Synology Diskstation 207
Verdict: A stunning array of features adds to the price, but if you'll use them the DS207 is worth every penny. (PC PRo Magazine Review, Jul 2007)
Synology are masters at making fully featured, award winning NAS products. With the DS-207, Synology have taking an already excellent product, and gave it a boost. Featuring the capability to have two hard drives, the dual bay DS207 provides RAID security to the home or small office environment.
Backup for all
With the huge disk capacities now available, it is more important that ever before to backup your disks. A single bay NAS drive may act as a backup for your computers, but why not back that single disk up? It may seem like a belts and braces AND more braces approach, but hard drives are so inexpensive, you really can afford an bullet proof approach to your data, and your data backup.
Apart from the long list of NAS features the DS207 provides (detailed below), the DS-207 also offers RAID 0 or RAID 1 support. RAID 0 is where the Diskstation combines the capacity of both hard drives, offering improved data transfer. We don't recommend using RAID0. However, RAID 1 is really exciting. Simply, it is two hard drives which are mirrored. What is copied on one drive is copied on the other. This provides very high fault tolerance. And because hard drives of so inexpensive, RAID 0 offers a fantastic way of protecting your data.
The unit requires 1 or 2 x SATA hard drives, and can support up to 750GB hard disks A gigabit Ethernet connection helps to keep data flowing to the drives. The DS207 has 3 USB ports, to which you can connect one USB printer and two USB hard drives, or 3 USB hard drives (if you don't use a printer). It also has a copy button on the front USB port, which lets you backup USB pen drives at the touch of a button!
Apart from RAID 0 and 1, the dual bay DiskStation DS207e offers a whole range of NAS features:
Windows ADS Support; ADS/NT support, Domain users login via CIFS/AFP/FTP.
Security; FTP over SSL, HTTPS connection, FTP Auto Blocking uninvited IP
File system; EXT3, FAT, NTFS
Applications; Photo Station2, Php+MySQL Web Station, Download Station, UPnP Multimedia Server, iTunes Server.
UPnP Multimedia Support
Audio Format: aac, ac3, FLAC, LPCM, m4a, mp1, mp2, mp3, mpa, ogg, raw, wav, wma
Video Format: asf, DivX, avi, dat, mov, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, vob, wmv
Image Format: bmp, gif, icon, jpg(jpeg, jpe), png, psd, tif(tiff), ufo
Playlist Format: WPL, M3U
Management; Web Based Management, Web Based Download Manager, Download Station bandwidth Control, Hibernation for internal and external disks, User Quoa, System Temp display, USB via USB2.0 port, Bit torrent download.
Printer Support; LPT, CIFS, AppleTalk
Hardware
RAM Size: 64MB or 128MB
Internal HDD: 3.5” SATA(II) X2
External HDD Interface: USB 2.0 port X3
Size: 160mm X 218mm X 88mm
Weight: 0.98kg
LAN: Gigabit X1
Fan: X1(60mmX60mm)
Power Recovery
AC Input Power Voltage: 100V to 240V
Power Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz, Single Phase
Max Capacity (Internal HDD): 1.5TB
Power Consumption: 54W(Spin); 36W(Access); 34W(Idle); 15W(Hibernation)
Operating Temperature: 50 to 95°F (10 to 35°C)
Storage Temperature: -40 to 185°F (-10 to 70°C)
Relative Humidity: 5% to 95%RH
Maximum Operating Altitude: 10,000 feet
Encrypted network backup, with Windows Vista support
Encrypted FTP
Website Hosting with PHP and MySQL
USB Printer sharing
The DS-207e allows 128 User accounts with 64 groups