Synology DiskStation DS119j Review | Daxdi

No longer considered solely business devices, network-attached storage (NAS) drives offer a convenient way for home users to store things like photos, videos, and music and access them from anywhere.

But not everybody needs an expensive multi-bay device with various RAID options.

If you're looking for a simple, one-drive storage solution, the Synology DiskStation DS119j ($99.99) is reasonably priced and can be pressed into service as a cloud server, a media server, and a security camera surveillance station.

It's also easy to install and manage.

However, you'll have to provide your own hard drive, and more important, you can't configure it for RAID protection.

For that, you'll need a pricier multi-drive NAS like the Synology DiskStation DS218j.

Robust App Support

The DS119j looks nearly identical to the DS218j ($247.00 at Newegg) that we reviewed earlier this year.

The only difference is that it's a one-drive device (the DS218j holds two drives) and is therefore thinner.

The enclosure measures 6.5 by 2.7 by 8.9 inches (HWD) and has a glossy white finish with a Synology badge on the right side.

A strip of black trim on the front holds a power switch and three LED indicators (system status, drive activity, and LAN activity).

The rear panel holds two USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN port, a reset button, and a power jack.

The DS119j is powered by an 800MHz dual-core CPU and 256MB of RAM and is cooled by a four-speed 60mm-by-60mm fan.

It has a single drive bay that will accommodate a 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drive and will support a maximum raw capacity of 14TB.

Supplemental external storage can be added using the USB ports.

As with the DS218j, the internal drive bay is accessed by removing two small screws around back and sliding the left half of the enclosure forward.

You can't protect your data with RAID like you can with dual-drive devices such as the DS218j, the QNAP TS-253B, and the Asustor AS6302T ($269.00 at Amazon) , but the DS119j does offer a nice assortment of first- and third-party apps that let you do more than just back up data.

As with other Synology NAS drives including the DS218j, the DS416slim, and the DS1517+, the DS119j uses DiskStation Manager (DSM), a web-based operating system with a Windows-like user interface that contains icons for Package Center, Control Panel, File Station, and Help.

When you first start DSM you'll see the above-mentioned icons on a desktop screen along with a System Health window that displays CPU and RAM usage.

Use the Package Center to see what apps have been pre-installed and to install new apps.

There are more than 90 Synology and third-party apps available, including Synology's iTunes Server, Media Server, and Audio Station multimedia apps, as well as a handful of third-party multimedia apps such as Logitech Media Server and MinimServer.

Synology utilities include Proxy Server, Mail Server, and Radius Server apps, and you can use the Surveillance Station app to manage your IP cameras.

Third-party utility apps include WordPress, Podcast Generator, SugarCRM, and Joomla, a content management platform.

Additionally, there are numerous backup, security, productivity, and business apps available for download.

The Control Panel is where you go to do things like assign user rights, create shared folders, configure network settings, and enable push, email, and text message alerts for when system errors occur.

Here you can also update the DSM OS, block IP addresses, configure desktop themes, and control fan speeds.

In File Station, you can read and move files, modify file structures, search for files, view and edit file attributes and privileges, and share file links.

DSM Help offers tutorials and articles to help you get the most from your NAS drive and contains a search engine to help you find specific help topics.

Middle-of-the-Pack Performance

Installing the DS119j was quick and easy.

I opened the enclosure and installed a Seagate 6TB HGST SATA drive, buttoned it back up, and connected the DS119j to my router using the included LAN cable.

I typed http://find.synology.com into my browser's URL bar and the drive was recognized within seconds.

I pressed the Connect button, and then the Set Up button, and installed the latest version of DSM, which also formats the drive.

After 10 minutes or so the device restarted.

I then created an administrator account and installation was complete.

The DiskStation DS119j turned in decent scores on our file-transfer performance tests, in which we use a 4.9GB folder containing a mix of music, videos, photos, and office document files to measure read and write speeds.

Its read score of 69MBps topped both the DiskStation DS218j and the Promise Apollo Cloud Duo 2 , but came up a bit short compared with the Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Gen 2.

The DS119j's write score of 54MBps was 6MBps faster than the Promise Apollo Cloud Duo 2 and the Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 drives, but not quite as fast as the DS218j.

Solid Personal NAS

With the Synology DiskStation DS119j, you get plenty of user-friendly apps that let you back up your data and more.

It can act as a media server to play music, view videos, and access your photos from almost any device, and it can serve mail and web pages, manage your surveillance camera system, and generate podcasts.

It's easy to install and manage, offers solid performance, and is relatively affordable.

That said, the DS119j is a one-drive NAS, and as such does not offer RAID protection.

If redundancy is critical, the DiskStation DS218j may be a better choice, but it'll cost about $70 more than the DS119j.