Feature tests
Feature tests
With the sheer amount of features the DS508 offers we would be remiss to not test a few.External storage connectivity
To test the DS508's capability to backup to either local or network disks, two USB caddy-based hard drives - both NTFS-formatted - were connected to the device, one after another, and only one was found - a blank 160GiB drive in an Akasa USB/FireWire caddy.
Our Icy box enclosure, equipped with a 320GiB drive, would show up as an incompatible file system.
Even with a drive found, we weren't able to transfer files from the external drive onto the NAS array, suggesting practical usability of the external HDD connectors is limited to backing up of an array when using the relevant options in the web-based user interface.
The DS508, however, requires that the drives be formatted in FAT32 or EXT3, according to Synology, then copied over using the File Station software.
We were also unable to transfer files to external USB devices, even with the 'usbshare' folder that the DS508 creates when a device is connected, and the appropriate privileges set.
Media streaming
CyberLink's Media Deluxe was used to test the Synology Disk Station's DS508's media-streaming capabilities.
With the music and video folders created automatically when multimedia streaming is enabled, files showed up in CyberLink SoftDMA without issue, allowing us to playback our music and video files over the network.
Similarly, with the feature enabled, iTunes detected the Disk Station under shared devices, and played the files off the network without problems.
FTP access
FTP configuration isn't fully documented, and we had some issues getting some folders shared. We could log into the two of our folders labelled 'shared' and 'photos', but not 'music' or 'video' despite settings being configured identically. Synology is looking into this for us, and we will report back with any findings.
All in all, the Synology Disk Station works well in certain scenarios but is found lacking in others.
