At first glance from the Synology Disk Station DS209 looks quite run of 15 million U.S. dollars to a small network-attached storage (NAS) devices. However, far from the case, DS209 compact provide a high level of performance with a whole series of unexpected features, beyond the simple file sharing.

Designed to take one or two drives, DS209 is smart living in a white plastic shell with an external AC adapter. Not included in the disk, but most of the 3.5-inch SATA drives can be used (there is a compatibility list on the Synology website) allows you to choose their own capacity (up to 2TB per disk) and the rotation speed. You can even go to the 2.5-inch hard drive, use the special operators, can be purchased separately.

Fitting of the disk can be a bit difficult because of the lack of space inside the device. You'll also need a screwdriver, but the necessary screws and cable, just the right length of cable to make it all very neatly in line with the common.

On / off button in front, with the status indicator, a Gigabit Ethernet port in the back round of the network connection. In addition to the two USB interfaces or expansion of existing storage or backup. They also can be used to manage the UPS and share a printer, coupled with that of one-third of the USB port in front of us. However, this is only one specific purpose: to insert Memory Stick, please click the following button to copy its contents will be automatically copied to a predetermined folder on your hard drive and shared network.

Once the disk is installed, the next step is to provide the Setup program to run, find DS209, prepare the disk and install Linux-based disk management software station. This takes about 10 minutes, and then configures the DS209 and management through an intuitive Web-based AJAX interfaces.

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In the Web interface to make light work of most tasks, including the installation of the logical volume. For our testing, we installed a pair of 250GB disks and configure them as a mirror of (the RAID 1), but support a simple two band across the disk (RAID 0), if you like, and JBOD (as a disk), the format of each disk can be used as a separate volume. Note that you may also be obtained from a single drive, the second after. Production capacity will also extend the use of external drives, but there is no hot-swappable.

You will eventually be a solid and capable NAS device. SMB / CIFS file-sharing standard, as well as to enable Linux users to the NFS can also be in the law. FTP server is the same, based on an application file with the station, to allow sharing of documents are available through the browser.

File Station is just one of a number of optional applications, can run in the DS209. Another (picture points) can be used to share still images and video, while the other (Audio Station) allows you to playback and streaming music network. However, another application (monitoring station) to increase the facilities to monitor and record network cameras, servers at the same time iTunes is other built-in options, as well as an integrated Apache Web server complete PHP support and MySQL database management.

The DS209 is not the cheapest NAS devices on the block, especially when you factor in the cost of the disk. But it is difficult to beat function or ease of use. Quite an impressive performance in our testing, but also with the document read / write speed of close to you want from the internal disk, but on the network. In addition there is a faster model, DS209 + 2 (£ 315 + VAT) to upgrade the processor, more memory and disk eSATA support.