Synology Cube Station CS407 NAS

Reviews: Networking

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Richard Poelling
Max
Synology
Jul. 19, 2007

<< Previous

Next >>

Photo Station

The CS407 can act as a photo sharing server. Enabling the PhotoStation service creates a shared folder, “photo”. Basically, placing pictures in this directory allows access by way of a web page. The interface you get is very clean and nicely put together. As a matter of fact, the interface is very similar to the popular Flickr photo sharing site.

The photos are presented as a standard size with the ability to run a slide show. Additional information is presented at the right side about each picture, such as the title, size, resolution, date, camera model, exposure, aperture, and ISO. Visitors can also leave comments right on the page.

The photos you place in the directory start out as public, unless you change their attributes from within the Photo Station administrator console. Users added to the Photo Station will only have access to the photos and not the rest of the system.

It's a small nuisance to have separate administration consoles, and I would have like to see the Photo Station controls rolled into the main administration console.

c03.jpg c04.jpg c05.jpg

Download Service

This is probably one of the more unique features found on the CS-407; it's a BitTorrent client.

To download a file by way of the CS-407 you must first enable the service, then install the Synology Download Redirector. This program puts a small, yellow box on the upper right corner of your desktop. Simply dragging a torrent file will load it into the queue for downloading. Time and bandwidth limits can be set from the admin console. You can also control how other BitTorrent users use the queue.

The BitTorrent client is surprisingly easy to use and overall an excellent addition to the product.

Backup Service

The Data Replicator II offers the user the ability to constantly synchronize files with the NAS on a regular basis, otherwise known as incremental backups. On the surface, the backup software worked well. In reality, I had a lot of problems because of the way the NAS works with Windows XP. The files are saved in directories that push file names past the Windows XP character limit. This problem doesn't exists for Vista users, but is still a troublesome oversight.

I will say that I had no problems restoring the files I could access. The very intuitive interface takes you through the process step-by-step. You can restore your files to the same location, overwriting existing copies, or to a new, empty directory. Even with the limitations, the software worked well.

The Cube Station also has the ability the work with other Cube Stations to perform network backups between them, but I only received one device and couldn't test the two together.

<< Previous

Page 3 of 7

Next >>

Page 1: Introduction & Features
Page 2: First Looks & Setup
Page 3: PhotoStation, Download Service & Backup Service
Page 4: Web Station, FTP Service, iTunes Server & Active Directory Services
Page 5: Testing
Page 6: Quality Check
Page 7: Conclusion

Subscribe to Storage [more info]

View All

Related Reviews

Infrant ReadyNAS X6

Storage December 7, 2005

Ximeta 80GB NetDisk

Storage January 3, 2004

Add Comment

5 User Comments

1 - Posted by NAS Shopper on August 23, 2007 - 11:40 pm

Thanks for the great review. I was all set to purchase a ReadyNAS NV+ until I discovered that diskless versions were no longer offered, so now I'm looking at alternatives like the cube station.

2 - Posted by Rich on August 26, 2007 - 10:53 pm

Yes, I was impressed with cubestation. Something I think I did fail to mention in the original review is the apparent lack of SMART info from the drives. I know my ReadyNAS X6 reports this information, but the cubestation appears to be missing it.

3 - Posted by Looking at a NAS on August 27, 2007 - 9:05 pm

I'm in the same boat as NAS Shopper, wanted a ReadyNAS until I found out I couldn't get a diskless version. Synology is a possibility.

4 - Posted by thany on August 10, 2009 - 9:52 am

Wouldn't you say it's rediculously slow for a RAID5 box connected via Gb LAN? I mean, any modern SATA disk can easily read in excess of 80MBps, and Gb ehternet is capable of running at a practical speed of mor than 950Mbps.

So I would expect transfer speeds around 80-90MBps.

5 - Posted by Max Slowik on August 10, 2009 - 11:41 pm

Sure, /two years from now!/ Wait. Shit. Something's two years off ;)

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.