Performance & Thoughts
Testing the Disk Station, I used the same test as I did when reviewing the Thecus N4100 - 512kb reads and writes, 60 second tests each, both sequential, so we're testing throughput here. The Disk Station was connected to the testing client via a 1Gbps connection. Inside the Disk Station was an 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA hard disk - a fairly ordinary SATA-150 drive these days.
The RAID 5 beast beats the Disk Station for both reads and writes, but not by much. However, comparing these two devices cannot go much further than this, purely because they are aimed at different markets. The Thecus N4100 is best suited to a small to medium sized business, whereas the Synology Disk Station DS-101g+ would be more at home in a SOHO or home entertainment environment.
Thoughts
The Disk Station DS-101g+ is a useful NAS solution for your home or your office. It serves as a superb way of backing up and sharing data, but beware that the lack of RAID means you need to have another copy of that data somewhere. Of course, hook up a second drive externally, be it SATA or USB and you can copy the contents of the Disk Station and you can back it up easily.
As we've seen, the features don't stop there. The setup and management is easy, the print server just works, the photo album just works, as does the web server. In fact, everything seems to just work. The only problem you might stumble across is logging into a share to gain write access if guests have read access... but the map network drive function in Windows is your friend, or else use the supplied software.
Performance is about what I've come to expect from a cheapish NAS box - not stellar, but good enough for most users. The biggest problem the Disk Station has is its heat management. Once the Disk Station gets hot, it gets noisy... annoyingly noisy. I wish Synology would find a means of installing a fan on the side panel rather than the back. There is just about space, even with a hard drive installed, for a 30-40mm fan, rather than the 25mm one it ships with. If you have the Disk Station in your house, it might annoy you. In an office it may be less noticeable. Thankfully, you can set the disk to power down and keep cool when not in use.
At the time of writing, the Disk Station DS-101g+ is available at around the £200 mark. You'll have to supply your own SATA hard drive, but prices are forever dropping and capacities forever rising. Is it worth it? If you just want a network accessible drive, perhaps not. However, if you'll make use of the Disk Station's other features as well, it is definitely worth a look. Recommended to those with a lot of media to share, be it at home or in the workplace.
HEXUS Awards
HEXUS Where2Buy
The Disk Station DS-101g+ is available from Komplett.
