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Synology Cube Station CS407 NAS
Introduction
The market for external storage has really started to heat up over the last couple of years. As greater capacities are becoming commonplace, people are finding even more stuff to store. As I have written in the past, the more space a person has, the more they will find to store in it, in the real world as well as the digital one. Some people can buy that 500 GB, 750 or 1 TB drive and slap it in their computer, but others want more complicated solutions. And the more you have to store, the more you have to lose. It is this increased awareness of data protection as well as storage needs which have given the NAS (network attached storage) market a boost. Light years ahead of the external hard drive, network attached storage brings with it a huge feature set, from remote accessibility, to automatic backups, and hardware failsafe systems. What is even more amazing is that these feats don’t require a second mortgage. Today’s NAS contender is the Cube Station CS407 NAS, from a newer company (founded in 2000) called Synology.    Features The Cube Station CS407 is equipped with an embedded operating system and 128 MB of RAM. It uses the Ext3 file system and supports single volumes, RAID 0, 1 or 5. It supports both Apple and Windows, and features a built-in FTP server, an iTunes server, a multimedia server, a print server, Active Directory Services support, and even a USB hub. The CS407 also includes a few extras which might just push the it ahead of the others in this arena. These extras include a photo-sharing service, a BitTorrent client and a backup utility. Each of these I put through their paces to see if they add irreplaceable functionality or if they are just flashy baubles. Included with the Cube Station is a CD which contains Data Replicator II, the backup client, Download Redirector, for BitTorrent, and Synology Assistant, to help with the setup.
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 
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 ;)
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