Customer Reviews

Synology DiskStation Diskless 4-Bay Network Attached Storage DS410

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this NAS device. I did a lot of research before buying and I decided on this one. After owning it a while now I can honestly say it is the best NAS device I have seen or ever worked with. There's more features than you can shake a stick at, and with the easy to use sleak (web-based) user interface, it's a snap to configure.

First you install your hard drives by removing the four thumb screws on the back, folding down the hinged back panel, and flipping off the top cover. Attach your drives to the slide-in trays using supplied screws. There are 4 slots, allowing up to 4 drives. After you slide the drives in, you can secure each tray to the chassis using one screw on each side.

Reattach the top cover and secure the back panel. Plug in the network cable and power cable. Put the software cd in your laptop and then run through a quick install program. It will search for devices on your network and list all sonology NAS devices it finds. Then you can configure a few options, such as network settings. I chose to provide a static IP address for mine, set it, and finished. Then I opened a web browser and used the static ip to connect to the DS 410. From that point on, I did everything from the web-based interface.

The most time-consuming portion of the setup/configuration is setting up your volume and formatting your drives. I decided to configure a RAID 5 volume. I used four 2TB Seagate drives in mine, for a total of 8TB. The setup program took about 14 hours to configure my volume--once it begins, you can walk away and forget it until it's finished. Then you can configure all the other cool features--shared folders, users, music server, ftp, ..., the list goes on and on. When it's all said and done, I had 4.59 TB of usable space. So keep this in mind--if you are expecting to get 6TB of storage (which you might expect for using 4 2TB drives), you will actually end up with less than that. Each of my drives had 1.89TB of usable space.

Oh and one last thing--I used the Seagate 7200 rpm drives with the 64MB cache. These drives are pricy but the performance is absolutely amazing. I never imagined I could get this kind of performance out of any NAS type device! I do have a friend that went with the low power Seagate 5900 rpm drives in his and the performance was terrible. He also had to return 1 of his drives during the process. After a couple of weeks he sent the drives back and purchased the same drives I'm using. Neither of us have any complaints. In my opinion, you can't go wrong with the top-of-the-line Seagate drives. You can check Sonology's website for a list of compatible (and also non-recommended) hard drives.

If you are an advanced user and want to completely customize your NAS the easy way, I don't think you will be disappointed with this device's features, flexibility, and performance.

Two thumbs up!

I was so sick of my armada of USB hard drives. This pile including power adapters looked like a plate of linguine from hell.

After some research Synology seemed to be the only company creating devices which match my needs:

* reliable

* great interface

* good throughput for streaming HD

* low noise

I struggled for quite some time to buy the fanless ds409 but at the end I decided for more capacity after reading several reviews mentioning the whispering ds410.

I ordered 4 x 1.5tb Samsung (HD154UI) hard disks which offer low energy footprint, very good price and excellent longevity. Sure, they only do 5400rpm but I need my new NAS to rather store tons of stuff and shut up instead of being loud.

The NAS comes in a small box including a high quality power adapter (yeah, dual voltage 100-240V), a cat5 ethernet cable, a CD and almost none instructions. This is the only drawback: Come on Synology, add some "step by step" instructions. I did not need those as I've been reading a lot on their excellent wiki [...] and user forum [...]

The hard drives are installed in a breeze and snapped tightly into the backplane of the NAS. I plugged it into my router and added power.

The installation assistant coming on the CD instantly found the device and started with a firmware upgrade dialogue. However, my NAS already had the latest version installed. Next steps were incredibly easy: Create user, add a volume (I chose RAID 5) and lean back. I highly recommend to enable the consistency check. It took about 7 hours until the volume was available: 4TB of pure space.

After adding shares I plugged my USB drives into the USB connectors on the back of the device. The external disks are made available as shares and via the internal file manager I started moving files to their new home.

The audio station feature indexes all music and can be accessed via a web interface or by an iphone. Perfect!

The download station handles downloads independently and does this flawlessly.

I haven't tried the photo station yet.

The box is now running for four days, everything works exactly as it should and does so with perfection. Thanks Synology, you saved me from my linguine from hell.

Update - August 2011

The Synology DS410 is still going strong but I do not recommend the Samsung HDD (HD154UI) at all. Many other users seem to have issues with these drives although Synology mentions them on the compatibility list. I already had two drives crashing and will now looking into Seagate drives.

I have had this unit for over a week now and I'm happy to report its solid as a rock. I upgraded from a DS209 which was also problem free. The added Raid5 and 4 drive bays and price make this a unit one can easily grow with. I feel i should have gone with a 4 bay to begin with. read/Write speeds are as advertised...FAST!

Installation was a breeze. Unit runs silently, is well built and is rather attractive looking.

Synology is definitely a top notch company. The reviews speak for themselves. All of their products are good and they are always updating the software/firmware across the board.

I'm very Happy with this purchase.

I recently purchased a Synology DS410 and a TS-419P from Qnap and tried both of these products out as they both had similar functionality. While the TS-419P is more aesthetically pleasing, has two ETH links, and an LCD interface on the box, the DS410 is a much better box in terms of functionality. I work in the networking world all day long and the last thing I wanted to do was jack around with problems on another box. As most of us know, the marketing world loves to over promise and the product never quite delivers. Well, this one actually did and did it well.

When I received my DS410, I simply unpackaged it, threw in the drives, and was up and running in no time (discounting the time for the volume setup). All features and functionality worked perfectly and I didn't have to "mess" with anything trying to figure out why it isn't working. I also hooked it up to my APC Back-UPS XS900 and that is working as well. Testing of the built-in media server works perfectly with Xbox 360, PS3, and Western Digital Live products.

So I've done a ton of research on NAS devices and settled on this one and I have to say after a few months of use - it's super stable and great performance!

Straight out, if you are just looking for to extend your HD and nothing more, this is not the product for you - too complicated and pricey for that - you are better off just getting on of those USB HD. This is a full service file, web, plus much more server - and will most likely require time on your side to learn.

On the other hand if you are willing to invest some time and need a great NAS this is it!

Pros:

- Great performance/built (of course depending on your network/router :) Plenty of memory/CPU power

- Seamless/Easy expandability

- Security: IP Block, HTTPS, firewall (although most likely you will need a better one via your router), Data encryption AES-256 (although pretty limited in it's implementation and decreases performance a bit)

- Stability of hardware/software!!!

- Small power consumption and wake on lan (although if using the photo station/web server/or surveillance station the system will not hibernate, but the HDD will stop spinning. I have 2 HD installed, when HDD not spinning, it's about 20W usage, with the HDD working about 36W, if you are not using the web server/photo station - I'm sure the consumption goes down to a few watts.

- Amazing feature set - WebDav, Photo Station (for sharing with family and friends), Web server, SqueezeServer for Logitech boxes, much more - see list on product web site

- I love the UI - really simple and intuitive

- Iphone apps

- Works with all - Linux, Mac, Windows

- I use Acronis Backup for Windows - works great. If you are planning on using Windows backup - Win7 Home Premium does not allow network backup/Win7 Pro/Ult does. DS410 also comes with it's own backup software.

- I suppose the big thing is RAID (I think it's a pretty good and solid implementation) - but I don't use it for my setup since I rather control what gets copied twice and use automated schedule local copy from one hard disk to another (works great, although you can't use the local backup on encrypted folders).

- Great tech forums and support

Cons:

- Depending on your tech knowledge, but a decent learning curve is involved. For me it was a HUGE educational experience (in a good way, but some people will not have the time nor desire to research/read online) - learning about network, network security (nothing to do with the product per se, but if you are going to consolidate and share you data (better make sure you have a good router/firewall) and understanding of ports/network security etc.

You can set the NAS up so it's not shared online, but that will limit it to just backup/file/media server. So think about how you are planning on using the device and then find the product - features mean nothing if you are not going to use them.

- HDD selection process - I had to go trough the web site/forum to select and read which hard disks work best. Again, not necessarily the product fault, but it's just complicated when you want to do more :)

My main uses: PC Backup (for images and file backup), File Server (sharing files accross PCs and Internet), Media Sharing, Photo Sharing via the web.

It's easy to get overwhelmed in features and reviews - just remember the good techie advice - just buy what you will use now, and not in the future - works when buying a computer, works when buying a NAS.

If you are on the fence, just get it. :) It's a good box and I'm sure you will make it work great for you!

Hope this helped.

Overall, 4-5 stars for the product.

I've had my DS410 for more than three weeks now, and it's a winner. Other reviewers have commented on features, and I won't repeat their praise -- except to say that this product has been easy to set up, intuitive to use, and perfectly reliable (so far). It's an elegant little box. Instead, I'll comment about how this product improves my electronic life in a number of important ways:

1. Now I have a real backup solution. Sure, I've had external drives (USB, FireWire, and even eSata) for years, and I did backups -- sometimes, on some machines, when I remembered to move the drive to the right place, and it wasn't already full, and so on. Now, I have a reliable always-on storage system with lots of free space connected to all my computers via gigabit Ethernet, so backups are a snap. So much of a snap that I'm actually doing them.

2. Now I have a real archive system. Yes, archives are different than backups, and storing old stuff once in one place sure frees up a lot of space on my work laptop, my home office machine, my kids' machines, and whatever other old clunkers I've got kicking around the house. (This makes backups faster, too.)

3. Now I have a real file server. Sure, I've had old Windows boxes that I tried re-purposing as file servers before, but never very successfully. "Old" often means slow, unreliable, finicky, energy inefficient, noisy -- and hence not always kept on. But now I can keep many of my files centrally on a speedy, reliable, always-on box that's fairly energy efficient, very quiet, and always connected.

4. Now I have a real music server. Yes, I've had old Windows machines on which I ran SlimServer / Squeezebox Server, and that worked OK, except for all the reasons in item (3) above. SqueezeBox Server now works well all the time -- a big difference. And I can keep all my FLAC files off any desktops and laptops -- a real space saver.

5. Now I have a print server. OK, I had a print server already, but it was yet another ancient Windows laptop. Using Windows for such applications can be annoying, because you either (a) have to tend to updates yourself, or (b) suffer the occasional Microsoft-driven reboot that USUALLY does not result in the box disappearing from your network but you never know. The DS-410 works great as a print server.

I put two Samsung 1.5 TB SATA 5400 RPM drives in my DS-410 -- the Samsungs are reliable, and the 5400 RPM drives are quieter, slightly cheaper, and possibly slightly more energy efficient than faster drives. On a network-attached storage box there's no advantage to faster drives (since the gigabit Ethernet is still vastly slower than the drives). I will be putting in two more of the same drives soon -- and trying out more of the functionality of this great product. Good job, Synology!

This is the first NAS server I ever owned. For a long time I was researching for a good high performance NAS for my home usage. I read VERY good reviews about DS410. CNET has a 4-star rating for it. Any way I decided to buy it. My primary requirements were - share files across the internet, access my photos and songs on my IPhone, stream media files to TV, and host a few websites. Let me tell you, I am extremely happy with the purchase. It is kind of expensive, but it is worth owning it. It is very fast, VERY quite, and responsive. The DSM 2.3 is wonderful. It has tons of features. Streaming audio, and video files to TV is very easy and it works without any issue at all. The only thing I didn't like is that, to install hard drive you have to open the body and slide out the bays. It wasn't an issue for me. But for people who are unfamiliar, it may be an issue.

I will recommend this to anyone.

very great function, easy to use, can even wake up over LAN - so when you power down due to inactivity, you can send a wakeup over LAN command, and the unit starts, without requiring someone to push a button. So Far very reliable (which I unfortunately can not say about my IOMEGA drives!)

I can definitely recommend this unit - used it together with 4x2TB WD green drives (make sure on Synology's Website to use a certified drive model!)

I've had this thing for 4 weeks and it worked fine until I tried to delete a volume. Then it crashed the disks and hasn't been able to do anything right since. I have a hard time believing that 2 out of 4 brand new Western Digital 2TB Green disks have faults. It got stuck deleting the volumes, creating the volumes, and reseting to defaults. Something I hope would be an "appliance" has ended up being a similar or more amount of effort to administrating a linux server to do the same thing.

Furthermore, time machine support doesn't have any quota limit so you have to do it with users (which incorrectly shows the free space to the mac backing up), and the itunes server support requires so much manual work to recreate what you had on your mac that it's not even worth including.

If this ends up actually being the disks or something else I'll come back and update this review, but for now I'm absolutely furious with the amount of time this damn thing has taken.

EDIT: I spent another 6 hours fighting with this thing trying to make boot disks and get sata enclosures working to change the spin down timing on the disk to finally make it work. Bottom line is that Synology requires proprietary tinkering on the particular drives I used. While this is documented, it is very poorly explained (as a matter of fact, without the forums it would be impossible to find out what to do as Synology doesn't bother explaining it.)

Bottom line is that this product is only for system administrator types (I did my time as a sysadmin, so I was able to deal with it). An average user would likely find themselves in a position where they would have to throw the thing out. The documentation is not worth the digital bits it's written in in most cases.

I've raised my review to 3 stars since they did document these issues. But buyer beware, you are signing up to basically be a sysadmin if you want to use this thing. It is likely you will get stuck on some basic functionality. Be careful to consult their supported disk guide before purchase.

This is my second Synology NAS purchase. Years ago I purchased the DS106e, and that is still running strong. These are well built, reliable units. Synology's software/firmware has come a long way, works great with Linux, OSX, etc. Used to be problematic, freeze with large 2 gig file sizes with Linux but that's been fixed while back. This DS410 is lightning fast, great web based interface. And I love that the disk trays will also fit 2.5" laptop drives in case I want to switch from 3.5" drives to reduce heat and noise later.

I bought 3.5" Samsung 2TB drives from [...], which work great and are quiet and reliable. [...] lists the compatible hard drives, check that out first before you buy drives for the barebones unit. Also nice is that Synology now supports ability to have different capacity drives together in the unit (like Netgear's ReadNAS), though I think most efficient if use regular RAID5 with identical drives.

Took about a day to check and format my four 2TB drives I put in. Probably will be a while before the hard drive industry gets greater than 2TB drives working (probably will take greater adoption of Windows 7 given the limitations of Windows XP), don't know if larger drives will be supported by Synology later, I hope so.

Synology is great about upgrading firmware and software thru life of the product. Their past products from years ago can be upgraded to latest firmware DSM 2.3 (my old DS106e just missed the cut for this latest version, just didn't have the juice).