Phage]

I have a DS211j - and it interfaces with Windows explorer and I can certainly copy whole folders. The only problem comes when you try and copy a folder onto one of the default shared folders. Doesn't make any difference to anything, but my directory tree for files is now (Diskstation)\Video\movies.

[jim]

couple of hours tops, for many years of use. Irrelevant when looking at the bigger picture.

Not my experience, but I guess that may differ depending on choice of OS. Setting up passworded shares and so on in OpenFiler was an absolute nightmare, probably wasted at least a day or two on configuring it now in total.

And no, cheapest wasn't a pre-requisite, but I struggle to see the added value. If something's done for you, why pay more?

[Bonebreaker777]

I have a DS211j - and it interfaces with Windows explorer and I can certainly copy whole folders. The only problem comes when you try and copy a folder onto one of the default shared folders. Doesn't make any difference to anything, but my directory tree for files is now (Diskstation)\Video\movies.

I am not even sure why was that question asked, but moving files and folders I tend to handle trough within the File Station (integrated program/app for data administration).
As this is within the device itself, it is a lot faster that moving and organizing files and folders trough Windows Explorer.