Synology Cube Station CS407: this one's got issues

Many four bay NAS units pass through the APC Lab each month. Most look the same with a series of drive bays that are easily accessible from the front of the unit with disks easily plugged in and out. Synology takes a different approach with the CS407. It looks more like a storage appliance that you set up and basically forget about.

Disk installation is more complex than with most of the NAS units we see. There are cables for the power and data to deal with rather than the usual plug and play arrangement we've become accustomed to. As a result, there's no hot swapping of disks. Disk installation is very well explained in the Installation Guide although some novices mightn't be comfortable installing drives to the unit.

Setting up the unit was straightforward. The accompanying CD guides you through plugging the power, and LAN cables in and then hitting the power button. It then searches your LAN for a Synology unit. There are both Windows and Mac versions of the software. Linux users should also be OK. Providing they can log into their router and determine the unit's IP address, they'll be able to configure the CS407 via a browser.

Our unit was detected in about five seconds on the first attempt - very easy. It shipped with four 240GB SATA drives configured as a RAID5 array giving a total available storage of just over 680GB. We were able to delete the existing volume and create a new one through the configuration tool that was clearly organised with easy to find options. Rather than nesting commands in complex structures as some do, Synology clearly focussed on ease of use over technical detail.

Connected to our LAN using its gigabit connection, the CS407 passed our "just works" test. All machines on the LAN could map drives to the unit although we did need to create folders and assign them privileges. For example, we could create individual folders for each user on our LAN for personal files and another folder that all could use.  

With Windows Vista, the CS407 appeared under the list of network devices in Explorer and we could map to the drive. As the CS407 can hold up to four SATA drives we could have chosen to configure the unit as either four individual drives, a single RAID5 array using all the disks or two RAID0 arrays.

Performance wise, we were very satisfied. File copies were speedy and we were able to play the same movie concurrently on two machines. Skipping ahead to different parts of the movie on each system didn't cause any problems.

Although the CS407 is a network appliance it looks like a desktop accessory. However, we found it was a little too noisy to be kept near a workstation. The noise level will vary depending on the disks you use but the unit's fan noise is quite constant. The fan speed is set to run at full speed if the system exceeds 60 degrees and half speed when the drives aren't in use.

As well as data storage and sharing, the CS407 boasts a couple of USB 2.0 ports for printer-sharing and piggy-backing another hard disk. It also boasts UPnP support for a huge array of audio and video codecs and can be used as an iTunes server. It also packs a BitTorrent client and can be used as an automated download system so that it can download and store files automatically. You can set the CS407 to only download at specific times so you can take advantage of off-peak allowances if your ISP offers them.

Although the Synology CS407 lacks a couple of the features we've seen in other NAS units, such as hot-swappable and plug-and-play installation, it's very easy to set up and use. For small offices the CS407 is a robust storage solution and for homes it's great for home media sharing.