... DX4000 Small Business Network File Storage Server is a fine device. However
596484
The WD Sentinel DX4000 Small Business Network File Storage Server is a fine device. However, it runs Microsoft server software and I found that to be a bit difficult. Overall, though, I am very happy with the performance.
4522028
I bought this for a small 80Gb hard drive I had laying around.  I am a Mac user and usually use FW400 with my older machine, and FW800 with my new one.

I didn't mind a USB 2.0 drive at first, but it seems to transfer data more slowly than the FW400 with respect to time.  The throughput is 480 vs. 400, but the clock said otherwise.  So, I'll use it for small disks with infrequently used data.

The enclosure itself is well built, and the option for either IDA or SATA is nice.  So, the enclosure gets a 4.
1600054
I bought the drive to increase the storage space in my file server. I don't notice any performance loss due to the low power feature, it sped through the drive fitness check a lot faster than I expected it to. It works fine, and I haven't had any problems after a month. It runs quietly (at least quieter than the fans in the machine), and no clicks either. Not much to say really... it stores a lot of data and does a good job of it.
313674
Haven't had it long, but working fine so far.  Using it as storage for a battery-powered, mobile, file server .  The storage serves to backup, extend, and share data between my mobile devices.  It was nice to find this high-performance, inexpensive storage for it.
4202990
If you are looking to add storage without the hassle of internal drives then this is a great device.

The setup is easy and there are plenty of configuration options via an easy web GUI. It uses the EXT2/linux file system so fragmentation is not a problem.

I have two 1 TB drives set in a raid 0 for testing purposes and this thing screams on a gigabit network.

It is a very small and quiet and looks sleek.

Overall this is the best home/small business diskless NAS system out there.
731789
Got this to replace a Windows Server 2008 R2 box I made a while ago.

The Windows Server had 8 hard drives, but I frequently found myself using just 2 of them. I wanted to save on power consumption so I decided to replace it with this NAS. I have it set up using two 1TB WD Green drives in single disk mode after using wdidle3.

Here are my impressions so far:

The NAS will format the hard drives you put in it automatically. Be aware of this.

The Windows Server transfers at about 60-80 Mbps.
The Qnap TS-212P transfers at about 15-40 Mbps. Yes, sometimes it's slow to transfer files.

Plex Server works to stream to the Roku boxes, as long as it doesn't need to transcode. I converted all my video files to x264 in mp4/m4v formats with AAC stereo and AC3 surround sound using Handbrake. Plex on Roku works great after I re-encoded the video files.
However, I neglected to tick the "Web Optimized" option in Handbrake for some of the video files. Those files won't play on Plex Web because Plex needs to transcode.

Updates the DNS to a No-IP account without any problems.

OpenVPN works great in conjunction with Squid. This allows me to use an insecure Wi-Fi (such as in a coffee shop) and create a VPN tunnel to the NAS at home. Then I can surf the web in relative security. I use this when I want to purchase something online at a coffee shop. OpenVPN also works with iPhone 5s, so that's a bonus.

I don't use it with anything else, so I can't comment on other apps. I turned off all of the apps I don't use, such as Download Station, Music Station, Photo Station, and Multimedia Station.

The reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is transfer speed. It's unpredictable. 15-40 Mbps is a huge gap. It's not too bad most of the time, so I would give it 4.5 stars if Amazon allowed half ratings.

Just be aware of my problems with slow transfer speed if you decide to get this. I might have gotten a defective unit, or it could be the WD Green drives I use (they're technically not compatible with this NAS).

Hope this helps.
2612573
I got the DS214 for a small office business client. It replaced an old Dell system they had been using as a windows peer-to-peer file server. The variation I got was diskless so I bought 2&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/WD-2TB-RED-NAS/dp/B00D8X0IJ4/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">WD 2TB RED NAS</a>&nbsp;hard drives to populate the drive slots. Physical prep and installation of the hard drives was trivially easy. The NAS operates very quietly and is quite suitable for an office environment.

The DS214 was configured with as a RAID1 array so the two drives were mirroring each other and there was 2TB available space - about 10X what they had on the old Dell! The DS214 has a 1Gbps network interface compared with the 100Mbps on that old Dell. The Synology would clearly provide a significant performance and reliability improvement for the client.

The management interface system is really nice to use. It gives the feel and sense of a well thought out and engineered product. I got no feeling of beta-ware. Initial setup was via a wizard and very straightforward.

My task was to configure the system to replace the Dell - so existing users shares would just be there when they got back in on Monday. In the best of times this can be a bit tedious to dig this information out of a system, but setting up the DS214 with the DSM management interface was a breeze! Adding users, setting up group memberships, setting up access controls all well thought out. The result was a seamless transition for the users - many didn't realize the change had happened even through access to their files was noticeably faster. Thank you Synology!

Synology has a nice NAS server App ecosystem with lots of apps. With many small businesses this will be a big plus: keeping options open for adding new features to the Synology. To be clear - this isn't like a 8 core Xeon. It's limited in power, so don't go crazy but most of these can make good sense. Like the backup app, the cloud access app, the antivirus app, printer serving, etc.

Backups of the NAS can be done nicely with the USB3 interface to a suitable USB drive like the&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/WD-My-Passport-Slim-2TB-USB-3-0/dp/B00EO3031A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">WD My Passport Slim 2TB USB 3.0</a>&nbsp;drive. Data, even on a RAID1 should be backed-up with a copy stored off-site as part of any business continuity plan/process. Another option is to backup to another Synology box on the network. Synology clearly thought about this issue.

Previously I setup a&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Buffalo-LinkStation-420-2TB-NAS/dp/B00CO0DH6S/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Buffalo LinkStation 420 2TB NAS</a>&nbsp;in RAID1 mode. The 420 is about 1/3 the price (the&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/LinkStation-421e-Diskless/dp/B00CO0DE0W/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">LinkStation 421e Diskless</a>&nbsp;version, that is) and you do get what you pay for. The Buffalo has no real app ecosystem and a much less elegant user interface. But at 1/3 the price for diskless you do get a budget home NAS. If those are your needs the Buffalo provides good value. It is sorta fast in light use (one or two concurrent users).

The point is this: I am comfortable using the Synology DS214 for mission critical storage. You get what you pay for and I like how the DS214 lets me keep my options open with a confidence inspiring package and regular updates with bug fixes and new features. I have to give it 5 stars.
767289
Excellent device for backup or security items that should not be kept on a PC
4548073
I'd go 4.5 stars but overall this works as I wanted/expected.  The size to cost ratio makes it a bit pricey and nowadays 250 GB boot drives are a bit small but I just wanted to run an inhouse video server and the main content is on a raided HDD array so this fit the bill.
1622637
Compact, quite, and performant with 16G HyperX DRAM and Samsung 850 pro SSD. Using it as a Linux dev and file server.
4221927
Works great for my application; a secondary low utilization NAS device. It's plenty quick for daily local backups of non-critical files. I popped two WD 6TB drives in, configured in SHR for redundancy.

Speed is adequate for basic home users or light small office usage. It has the same great features as some of my other high end NAS devices  such as the ability to control the fan from cool, quiet, to full speed control, Strong encryption for shared folders, plenty powerful to run as a media server for home use, multiple apps for advanced features (cloud sync, etc.), steady updates to the OS, giving me confidence that bugs are being taken of on a regular basis.

As you can see from my photo it's one of several NAS devices I own and use as backups for my main storage clusters elsewhere and I've been very pleased with Synology products.
4794970
I am using this for archival storage.  I have configured it for use under Windows, but I use it for Linux more often. I configured a 5 drive 3TB LVM2 logical volume, resulting in a 15TB filesystem.  The I/O performance under USB 3.0 is quite good.  The construction quality is exceptionally good.

I highly recommend this product
1763573
This was my first Network Accessible Storage device that I had ever laid hands on, but it was very easy to figure out.

Right out of the box, the quick start guide was succinct in telling me how to install the drives and navigate to the web interface. The basic setup took about an hour, then the RAID verification took about 10 for 2 x 2 TB WD Red drives. Creating a share was a snap, though you might have to look a little harder to create users for that share (or to enable the guest account). It has a HTTP interface, but you may need to hunt down the IP manually if the name doesn't resolve correctly, as may occur in some unusual network layouts.

Overall this device performed very well for setting up a small business file server, as an alternative to a full workstation hosting key data. It's very responsive to client requests.
2992057
The D-Link DNS-321 is among the least expensive dual-disk RAID NAS systems currently on the market. This small device offers an impressive array of features such as FTP, Samba, NFS, iTunes, DHCP, HTTP and UPnP servers, user and group access management, several RAID levels, a well-designed Web interface and gigabit network support. It is this last feature that I would like to discuss in some depth.

Those of you who are not computer experts need to understand this: the DNS-321 is not just a small black box with two hard drives but an actual computer that has it's own CPU, memory and operating system. If, looking at the DNS-321's small size and low price, you were to imagine that it is not a very powerful computer, you would be absolutely correct. And there lies this gadget's only major flaw.

When originally designed, DNS-321's predecessor was intended for wireless or 100Mbps networks. The device's CPU and other system resources were precisely scaled to cope with 100Mbps (12.5 Megabytes per second) data transfer rate. This was necessary to provide the desired performance and features, while keeping the device as affordable as possible.

As time went on and gigabit (125 Megabytes per second) networks became more common in small offices and homes, D-Link's marketing folks must have felt an unbearable urge to include gigabit support in their low-end NAS products. The hardware was upgraded to include a new integrated gigabit network interface.

If you connect the DNS-321 to a gigabit network, true to the claim on it's packaging, the gadget will establish a gigabit link to your network. Unfortunately, painting racing stripes on your old rusty Ford Tempo does not turn it into a supercar. Running FTP, NFS, Samba, UPnP and other services supported by DNS-321 requires processing power and a certain amount of memory. These requirements grow with the rate of data transfer.

Unfortunately, DNS-321 has just enough resources to comfortably handle up to about 14.5 MB/s, which is a long way from the maximum transfer rate of a gigabit network. Thus, D-Link DNS-321 is a NAS system capable of establishing a gigabit network connection but not capable of using it. What do they say about having your cake and eating it? Not for a hundred bucks, my friends.

If you already own the DNS-321 and would like to get the most performance out of it, there are a couple of things you can do. First, you will need to upgrade the firmware to the latest version. Most DNS-321 units shipped without NFS server functionality, which has been added in the later firmware version. The upgrade is performed via the Web interface and the entire process was quick and painless. Turn off services you are not going to use, such as DHCP and UPnP, for example. Doing so will free up some valuable system resources and will slightly boost data transfer speed. Avoid using Samba - it is a resource hog. You will get at least 20% faster transfer rate using FTP or NFS instead of Samba. Unfortunately, there is no way to disable the Samba server. The speed offered by the DNS-321 is entirely adequate for playing uncompressed videos in 1080p resolution with a DTS 5.1 audio track. I've been streaming a 40GB MKV file via NFS to an XBMC player without any issues. However, as a file backup solution the DNS-321 is just too slow for my liking.
1041756
Very fast drive for large files, but the trade off is slower speed for random read writes for small files
88040
I forgot the BS I needed to go through to get Windows to see the full 3TB, but that isn't the drive's fault.  I bought the 7200 RPM and 64MB cache specifically for better performance.  I am currently using about 700 GB of the 2.8 TB available so I don't expect a lot of "crunching" away.  Although my PC is a couple of years old, it's still fairly current technology (i7 cpu, 16GB DDR3 high speed RAM, ...).  The 1 TB main drive it replaced performs a bit better.  I would NOT use this for any RAID setup.  It is ideal as a backup/secondary drive.
3770263
Drive is small and well designed. It has performed well in file transfers and I recommend it to others.