Synology DS109j NAS Disk Station Review

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Product: DS109j
Manufacturer: Synology
Supplied by: Synology
Price: 139USD/RM502
Launch Date: NA

Today we are glad to introduce another new brand that arrived on our doorstep; Synology. Synology is one of the famous Network Attached Storage (NAS) makers since year 2000 and DS109j is their economical 1-bay SATA NAS server for personal and home use. Besides that Synology DS109j is also equipped with Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 which comes with luxury of applications and features.

Company Profile

Synology Inc., founded in April 2000 by a duo experienced in system designing and marketing, is a dedicated Network Attached Storage (NAS) products provider located in the Taipei city, Taiwan. With a staunch and united team organization, Synology creates and brings forth NAS servers of originality for the global market. Under the breezy yet conscientious team work, Synology embodies the spirit of vitality, creativity, specialty, and versatility, implanting a new breath into the staid NAS business. With our sustained and substantial investment in research and development, Synology is pursing the laurels of contemporary NAS industry on an international scale.

Synology NAS Servers are designed to fulfill its customers' need of security, performance, energy saving, and functionality on a broad range around the globe from prosumers to corporations. Moreover, to practice commitment made to its widespread customers and to provide every possible means of satisfactory services, Synology is using its best endeavors to the establishment a fully developed customer support and service team. Having a vision beyond the visible, Synology NAS Servers signify -Value.

Features

Specifications

Package & Contents

Synology DS109j comes with a very nice and secure packaging with dimension of 6" x 10" 9" (W x L x H); a handle is attached at the top of the packaging for easier carrying. Some basic information such as hardware requirement, applications and package contents regarding DS109j are written on the packaging box.

Inside the Synology DS109j, there are three smaller boxes which are used for storing a power cord, network cable, power adapter, DS109j Disk Station as well as some accessories. Those accessories that are bundled for Synology DS109j are software CD, quick reference guide, welcome note and some assembling kit; screws.

A 50W 100-240V auto switching power adapter is included which is made by CWT. Such 50W power adapter is a bit huge as there is much slimmer adapter available in the market nowadays and we hope a slimmer power adapter can be used for next revision or maybe an integrated adapter will be much better. Besides the power adapter, a 2 meter RJ-45 LAN cable and a power cord are included as well.

Just couple of weeks ago, Synology just announced their Disk Stations supports 2.5" HDD including SSD and Synology DS109j is also one of the supported Disk Stations; thanks to Synology, a 2.5" Disk Holder is included for our review today. Basically this 2.5" Disk Holder is just a simple plastic holder for holding a 2.5" HDD so that it can be installed in Synology DS109j.

Synology DS109j

Network attached storage (NAS) is a simple storage device which is designed to be attached to a network system. Although NAS is a complete system but it only comes with basic OS and software for basic functionality of data storage and some basic NAS functions. NAS can be accessed through network IP address or its GUI accessing software such as Disk Station Manager 2.1 of Synology. Latest NAS is equipped with additional functions such as Bittorrent, FTP, HTTP, internet sharing and etc which makes a NAS system to have greater flexibility and functionality.

Synology provides very complete NAS systems covering from 1-bay till 5-bay and DS109j is the most basic single HDD NAS system. DS109j is a 3 star performance single bay NAS which not only provides cost effective solution for easy file solution and backup but also comes with affordable price. Since Synology DS109j is a 1-bay NAS, its dimension isn't that bulky and heavy; 160 x 63 x 218 mm (H x W x D) and 0.81KG. The whole device of Synology DS109j comes with very stylish design with glossy white painting. All the Synology products have standardize design which is good for marketing as well as lower manufacturing cost; Both Synology 1-bay and 2-bay NAS are identical but 2-bay NAS has slightly bigger container.

The front panel of Synology DS109j has two buttons (Power & USB Copy), four status LEDs (Status, LAN, DISK) and a USB port. The most bottoms LED is an empty LED (eSATA status LED) as Synology is leveraging this DS109j enclosure casing with other models to reduce its product cost. The USB copy button allows USB device such as digital camera, flash drive to have a quick access and copy the data from the USB device to Synology Disk Station's internal HDD.

For the rear view of Synology DS109j, there are a 40mm active cooling fan, two USB ports, Gigabit LAN, RESET key, DC port and a pad lock. RESET button is used to reset DS109j to manufacturing default values which include IP, DNS, password and so on. Synology DS109j has total three USB ports which are quite sufficient for normal usage and all of these USB ports can be used with USB copy feature. The pad lock is a Kensington lock which is identical with notebook pad lock. eSATA port is missing on DS109j model but it is available for DS109 and DS109+ versions. Four rubber feet are included to allow Synology DS109j to be held firmly on the surface in vertical placement.

Synology DS109j can be opened up by just sliding upward/away the left panel (if rear panel is facing you) and the interior of a NAS is quite similar with a HDD enclosure but without networking feature. The PCB is hidden at the bottom of the HDD cage where four screws need to be removed in order to reveal the PCB. For 2-bay NAS Disk Station, SATA and power cables are included unlike 1-bay NAS Disk Station (DS109j) where the single SATA and power connector can be used.

Here is the SATA HDD connector of Synology DS109j. As we mentioned previously Synology DS109j can support both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA HDD but a 2.5" Disk Holder is required for 2.5" HDD for dimension conversion purpose so that it can installed on this Disk Station. The maximum HDD capacity that can be supported by DS109j is 1 Terabyte and we would say such capacity is needed since HDD is much affordable compares with old time.

The cooling fan is connected on the PCB power connector; 3-pin cable and beside the USB ports, there is an internal small speaker where it will beep if the fan stops working; a good feature to advoid HDD being overheated. Although NAS is quite similar with a HDD enclosure but in term of performance NAS can do much things and there is a reason for turning them on 24/7 so a better cooling is required. Synology adds a 40mm cooling fan as the exhausting fan to pull out the hot air from the Disk Station where the fresh air will be drawn at the bottom of the front panel; balance and good circulation.

MPC8241LVR266D is one of the core chip of Synology DS109j from Freescale semiconductor; a 266MHz speed, 32bit processor. MPC8241LVR266D is the most basic processor for Synology NAS Disk Station as its brother; DS109 and DS109+ come with 1.2GHz and 1.06GHz; much faster processing speed. Marvell 88E8001-LKJ1 is the Gigabit LAN chipset.

Since Synology DS109j is a SATA HDD NAS, so a SATA controller is a must and Silicon Image SiL3512ECTU128 is a SATA port chipset which supports up to 1.5Gb/s data transfer rate. PSC A2V28S4OCTP is a 8MB SDRAM and there are two of them. Synology DS109j is a 32MB internal NAS Disk Station, there is another 16MB memory chipset which is Spansion S29AL016J70; a boot sector flash memory.

NEC 0720102GC is a 4-port USB 2.0 controller chipset which delivers three USB ports for Synology DS109j. A 3V Lithium Mitsubishi CMOS battery is included and beside this CMOS battery there is a CMOS flash-based 8-bit microcontroller; PIC16F627A which features 4MHz internal oscillator, 128bytes EEPROM data memory.

Installation, Testing & Performance

For the hardware installation, let us start with 2.5" SATA HDD. Enclosure of Synology DS109j needs to be removed first and since physically DS109j can't support 2.5" HDD so a 2.5" HDD Disk Holder is required which was released by Synology recently. The 2.5" SATA HDD installation is quite simple by just secure the HDD into the Disk Holder with three screws.

Once the 2.5" SATA HDD is completed installed on the Disk Holder then it can be mounted on the Synology DS109j straightaway. Here are the completed 2.5" and 3.5" SATA HDD installation on Synology DS109j and the HDD needs to be inserted from the middle of HDD cage not slot in from front till the end.

After that four screws are required to fasten the SATA HDD on the HDD cage of Synology DS109j. However for 2.5" SATA HDD, only two screws are required as the L-shaped Disk Holder doesn't support any screw mounting for the other end of the 2.5" SATA HDD (2.5" SATA HDD is having different kind of mounting).

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33GHz
Motherboard: Asus P5Q-VM
Heatsink: Stock CPU Cooler
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM Fujitsu
Hard Drive: 80GB 7200RPM Western Digital
Graphic Card: On Board
PSU: Seasonic M12D 850W
Chassis: In Win Allure
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Operating System: Microsoft Vista Home Premium
Benchmark Software: Prime 95
Ambient Temperature: 28 Degree Celsius

For a working Synology DS109j, it will light up accordingly; green blinking LED for an active network, Disk and USB Copy while blue static LED when the system is ready.

Here is the overall comparison between Synology 1-bay NAS Disk Station; DS109j, DS109 and DS109+. As you can see, there is huge speed variance between DS109j with DS109 and DS109+ since DS109j is a most basic NAS from Synology. The average upload and download speed for Synology DS109j are 11MB/s and 35MB/s.

Software installation is required and here is the software CD interface for Synology DS109j and basically there are three software; Synology Assistant, Data Replicator 3 and Download Redirector. There is another option; Set Up Synology/Server and this is required for the first time setup as it will guide the user to install the PAT file (synology_powerpc_109j_0835.pat) which is located in "patches" folder. The whole setup process will take some time; around 10-15 minutes.

Once the setup is completed then the Synology DS109j is ready to be used and NAS can be detected correctly and shown at Synology Assistant software. Double click the Disk Station will bring user go to Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 but login is required; the default password is blank. Password and additional users can be added in the control panel of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1.

Here are the Web Management UI of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1; Wizard and Complete modes with AJAX Management UI. There are plenty of settings can be fine tuned and setup in Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1; Information, System, Privileges, Storage, File Sharing, Network Services, Applications, Backup and External Devices. You may confuse and worry about all these settings but basically only some few steps are required to setup this Synology DS109j NAS Disk Station, the rest of the setting are enhanced features in order to make this NAS system to be more powerful and complete.

Since only a single HDD can be supported by DS109j, only basic volume can be supported while JBOD, RAID 0/1 for two HDDs, RAID 5 for more than three HDDs and lastly RAID 5+Spare/RAID 6 for more than four HDDs. Mail Station is a new feature of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 where it can act as an e-mail server and four protocols are provided; POP2, POP3 SSL/TLS, IMAP and IMAP SSL/TLS.

Besides that other functions of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 such as Surveillance Stations 2 which allows connecting to IP camera for monitoring and recording purposes. File Station 2 is a web-based file management tool for accessing and managing the files at NAS Disk Station remotely; a very simple and useful file management tool.

Audio Sation is an innovative way to play the music on Synology NAS Disk Station in web browser format for both native streaming and connected USB speaker. Besides that this Audio Station also supports internet Radio for fast accessing the worldwide radio station. iTunes Server is for music sharing within the local network by just install iTunes software and listen the music that are stored in Synology Disk Station.

Synology Web Station has built-in support of PHP and MySQL where a dynamic database driven website can be developed. This tool is useful especially for a large network group like university hostel where users can share their intranet website with others. Photo Station 3 is another application of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 where it allows photo, video, and even blog sharing.

Since NAS is a storage solution so a backup application is a must and there are few data back up methods of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1; Desktop Backup (from desktop to NAS by using Replicator 3), (Local Backup (from one internal shared folder to another shared folder), Network Backup (from one NAS to another NAS) and USB Copy (one touch fast accessing backup).

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 since peer to peer download is much more convenience way for file downloading especially multimedia files. Download Redirector is linked with Download Station 2 but it is in web interface.

The last software that is bundled together with Synology DS109j is Synology Data Replicator 3 which is a backup and restore software for allowing easier and faster way to back up and restoring the data. This software is not only worked with Synology NAS Disk Station but also can be used for normal local drive back up and restore.

There are too many features and applications for this Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 and you may really need to take some time to understand all of them and some of them are really interesting which will be useful for certain people. Since Synology DS109j is a HDD device, we have tested with its download/upload speed which this is important as having a slow respond NAS Disk Station will be the gating item for you to fully utilize its features. The upload/download speeds that we get are quite similar with its spec; 10MB/s and 33MB/s. If you are comparing such download/upload speeds of Synology DS109j with other high end Disk Stations then such speeds are not really impressed but for a budget small business or home usage, we would say this is quite enough for moderate usage.

Conclusion

We are quite impressed with Synology DS109j although it is a budget NAS Disk Station but it still comes with necessary hardware setup and plenty of great features/applications from Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1; a very balance NAS system. For a less than 150USD NAS Disk Station, Synology DS109j is not only affordable for a small medium business but also for home user; can be a good start for begineer. Furthermore the features and applications of Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 even makes this NAS Disk Station to be much advance and complete since it is only offering basic NAS functions but also other good to have features. We highly recommend this Synology DS109j for those are looking for an entry affordable NAS system for moderate usage.

Pros:

* Affordable NAS Disk Station with moderate performance
* Support both 2.5" & 3.5" SATA HDD
* Flexible & user friendly Management UI; Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1
* Plenty of features; Web Station, Surveillance Stations 2 & so on
* Comes with Data Replicator 3 & Download Redirector

Cons:

* Only single HDD is supported
* Plastic enclosure
* eSATA is not supported

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