Synology BeeStation 4TB Personal Cloud Storage Device (BST150-4T) Black

I was looking for a simple, reliable, affordable personal cloud storage option. This thing checks all the boxes. Plug and play, you don't have to be an IT geek to get it up and going. To be fair my only hiccup was during the initial setup it kept failing to complete the install, after over an hour of frustration I finally found a page on the Synology website that informed me that the site was temporarily down for maintenance and updating. Tried it again the next morning an voila, easy peasy! Wish they would have made it a little easier to know that little detail. Even with that, it deserves 5 stars, this thing is just what I was looking for. Love it!

Beestation has worked flawlessly under W10 and W11 so far. My main critique is the documentation is a little hard to follow.Beestation has the following modes of operation:1. Desktop -- this mode establishes a cloud drive as part of your file system. The default is on the C-drive, though you can move it to any attached drive. This is very convenient for a single user. It is a poor way to go if you are sharing the same files across multiple PC's (IMHO.) The reason is if you change a file (or do a backup) on one PC, all the other PC's have to update their cloud images and this makes for a lot of network traffic.2. As a mapped network drive. This mode works well if you are sharing the same information across multiple PC's.3. As a file server. You access the files via a web browser. This is convenient if you are temporarily accessing (upload or download) files from a PC that has not mapped the Beestation's folder(s.)4. Sharing the Beestation with other users. Each user has their own account and can access the drive via the ways mentioned.Thus Beestation is quite flexible and should operate as fast as your network allows. Though I have not tested how well it works when being accessed by multiple PC's concurrently.

This mostly meets my need of a simple NAS back-up system to replace WD's MyCloud which quit working for me. (It just quit backing up for me and all I get is errors now.) Things I like - does a simple, continuous backup of my computer docs & photos for me to access remotely. Cons - took me a while to figure out how to set it up in a way I would like and still taking some time to make sure it's working properly from ipad and iphone. It takes all my photos and arranges like Google Photos does and I don't like that - I'd rather it keep my photo folders set up the way I already have them on my computer. So I pull up pics on my phone from the BeeStation, I have to try to find them by date or something rather than by my file designations. It doesn't seem to keep multiple copies of a backed up item - only keeps the most recent one. I would prefer multiple copies in case I need to pull up a doc 2 versions ago. So it seems that it will mostly work for my needs in having a continuous backup that's accessible remotely, but I'm still using other portable external hard drives as long-term backup storage.Edit to add that I found a setting where you can choose how many versions to keep of each file, so you can keep multiple ones. Just wasn't very clear where to find that setting.

When it works it’s great, but twice now I’ve got emails stating that the hard drive is damaged and in critical status and trying to get tech support from Synology is next to impossible. No contact phone number or chat. No email address for support. Only filling out a support ticket with limited options to choose what the issue is. Very hard to get help and response time is not good and trying to communicate the issue through emails is difficult and frustrating. I would never buy another Synology product again.

This plug-and-play private cloud storage device was easy to set up. While a bit expensive initially, I thought it was a good long-term investment. I had some initial upload issues the first 48 hours after installing, but a Synology firmware update fixed them quickly. Upload/download speeds are good. I also connected the power cord to UPS for power outage protection and to protect against data loss.It's much easier to setup and navigate than my Synology NAS for simple file storage and remote access. I chose this one over other brands for the brand reputation and it's made in Taiwan. I'll eventually add a backup external hard drive to the second USB port as a backup instead of the external Synology Cloud storage option.

This is a great backup device for simplicity.The instructions are extremely clear into how to set everything up with scanning a QR code.Everyone complaining that they can't get the device to work is likely just impatient from the slightly long initial startup time. This additionally works with Mas OS Sequoia. Everything was seamless during the update.If someone says it doesn't work with an OS update, they likely did something else to cause their issue.The BeePhotos and BeeFiles app are great. BeeFiles is similar to google drive, where it can sync to a folder on your device. BeePhotos is basically a toned down version of google photos. There is unfortunately no dark mode on these apps.It is extremely easy to share files and albums between users. My one complaint is the link will open up the album in the web, versus in the beephotos or beestation app. Hopefully this will get addressed, but it is not a huge issue.Time Machine works great, which is the primary reason I got this machine.While this doesn't work with a Plex Server, you can view the files locally on a device and a tool, such as VLC and such.This is useful for viewing home videos and photos.The one downside to this device is that it only runs off 1 drive, where many NAS drives will have 2-bays.I recently purchased an external drive to act as a backup device so I don't solely rely on the beestation and the one drive.I will try and update my review after I report how my solution works.