Synology's latest NAS is targeted at home users, boasting a mixture of performance and energy-sipping hardware to merge together the best of both worlds. The DS115j storage device is a 1-bay unit now shipping across the globe; it can also be used as part of a surveillance system.
NAS-maker Synology has spoken up on the recent "ransomware" attack on its network drives, advising owners to upgrade to avoid the risk of their files being nefariously encrypted and then be extorted afterwards. The exploit used by SynoLocker was patched back in December 2013, Synology says today, but relied on owners actually updating the firmware of their drives to apply the fix. That means it's bad news if you've already been hit by the ransomware.
Synology's NAS drives are really getting popular. You can gauge that by the fact that it now has its own specific Cryptolocker strain. This ransomware encrypts data on the user's drive with a key that only the perpetrator knows, who then tries to extort money from the poor unsuspecting user in exchange for getting access to his or her own files.
Synology seems to have an endless train of NAS boxes, each designed to address different use cases and market segments. This latest model, the Disk Station DS415play, is no different. Building up on the DS214play unveiled last year, this NAS boasts of 4 drive bays that will ensure that your videos, music, and photos are well accommodated for streaming and sharing with friends and family, whether it be locally or over the Internet.
Synology's compact four-drive NAS has had an upgrade, with the DS414slim keeping the 2.5-inch HDD support of its DS411slim predecessor, but boosting speed and connectivity. Intended for home users and small offices, the DS414slim now has a pair of gigabit ethernet ports for dual LAN failover and Link Aggregation for what Synology claims are read speeds of over 110.91 MB/s, and write rates of over 54.53 MB/s.
The team at Thecus have created a network-attached storage unit that’s both extremely simple to set up and looks the part of a non-assuming piece of technology. While some NAS units looks like massive hunks of metal, this mostly-plastic unit looks plain, works simply, and does its job well.
Synology has announced a new upgrade for its entry-level "j" series of network attached storage devices. The upgraded product is the DS414j and it is the first of the NAS devices in the range to get a dual-core processor. It's also the first in the "j" range to get a USB 3.0 port for faster connectivity.
BitTorrent Sync is a feature that was announced a while back that is designed to be a cloud-like storage device that lets the user sync files across multiple devices. These files don’t have a home on the web like most cloud storage services, rather the files are shared across all your devices. BitTorrent has announced a new twist for BitTorrent Sync.
Synology is adding Google Chromecast support to its range of network-attached drives, allowing photo, audio, and video saved on the shared storage to be streamed to a TV. The feature, freshly enabled in the DSM 5.0 beta, will turn a phone or tablet into a remote control for playback of content stored on a Synology DiskStation, though right now the NAS company is still waiting on Google for the final go-ahead.
LenovoEMC has revealed its latest high-performance NAS, a four-bay backup and media-streaming center targeted at prosumers and small offices. The LenovoEMC px4-400d can store up to 16TB spread across four drives, and runs up to 25-percent faster than its predecessor, the company claims, thanks to a switch to Intel's new 2.13GHz Atom D2701 dualcore processor and 2GB of memory. It also includes a new batch of ports, including USB 3.0, for easier expansion.
As entertainment and such becomes increasingly digital and cloud access an arguable necessity, the use of personal cloud services that expand beyond mere external hard drives is increasing. NAS units are only popular way to fulfill this need, but they units are often expensive and, depsite efforts to the contrary, complicated. To meet consumer needs for home-based storage without making things too hard to figure out, Lenovo has introduced its Beacon personal cloud storage device.
Netgear revealed its ambitious network storage plans early this year, rolling out the red carpet for an eventual launch of a handful of ReadyNAS units that would complement the ReadyNAS Duo v2 that we reviewed in 2011. We got our hands on one of these new units, the ReadyNAS RN102, a 2-bay connected device that offers up to 8TB of storage, which places it a step below the similarly-launched RN104. At about the same price of the Duo v2, the RN102 takes things up a notch in the hardware department, but is it ultimately worth the upgrade? Read our full SlashGear review to find out.