Synology DS2. 16se Review Storage. Review. com. November 2. Adam Armstrong. The Synology Disk. Station DS2. 16se is Synologys latest affordable 2 bay NAS aimed at small home office and home users. The DS2. 16se is ideal for users looking for a budget friendly method of setting up a private cloud, a full featured server, or a media server. The DS2. 16se uses Synologys award winning DSM as an operating system. With the scalability to expand up to 7 drives with Synology Expansion Unit DX517 and the support for realtime 4K1080p video transcoding, DS718 is ideal for. Though this is a lower cost and se or single edition option, its still comes will all of the features that DSM has to offer. The DS2. 16se comes with the claims of 1. MBs read and 5. 9MBs write performance in RADI1 configuration in a Windows environment. The DS2. 16se uses a Marvell Armada 8. MHz CPU and 2. 56. MB of DDR3 RAM to hit these speeds. Backup Software For Synology Nas Drive' title='Backup Software For Synology Nas Drive' />The DS2. TB 8. TB x 2. And the new NAS is extremely power efficient using only 1. W when in use. Users can schedule power on and off to further save on their electrical footprint. As with all Disk. Synology DS418j review A review of the DiskStation DS418j, a fourbay NAS drive thats faster and better specified than its predecessor for the same money. It was bound to happen. After 4 years of running multiple NAS units 24x7, I finally ended up in a situation that brought my data availability to a complete halt. Mount an HFS USB drive on your Synology NAS allowing you to transfer files from the drive to the NAS directly. Buy Synology DiskStation DS215j 2 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure at Amazon UK. Free delivery and return on eligible orders. Definition. Striping with dual parity, fault tolerance for dual drive failures. Advantages. Can survive the loss of two disks without losing data Data redundancy. Synology Inc. was founded in January 2000 when Cheen Liao and Philip Wong left Microsoft to pursue an independent project. Liao was a development manager in the. Station And Rack. Station devices offered by Synology, the DS2. Disk. Station Manager DSM. DSM is simple to use and makes setting up a multi function server fairly easy. DSM comes with a variety of free multimedia applications for users to store they media. Syno-stop-img.png' alt='Backup Software For Synology Nas Drive' title='Backup Software For Synology Nas Drive' />They can stream their media to several other devices including mobile devices, gaming consoles, and streaming boxes. The NAS can be used as a backup as it supports both Apple Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore. DSM offers Cloud Station for syncing files and it also supports syncing the device to other cloud services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and others. The Synology DS2. DS2. 16se specifications CPU. CPU Model Marvell Armada 3. F6. 70. 7CPU Architecture 3. CPU Frequency 8. MHz. Floating Point  Hardware Encryption Engine     Memory. System Memory 2. MB DDR3. Storage. Drive Bays 2. Compatible Drive Type See all supported drives. SATA III SATA II HDD2. SATA III SATA II HDD with optional 2. Disk Holder2. 5 SATA III SATA II SSD with optional 2. Disk HolderMaximum Internal Raw Capacity 1. TB 8 TB HDD X 2 Capacity may vary by RAID typesMaximum Single Volume Size 1. TBExternal Ports. USB 2. 0 Port 2. File System. Internal Drives EXT4. External Drives. EXT4. EXT3. FATNTFSHFS Read Only, with max. TBSize Height X Width X Depth 1. X 1. 00 mm X 2. 25. Weight 0. 8. 7 kg. LAN Number RJ4. 5 Gb. E x. 1Link Aggregation  Wake on LANWAN  System Fan 9. Fan speed mode. Cool mode. Quiet mode. Low power mode. Wireless Support dongle  Noise Level 1. BAPower Recovery  Scheduled Power OnOff  Power Supply Unit Adapter 6. WAC Input Power Voltage 1. V to 2. 40. V ACPower Frequency 5. Hz, Single Phase. Power Consumption. W Access5. 1. 2W HDD HibernationBTU. BTUhr Access1. BTUhr HDD HibernationTemperature. Operating Temperature 5C to 4. C 4. 0F to 1. 04FStorage Temperature 2. C to 6. 0C 5F to 1. FRelative Humidity 5 to 9. RHCertification. FCC Class BCE Class BBSMI Class B2 year warranty. Design and build. Overall, the outside of the DS2. DS2. 14se, expect for the different model number. It is encased in white plastic and is small enough to place on a desk without adding to the clutter. The front of the device has the model number in the lower left hand side with a power button and four LED indicator lights on the right hand side. The sides of the device have Synology branding that doubles as ventilation. The fan takes up most of the rear of the device. Beneath the fan are the recessed reset button, two USB 2. LAN port. Beneath these ports is the power supply and over to the right is a Kensington lock. The DS2. 16se doesnt have drive trays. Instead users need to side the left hand side of the device forward to get to the drives. Once it is open there are 4 screws in each drive holding it in place. Testing Background and Comparables. We publish an inventory of our lab environment, an overview of the labs networking capabilities, and other details about our testing protocols so that administrators and those responsible for equipment acquisition can fairly gauge the conditions under which we have achieved the published results. To maintain our independence, none of our reviews are paid for or managed by the manufacturer of equipment we are testing. For this review, our enterprise synthetic benchmarks will look at the DS2. TB WD Red HDDs. The synthetic benchmarks will examine the performance for CIFS protocols and will be compared to the Synology DS2. Enterprise Synthetic Workload Analysis. Prior to initiating each of the fio synthetic benchmarks, our lab preconditions the device into steady state under a heavy load of 1. Then the storage is tested in set intervals with multiple threadqueue depth profiles to show performance under light and heavy usage. Preconditioning and Primary Steady State Tests Throughput ReadWrite IOPS AggregatedAverage Latency ReadWrite Latency Averaged TogetherMax Latency Peak Read or Write LatencyLatency Standard Deviation ReadWrite Standard Deviation Averaged TogetherThis synthetic analysis incorporates four profiles, which are widely used in manufacturer specifications and benchmarks 4k. Read or 1. 00 Write. Sequential. 1. 00 Read and 1. Write. 10. 0 8k. Read, 3. Write. Sequential. Read or 1. Write. In the first of our enterprise workloads, we measured a long sample of random 4k performance with 1. In this test, the DS2. IOPS. With read performance it came in last by a significant margin with only 5. IOPS. With average latency the placement of the results were the same with the DS2. Unsurprisingly the max latency was the highest with the DS2. The max latency of the configurations on the Ds. Standard deviation saw the DS2. Our next benchmark measures 1. K sequential throughput with a 1. T1. 6Q load in 1. In this test, the DS2. IOPS though it was less than half of the top spot of 8,0. IOPS for the DS2. CIFS. Write throughput was the lowest of the bunch at 1,7. IOPS. Compared to the fixed 1. Here the DS2. 16se had the lowest but most consistent performance bouncing between 7. IOPS. On average latency the DS2. With max latency the DS2. DS2. 16play CIFS, though the play did run lower overall. The DS2. 16play i. SCSI had the lowest and most consistent latency. With standard deviation the DS2. DS2. 16play. Starting of with higher latency the NAS finished in the middle of the pack. The last test in our Enterprise Synthetic Workload testing is the 1. Looking at the 1. DS2. 16se showed us speeds of 1. MBs read, right behind the top performer DS2. CIFS at 1. 15. MBs. And the DS2. 16se had the lowest write speed at 6. MBs but still higher than claimed. Conclusion. The Synology DS2. NAS aimed at home users, be it small offices or media enthusiasts. The NAS is highly efficient, using a little less than 1. W while the drive is being accessed. The NAS comes with a Marvell Armada 8. MHz CPU, 2. 56. MB of DDR3 RAM, and up to 1. TB of capacity. The NAS is powered by DSM and comes with all of the benefits users have come to expect from the OS including cross platform file sharing, mobile access through apps, the ability to store and stream media, and multiple backup options including sync with other cloud sync services. Looking at performance, the DS2. DS2. 16play we compared it to but it held its own, which says a lot considering the DS2. CPU that was twice as fast and had four times the memory. In our 4. K tests the DS2. IOPS write and 5. IOPS read as well as average latency as low as 8. Recovering Data from a Failed Synology NAS. It was bound to happen. After 4 years of running multiple NAS units 2. I finally ended up in a situation that brought my data availability to a complete halt. Even though I perform RAID rebuild as part of every NAS evaluation, I have never had the necessity to do one in the course of regular usage. On two occasions once with a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB drive in a Netgear NV v. Samsung Spinpoint 1 TB drive in a QNAP TS 6. Pro II, the NAS UI complained about increasing reallocated sector counts on the drive and I promptly backed up the data and reinitialized the units with new drives. Failure Symptoms. I woke up last Saturday morning to incessant beeping from the recently commissioned Synology DS4. All four HDD lights were blinking furiously and the status light was glowing orange. The units web UI was inaccessible. Left with no other option, I powered down the unit with a long press of the front panel power button and restarted it. Driver Hp Officejet J5700 Windows 7. This time around, the web UI was accessible, but I was presented with the dreaded message that there were no hard drives in the unit. The NAS, as per its intended usage scenario, had been only very lightly loaded in terms of network and disk traffic. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to note that the unit had been used againt Synologys directions with reference to hot swapping during the review process. The unit doesnt support hot swap, but we tested it out and found that it worked. However, the drives that were used for long term testing were never hot swapped. Data Availability at Stake. In my original DS4. I had indicated its suitability as a backup NAS. After prolonged usage, it was re purposed slightly. The Cloud Station and related packages were uninstalled as they simply refused to let the disks go to sleep. However, I created a shared folder for storing data and mapped it on a Windows 8. VM in the QNAP TS 4. NAS that is currently under evaluation. By configuring that shared folder as the local path for QSync QNAPs Dropbox like package, I intended to get any data uploaded to the DS4. QNAP AT TS 4. 51s QSync folder and vice versa. The net result was that I was expecting data to be backed up irrespective of whether I uploaded it to the TS 4. DS4. 14j. Almost all the data I was storing on the NAS units at that time was being generated by benchmark runs for various reviews in progress. My first task after seeing the hard disk not present message on the DS4. QNAP TS 4. 51. I had copied over some results to the DS4. Friday afternoon, but, to my consternation, I found that QSync had failed me. The updates that had occurred in the mapped Samba share hadnt reflected properly on to the QSync folder in the TS 4. Thursday night, which leads me to suspect that QSync wasnt doing real time monitoring updates, or, it was not recognizing updates made to a monitored folder from another machine. In any case, I had apparently lost a days work machine time, mainly worth of data.