Synology Cloud Station as DIY Dropbox Alternative. Bit. Torrent Sync, Dropbox, Amazon Cloud, Google Drive . I've been a dedicated Dropbox user for many years and continue to pay for their . The announcement of a new Amazon unlimited storage option is compelling but the lack of options for access as well as limited app support will likely keep me using Dropbox. But, I find myself using my own hosted Cloud Station on my Synology NAS more often as my way of getting files moved between devices. The sync application for the Mac works well and the DS Cloud i. OS app is very functional. Both are fast for me, but whatt I really like is that the files are only ever on devices under my physical control. Cloud Station. The Cloud Station service runs on the Synology as a free user installed application. It's configured with a Synology . It functions a bit like Dropbox. You point it at some directories on the Synology and it looks for changes and notifies clients when they need to get a new file. Synology Cloud Station Review. If capacity becomes an issue files can be synced between two NAS devices. And Cloud Station offers encryption to keep. For this review I used a DS415+ which is my home NAS. Synology Cloud Station your personal private cloud. Synology DS412+ unboxing http:// Category. How I use my NAS - Duration: 17:52. Cloudbackuping 232,226 views. In some ways, it's more powerful than Dropbox. You can setup access through Synology permissions so that different users have different access. Why would this be useful? Because you can share a Synology Cloud Station with another Synology user. Everything they add to their shared folder will automatically be synced between NAS devices. And this can all be segregated based on permissions so that private content stays private.
Cloud Station provides optional sync profiles for configuring what type of content can be kept in sync. If you don't want your friend's collection of animated GIFs, then setup a profile to exclude syncing files with the . Similar to Dropbox Pro, Cloud Station provides optional versioning of the synced files. This is a basic function of the Synology OS and it's extended to the Cloud Station applications on other devices. Versions can be restored or downloaded as a new file. Other Synology owners can sync through my Cloud Station using the companion Cloud Sync service on their own NAS. Setup is pretty easy but managing the permissions can be a bit confusing if you have no experience with these options. Once configured, every file added, deleted or changed on either end of the Cloud Station is automatically synced between the two NAS devices. In my testing, the reliability and performance is fairly stable and mostly dependent on how reliable the two NAS Internet connections are. The biggest issue I encountered was with syncing very large collections of files (tens of thousands). The syncing service would eventually die or hang and require a restart of the NAS to fix it. There were no issues with . The client application is downloaded directly from the Synology NAS interface or from the Synology download page. Once installed, it's a simple matter of giving it a Cloud Station ID and telling it which local directory to use for syncing on the Mac. From there, it behaves much like Dropbox. Adding, deleting, or changing files on the Mac causes them to sync to the Synology. Subtle overlays are displayed on the file icons to indicate their current sync status. Cloud Station also adds a new contextual menu for files to OS X. Right click to access file versions or to create a Synology sharing link. Synology share links use a short gofile. Synology service) URL but these simply redirect to your own NAS through the magic of Synology DDNS and do not reside on a hosted service. There's also selective syncing for subfolders. Individual folders can be disabled for syncing to the Synology NAS and all other connected devices. Following the Dropbox design, which is fine with me, Cloud Sync runs as a menu bar application to indicate current syncing status and lists recent file changes. The menu bar provides quick access to the local sync directory as well as the settings. As with the Synology Cloud Station app on the NAS, the Mac app has optional sync profiles to restrict file types. The Synology design allows for a many- to- many configuration. Each Cloud Sync client can sync with many different Cloud Stations and each Cloud Station allows multiple clients. The services keep it all straight and log each device and transaction. Unlike mounting a remote volume, Cloud Sync works perfectly offline. Files are accessible like normal and once the NAS connection is available again (through the local LAN or over the Internet) file syncing resumes and changes are updated. How fast is it? It feels instant on my network. It feels faster than Dropbox. DS Cloud for i. OSDS Cloud is the free Cloud Station client for i. OS. As with the Mac app, DS Cloud provides access to multiple Synology Cloud Station servers. Files are kept in sync between the i. OS app and the Cloud Station directory on the NAS. Cloud Station is also smart enough to provide controls for when syncing should occur. Geofence syncing is also a nice feature to just make sure I'm always up to date when I arrive at home or work. It always drove me nuts to be required to open the Dropbox i. OS app so that it would know to sync my files. DS Cloud is not a step backward. The main reason to use DS Cloud over the similar DS File for i. OS is that DS Cloud works offline. Files in DS Cloud are available for editing and sharing regardless of connectivity. The only dependency on the Synology NAS is for syncing across devices. This provides a way to capture to my i. Phone anytime or place and only worry about syncing when I'm back on a network connection. Working with files is surprisingly easy in DS Cloud. It's very simple to get files out using familiar sharing methods in i. OS 8. While any file type is available in DS Cloud, there's enhanced support for images, video and PDFs. All can be previewed directly in DS Cloud. Videos can be played, images viewed at full resolution and there's pretty good PDF annotation and viewing built right in. All without ever leaving DS Cloud. Perhaps one of the best features of DS Cloud is its integration with other document providers in i. OS 8. Of course, it supports receiving files from other apps through sharing extensions, but I can also pull files directly from any number of other file sources, like Dropbox or i. Cloud. One of the greatest integrations is with Transmit for i. OS which lets me grab files from remote SFTP servers and bring them into DS Cloud without jumping between apps. Conclusion. There are always going to be questions of performance. Self- hosting has benefits but it also means the buck stops with you. I have terrific performance on my Synology 1. But I've also optimized my setup and I have Fi. OS at my home. Your home network connections are likely to be the primary bottlenecks, so be warned: You only have yourself and your cable provider to blame. I like Cloud Sync because it means my files are secured in ways that are less opaque. When Slack had their recent security breach, I enabled two factor authentication on all of my accounts. During the process, they create 1. I wanted to snap a photo of these keys and store them somewhere I could trust. So, I opened DS Cloud and snapped photos of each account 2. FA page. The files sync to my NAS and Mac within a second and never exist on any cloud service. I don't have a particular security concern with Dropbox but I figure, why not use something I control if it's just as good in nearly every respect. Using My Cloud - Western Digital My Cloud Review & Rating. Using My Cloud. After installing the software on my Windows 7 laptop, I had a shortcut on my desktop, . It shows information in widget- like boxes. One box shows free disk space. There's a an arrow on the square that opens the box to display even more information— a breakdown of how much of the My Cloud space is taken up by music, videos, photos, or . It's empty save for a plus sign. Clicking the plus sign generated an activation code for users to enter into devices such as smartphones and tablets so these devices can access the data on My Cloud. The interface also provides information such as how many users are setup on the NAS; how many shares are setup; and the state of a feature called Content Scan. This is an option you can turn on or off where My Cloud will continual scan your home network for multimedia content. You can set permissions for users for any of the folder shares. I did find setting permission a little unintuitive, although once I figured out what I had to do it worked fine. You can set permissions by accessing the User or Folder sections of the interface. However, setting permissions' options were disabled in when I tried to apply permissions to a few test users and folders. I finally figured out that all folders by default are set with public permissions, meaning anyone has Read and Write access to all folders by default. I had to disable the Public sharing on any folder and then I was able to configure permissions. It may take some users a bit to figure this out, as the need to disable Public sharing is not made explicit in the interface (I found out what to do in support). Safepoints is a feature that allows users to take a snapshot of the entire My Cloud disk and restore the disk if needed. The snapshot is saved to an external USB drive attached to My Cloud or to another storage location on the network. I tested the feature by attaching a Western Digital My Passport USB drive to My Cloud. I had to close the browser and re- open it before the My Passport drive showed up in the My Cloud interface. To start using Safepoints, a wizard walks you through selecting the device you want to save the snapshot, giving the image a name and description, and setting up the schedule for snapshot taking. The feature works very much like Apple's Time Machine. In addition to the above capabilities, My Cloud supports SSH and FTP access to files, DLNA, i. Tunes and email notifications whenever there may be a system issue with the device. Working within the interface and applying settings was a bit peppier in performance than with the Seagate Central. One aspect of the My Cloud that makes me leery is that you are not prompted for login when you click on the shortcut from the desktop to get into the dashboard and I did not see a way to add authentication. The interface just opens up. The Cloud in My Cloud. The cloud in . The good thing about My Cloud is that data remains on the device in your possession and you are simply using Western Digital's cloud service to connect. Your data is not stored on its servers. You actually set up access to the cloud service when you first set up My Cloud. You are asked for an email address to which an activation link is sent. Once activated, you are given the link to log into the WD service. There are mobile apps that allow you to do the same from Android and i. OS which we will cover in a separate review. Accessing the cloud interface, I saw an image of the My Cloud device and an option to access my share folders. When I clicked to do so, I received an annoying message that the Java plug- in was required to view my folders. There isn't much you can do in the cloud interface. You are shown a listing of your folders and then given the option to open the folder in Windows Explorer (from a PC). That is fine, because you can do anything you need to do with your data from Explorer. However with Seagate Central, I was able to upload and download files; create new folders; manage user settings; and even view my images in a slideshow- - all from Central's cloud interface. I like the option of managing my data through the cloud UI or via the local operating system file manager. With Central I can do either. With My Cloud, I am limited to the OS's file manager. Performance. Western Digital's My Cloud clocked the highest performance numbers tested to- date for a single drive, consumer NAS. It tested at 5. 6 MBps for Writes and 6. MBps for Reads. This is great performance and beats Seagate's Central which impressed with its Read/Write speeds. While you won't see this great performance when remotely connected (that speed depends on how fast your Internet connection is) for working within your network, the My Cloud is built for uploading and downloading large files and streaming HD video. It's a performance masterpiece. Here is a chart comparing it with other NASes in its class: Lofty My Cloud. Western Digital's My Cloud has rock- solid hardware. Its performance bests that of the Seagate Central and the design is gorgeous. It never felt warm to the touch the hours I had it powered up whereas the Central felt a tad warm after a few hours. Where the My Cloud lags behind the Seagate Central is its limited USB support; you can only connect external drives and the fact that you really can do nothing in the cloud interface with your data. However, the My Cloud is sure to win fans, especially heavy HD video streamers, and it's an easy four- star earner for consumer NAS devices, edged out only by the Seagate Central.
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January 2017
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