My review of DL2100 ( compared with EX2)

Question

Hey,I had an EX2 device before and here is my review after 5 months of usage . Now i have replaced them with DL2100 and i want to compare the 2 of them with real life usage, not marketing. With red, you will see the review for DL2100  
So what i like about EX2:
- fast read/write ( this is only because i don't have another NAS to compare)   - quite fast read/write, about 15-20 MB more than EX2 ( not using link aggregation)
- small and elegant design   - bigger and chunkier. I like EX2's design more, but this is the trend now on NAS devices, so it's ok
- quiet   - except the first seconds when the device is booting, the fan is quite.
- apearently easy to use   - apearently easy to use- intuitive explanations in the GUI   - intuitive explanations in the GUI is keept and i like this
- cheaper than other competitor ( now i know why )   - not very cheap at 650+ euros. I guess they charge the extra money for hardware( better CPU, more RAM and upgradeable, dual network and dual power supply. Not a very improved OS to justify the cost)- quality HDDs
   - quality HDDs   - added power button. This small and common thing is needed.   - public folders can finally be turned off and deleted. Seems that they finally understand and implemented one of customers biggest request.   - finally the fan is working and the fan's rotations are counted   - RAM is upgradable
So what i don't like about EX2:- no power button. Even if WOL is available and something so simple as a power button may seem unnecessary, trust me it's needed.
- public folders can't be made private ( on ex2100 it can, but firmware update for EX2 is 6 months old)
- power scheduler is not customizable enough   - power scheduler is still the same and very primitive.
- smartphone apps are not reliable, maybe because of the ex2 's firmware. Sometimes it connects and the next time it sais that you don't have access or permissions and you have to add the device again. Not reliable when you are away.   - smartphone app seems to be more stable on DL2100. Still not perfect, but until now i had only 2 problems when the app could not connect to NAS. Again, the fix was to generate another access code, delete the device and add it again. Still needs work!
- support is very limited  - I still found problems in the first 1hour of usage, and nothing to be done without a firmware update.
- firmware is not customizable enough ( have you see Synology or Asustor ? ..if not, take a good look you have enough to lean WD !! )  - same thing as EX2, beside some extra features like public folder deletion, 2xNICs connectivity options, everything is the same as EX2
- updates for EX2 stopped and no one from WD want to make an official statement about what's going on.  - DL2100 is not better at this chapter. Still no updates since the device release ( 1.06.133 realeased a few days ago is only for a security update, not performace and usability improvement )
- backup works whenever it wants  - no problems so far, but i only use remote backup and most of the backup problems were related to attached stick/drive- unable to backup on a shared location except on another WD device   - same problem/ 'feature'
- app market from ages ago with no active updating   - same app market- for every new shared folder created, you have to create a separate backup job, because editing existing ones is impossible    - problem persists. No possibility to edit a job once it's created- no possibility to turn OFF .wdmc hidden folders where not needed. If you have to copy all the picture folders on another location, you will end up copying those hidden .wdmc folders aswell. If you have a few hundrets of picture folders, good luck clean that up.    - so far, i couldn't see any .wdmc hidden folders. I'm sure they are somewhere, but even with show hidden folders  option activated on Windows, i couldn't se them. Copy of the folder on another WIN machine doesn't seem to have other files beside what I added to that folder. I haven't tried SSH- When accessing EX2's dashboard over internet or VPN, My cloud Services shows as turned OFF and can't be turned on, but when i access the dashboard within the internal network, Cloud Services shows as ON. Also you can't use tools that require Cloud Services to be turned ON, ex statistics of disk usage.    - same problem.- Dashboard can't be accessed over VPN or any other subnet. The only workaround is to turn Cloud Access ON, even if you do not do the port forwarding on the router to actually have Cloud Access over the internet   - same problem- FTP still has problems   - I couldn't make FTP work the way i wanted, only wih the same setting from EX2, which i've talked about on this forum.- If you have a normal backup job and you create a Sync backup job, it will not sync the existing backup, but it will create another folder and double your files on the backup target nas. Not to mantion that day 28 is the beste WD could do. What if i want to do a sync on day 30 or 31.   - same problem- WOL is not a feature if the target is shutdown while attempting to run a backup job   - same problem- no possibility to hide folders from users that do not have access   - same problem- no idea is the fan is actually working or when it should be activated. Fan RPM is always 0   - TURN OFF LED option is not available anymore. I was using that and i don't like the bright light during the night.   - No possibility to see how much space is free/used on every disk when JBOD. Only if you map the shares or calculate how much every share is using. Not practical !   - Problems with the email notification system. A shutdown/reboot (which is critical to know) of the device is considered an information instead of atleast a warning if not critical. Therefore, notification email not sent. Also a successfull backup is considered a warning, instead of an information. I haven't tested all the event's but since these are quite important i notified WD support.  

Answer 1

Hi there,
Thank you so much for the feedback on the products, I hope that this helps others make their choice. And please be sure to post any suggestions for this device on our ideas board:
http://community.wd.com/t5/Network-Product-Ideas/idb-p/network_ideas