Synology DS409slim NAS Station Review

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Product: DS409slim
Manufacturer: Synology
Supplied by: Synology
Price: 400USD/RM1414
Launch Date: NA

After reviewed on Synology DS109j 1-bay NAS system, today we have just received another new product from Synology which is a 4-bay NAS system; DS409slim. Synology DS409slim is not really same with its sister; DS409 as DS409slim supports four 2.5" SATA HDD while DS409 supports four 3.5" SATA HDD. Besides the size reduction, DS409slim consumes lesser power and also come with cheaper price.

Company Profile

Synology Inc., Founded in 2000, Synology is a young and energetic company dedicated to developing high-performance, reliable, versatile, and environmentally-friendly Network Attached Storage (NAS) products. Our goal is to deliver user-friendly solutions and solid customer service to satisfy the needs of businesses, home offices, individual users and families.

Features

Package & Contents

Same with DS109j, Synology DS409slim is packed with the same ID packaging box which is a high quality cardboard and all the accessories are packed very well too. Unlike most of the products, Synology DS409slim isn't packed with any foam but some simple cardboard holders which is good enough to protect it from shock and vibration.

Here are the complete bundles of Synology DS409slim. Besides the DS409slim NAS Station, there rest of accessories are power cord, power adapter, network cable, NAS station stand, software & driver CD, quick installation guide and some installation screws. The complete user's manual (softcopy) for DS409slim and Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 are available inside the CD kit.

The power adapter and power cord are separately into two portions which is good for easier keeping but as usual we still prefer an integrated or smaller power adapter since NAS system doesn't really consume much power. The quick reference guide comes with very sharp color which is a bit hard to read. Since Synology DS409slim is a 4-bay NAS system, label indicators are provided so that the disk tray can be identified easily.

A Closer Look: Synology DS409slim Exterior

We have reviewed Synology DS109j previously which is a 1-bay NAS station so we won't repeat the functionality of a NAS system here. However when selecting a NAS station, some of the criteria are important like total supporting drives, connectivity (USB port, Gbit lan, wireless, eSATA), CPU speed, memory capacity, one touch backup as well as NAS UI software which is another important feature.

Synology has quite number of NAS products from 1-bay to 5-bay and covering for Home, SOHO as well as corporate business usage. Synology DS409slim is the first 4-bay 2.5" NAS system in the market which is not only support 2.5" SATA HDD but also SSD. The whole unit of Synology DS409slim is having dimension of 120 x 105 x 142 mm and 0.66KG weight; this is the smallest NAS systems that we have seen so far, furthermore it is a 4-bay NAS system.

Synology DS409slim comes with black enclosure which consists of two surfaces; glossy for the top and front panels while non glossy for the rest of the panels. Due to space constraint of the front panel, the power (red) and quick copy (green) buttons are located on the left panel instead of front panel. On the front panel itself, there are total six LED indicators and one USB port for fast accessing and One-Touch Backup.

Here are the rear panel of Synology DS409slim where there are four disk trays in total for supporting four 2.5" SATA HDD or SSD. These disk trays can be attached and detached from the Synology DS409slim easily without going through the hassle installation process as other NAS systems. This is absolutely fabulous but due to great flexibility, a safety lock is included so that all these disk trays will be secured.

Besides these disk trays at the rear panel, there are other connectors such as eSATA, USB2.0, LAN port, reset button and a power input jack. eSATA is included which is great news for Synology fans as not all the budget NAS systems come with eSATA connectivity although it does provide greater flexibility over USB2.0. Same as other NAS systems that we have tested before, no WLAN is supported for Synology DS409slim too maybe due to slower speed and higher cost.

At the bottom of the Synology DS409slim, there is a 60mm air vent which is equipped with 60mm active cooling fan. This 60mm fan is required in order to cool down all the four 2.5" installed drives else the performance will be highly impacted if the drives are running with high temperature. Synology DS409slim doesn't come with separately enclosure stand as the rubber feet are integrated with the bottom panel of it.

Besides those rubber feet, Synology also provides a stand to allocate the whole DS409slim on top of it. The stand is made by plastic material with glossy top surface. We have no clue what is the main purpose for this stand as the rubber feet of DS409slim is able to do the job well by holding the whole DS409slim firmly on the ground. Anyway there is no harm to have it and it may be useful for certain of usage especially for non flat surface.

A Closer Look: Synology DS409slim Interior

Here are interior views of Synology DS409slim after all the four disk trays are removed from the NAS station. As you can see the PCB is just located right beside the disk tray so please ensure the nearby disk tray is slotted in properly else it may damage the PCB components but this is unlikely except for those careless folks.

As we mentioned before Synology DS409slim can support both 2.5" SATA HDD and 2.5" SSD as both of them are having same type of connector. However based on the specification of Synology DS409slim, maximum storage capacity that can be supported is only 500GB; hopefully in the future larger storage capacity can be supported either by new firmware or new hardware respin.

For better understanding regarding Synology DS409slim, we have disassembled the whole unit into smaller parts. However it will take some time for doing so due to space constrain to unscrew them and user doesn't need to do this as the HDD installation is pretty simple; just remove the disk tray for HDD installation and slot back it into the DS409slim. The 60mm active cooling fan is only generating around 24dBA which is pretty silent and should be enough for NAS station as some NAS stations only come with passive cooling.

Synology DS409slim has total two pieces of blue PCB; one is the major/component PCB with CPU, memory, networking and other major chipsets while another one is the simple PCB with four set of SATA and power connectors. The connector PCB is fastened on then metal cage of Synology DS409slim and it is installed on the component PCB vertically. RAID is supported for Synology DS409slim which is another great feature compare with 1-bay NAS station and the supported RAID modes are JBOD, RAID 0/1/5/5+spare and RAID 6.

Synology DS409slim is equipped by Marvell C120 88F6281 chipset which is a 1.2GHz 16bit CPU with 256kb L2 cache and it is quite popular in NAS sector. In term of memory, Synology DS409slim is having Elpida 128MB DDR2 800 memory with 5-5-5 timing (Synology DS109j only has 32MB memory). There is only a single memory chip for Synology DS409slim maybe due to space constrain as most of other NAS system is equipped with either 2 or 4 memory chips for lower product cost.

GST5009 is a Gigabit LAN network chipset which supports 4 pairs of category 5 UTP cable and such high speed LAN chipset is highly required as it will have physical impact on the networking performance especially within a group of users during heavy load. The BIOS chip of Synology DS409slim is labeled and our sample is powered with v2.00.

Since Synology DS409slim is a small device hence its CMOS battery; Maxell CR1220 3V is much smaller than those normal 3V CMOS batteries that we have seen. GL850G is a Genesys Logic's advanced version hub chipset which compliant to USB specification revision 2.0 while Marvell 88SX7042 is a PCI-e 4-port SATA-II which is a SATA controller with 1.5Gbps and scalable to 3.0Gbps/6.0Gbps.

Installation, Testing & Performance

The installation of Synology DS409slim is extremely simple as users just need to install the HDD on the disk tray then install the disk tray back to the NAS station. Four screws are required for each HDD installation for best protection but two/three screws are acceptable as well if you are lazy to have all of them. The installation will be same for both 2.5" SATA HDD and 2.5" SSD since they have exact physical layout.

Once the HDD is installed on the disk tray then next step is slot back the disk tray together with HDD into the Synology DS409slim. The sequence is start from most left to right and indicators are marked right below the disk tray on the NAS station. For avoiding wrong HDD sequence, please apply the label indicator on the disk tray which is come along with Synology DS409slim. Kensington lock can be used to secure all these disk trays and such lock is pretty standard since it is widely used for notebook.

If everything is setup correctly then it's time to power up Synology DS409slim and the detail of these LED indicators can be found on user's manual for better understanding.

If RAID is required, please refer to this table so that the exact HDD capacity, quantity, RAID modes are setup correctly as different RAID setup will have different functions as well as hardware requirement.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink: Noctua NH-U9B
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 6400/8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce 9800GT Low Power
PSU: In Win Commander 750W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

Besides the hardware setup, software setup is required as well for Synology DS409slim as the UI software is playing an important role for NAS system. Basically there are three software which is bundled with Synology DS409slim; Synology Assistant, Data Replicator 3 and Download Redirector. For the first time setup, "set up the Synology Server" is required where Synology Assistant is installed while guides the users step by step installation; the first time installation will take some time, around 10-20 minutes due to firmware flashing, HDD formating.

Synology Assistant is a NAS system detector where it helps to locate the NAS system in the same local network. Besides that Synology Assistant can be used to map drive and add printer which are useful feature for fast accessing. Double click on the detected NAS system will prompt up a browser with login screen and the default password is blank.

All the Synology NAS systems are sharing the same NAS software which is Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 and we have discussed it before during DS109j review so we won't repeat here again and you may refer here for further detail or download the user's guide from Synology website. RAID setup is something additional for DS409slim as it is not available for DS109j which is a 1-bay NAS station.

There are plenty of features of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 such as File Station, Download Station, Surveillance Station with 5 IP camera supported, Audio Station as well as Web Station. The web Station is a useful tool which has built in support of PHP and MySQL here a dynamic database driven website can be developed while File Station is a management tool to arrange and organize the data in NAS station nicely.

Download Redirector is a downloading software which is not only allowed for normal HTTP, FTP download but also integrated with BitTorrent and eMule download features while Data Replicator 3 which is a backup and restore software for allowing easier and faster way to back up and restore the data.

For the practical benchmarking, we have tested Synology DS409slim with its transfer speed/rate as well as start up and shut down time. The start up and shut down time of Synology DS409slim is pretty good as it is even faster than one of our tested 1-bay NAS station but the shut down time is a bit longer; around additional 10s compare with other NAS stations that we have tested before. Single beep will be heard during start up and shut down period to indicate the signal is received by the DS409slim to perform the operation.

Same with other NAS stations, we have tested Synology DS409slim with some real life application by transferring some movie and photo files from PC to NAS station. As we can see, Synology DS409slim only takes around 36s for transferring 1.6GB movie data and 18s for 516MB photos which is really outstanding for a small 4-bay NAS station as it is even faster than those 1-bay NAS station with 3.5" HDD that we have tested previously.

In term of noise and heat, Synology DS409slim is doing very well as the 60mm cooling fan is able to cool down the HDD effectively. Besides that the noise is barely audible since the fan is only generating around 26dBA. So far we don't encounter any stability issue with Synology DS409slim during the whole testing and everything is working as per design.

Conclusion

Synology is one of the famous NAS leaders and by launching DS409slim which is the first 4-bay 2.5" NAS Station in the market, it should able to provide greater choices to fulfill all kind of users. Although 2.5" HDD is more expensive than 3.5" HDD but there are some advantages for having such NAS station with 2.5" HDD supported as the power consumption is much lower besides the smaller dimension; both 2.5" SATA HDD and 2.5" SSD are supported too. Synology is targeting DS409slim for budget market but its retail price is not cheap which costs around 400USD; around 50% more expensive than DS109j; 1-bay 3.5" HDD. Anyway if this is one of your ideal or dream NAS station that you have been looking for or suit your need then just go ahead and get it as we believe the choices for such NAS devices are extremely limited.

Pros:

+ Support 2.5" SSD & SATA HDD
+ Support RAID management
+ Light weight & small size
+ Low power consumption
+ Easy disk tray removal
+ Comes with active cooling
+ One touch backup
+ Flexible & user friendly Management UI; Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1
+ Plenty of features; Web Station, Surveillance Stations 2 & etc
+ Comes with Data Replicator 3 & Download Redirector
+ eSATA is supported

Cons:

- Not Cheap
- Limited with maximum 500GB storage capacity
- 2.5" SATA HDD is more expensive than 3.5" SATA HDD

Thanks to Synology for providing this sample for us to review.