DS116 or DS216j

[nheather]

I am about to retire my very old 500GB Buffalo LinkStation.

Another LinkStation would be the cheapest option - I could get the 4Gb 510 for just under £200 - on paper it seems just as fast as the Synology entry range.

But I feel the Synology should be the better technology but which one.

It is just for backups and filestore and photos. But not videos so as you can see I have managed fine with 500GB up to now. It is getting full and unreliable though so has to go.

So 4GB would be way more than I need and I certainly don't feel the need to RAID.

Looking at the entry level Synology range I find the DS116 and the DS216j at around the same price. I have discounted the DS115j because it does not have USB 3.0 and as far as I can tell the DS116j is not out yet.

On paper the DS116 is a little faster, it has more RAM and faster CPU so I guess it might run apps better.

But is there really that much in it. If I went for the DS116 I would probably through a 4GB drive in but if I went for the DS216j I would probably add a 2GB and then add another disk in the future if the need ever arose.

Which would you go for in my position?

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[thiggins]

If you don't care about RAID, or apps or features other than acting as a network shared drive, why retire the old Buffalo at all? If it's fast enough and you are just using it for backup, leave it be and buy another single drive NAS. Doesn't really matter which one. They're all faster than the Buffalo now.

 

[nheather]

If you don't care about RAID, or apps or features other than acting as a network shared drive, why retire the old Buffalo at all? If it's fast enough and you are just using it for backup, leave it be and buy another single drive NAS. Doesn't really matter which one. They're all faster than the Buffalo now.

Good question, and I do feel that I am being a little unfair on Buffalo as it has served me well for many years. There is probably more than a little snobbery and people saying "Buffalo, pah!, get a real NAS like a
Synology or QNAP".

So ignorring brand image this is what I have against my current Linkstation

1 - even with my low usage, the disk is beginning to be a problem. I have housekepping jobs now and then to free up space

2 - you can't change the disk. Well you can but it is quite difficult

3 - if the Linkstation hardware were to fail I understand that it is pretty difficult to recover data. Even with the disk removed and connected to a computer it wouldn't be accessible because buffalo use a proprietry format (may not be true, what I have heard)

4 - most importantly, there have been a few scares over the last year where the Linkstation has failed to boot and needed to be reset

So I am looking for a replacement. My other requirement is that I would like to leave a USB drive connected to it for automated backups (NAS > USB Drive) if that is possible - does that rule out another Linkstation.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[thiggins]

Given those symptoms, you should make sure you have your data backed up off the NAS ASAP and get a new one.

I would think Buffalo supports attached backups. But I haven't reviewed a NAS in years. The U.S management changed and they lost touch. A new contact pinged me a few months ago, but never followed up for review.

An entry level QNAP or Synology will be fine. WD is also worth a look, but you can't change drives on single-bay models. My WD MyBook Live (precursor to the Cloud line) chugs along fine and is easy to remotely access.

 

[nheather]

Given those symptoms, you should make sure you have your data backed up off the NAS ASAP and get a new one.

I would think Buffalo supports attached backups. But I haven't reviewed a NAS in years. The U.S management changed and they lost touch. A new contact pinged me a few months ago, but never followed up for review.

An entry level QNAP or Synology will be fine. WD is also worth a look, but you can't change drives on single-bay models. My WD MyBook Live (precursor to the Cloud line) chugs along fine and is easy to remotely access.

Hi,

Thanks for the advice. The WD MyCloud looks interesting. I would use it for filestore and PC backups. Filestore is straight forward, for backup I would like to

1 - backup from my family's PCs to the NAS

2 - backup from the NAS filestore to a connected USB drive

Ideally, I would like to leave the USB drive connected and then a scheduled job on the NAS would backup the selected folders automatically.

Do you know if that would be possible?

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[thiggins]

The MyClouds come with very nice backup software that take care of client backup.
Attached backup is described here.

 

[nheather]

The MyClouds come with very nice backup software that take care of client backup.
Attached backup is described here.

That's great, thanks for the information. Do you know if

1 - a savepoint can be defined as certain folders on the NAS or whether it has to be the whole NAS.

2 - if the savepoint is saved to a USB drive, would that it be readable on another computer or does it use a proprietry format that can only be read by using the 'restore savepoint' function on the NAS.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[thiggins]

Search the WD help pages. The answers are there.

 

[nheather]

Search the WD help pages. The answers are there.

Thanks, found the answers. For anyone else interested

YES - the backup can be read directly by another computer

NO - you can't choose what to back up - it is everything or nothing. This is a bit of a 'turn off' for me as it means that I would have to get a portable drive which is as big as the data on the My Cloud, or to be safe, at least as big as the My Cloud.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[Wutikorn]

NO - you can't choose what to back up - it is everything or nothing. This is a bit of a 'turn off' for me as it means that I would have to get a portable drive which is as big as the data on the My Cloud, or to be safe, at least as big as the My Cloud

Not sure if I am too late here, but that the safe point can be set to backup different main folders. For example, I have one partition, and when I look up that partition I can see three folders which can have sub-folders. If I remember correctly, WD MyCloud does allow the main folder to be selected for each task, for example, backup main #1 every Monday, main #2 every Wednesday(doesn't have to be the entire NAS). If you bought this WD MyCloud, I suggest you set as many main folders as you can as backup task normally fails if it is too large. Btw, I had a problem that my WD MyCloud will always fail backups once the backup files are at the certain size(large in size, around 500GB-1TB).

If you have a little higher budget, I highly recommend DS116, which I am using. Do you plan to use it as cloud storage as well? Or only for local access? DS116 has quite significantly higher specs and Synology DSM is way better, in my opinion, than WD's. Check Synology DSM demo website to see how its interface is like.

Btw, I have both Synology DS116, and WDMyCloud(I don't want to use WD MyCloud anymore after using DS116, but I just keep it running as a backup).