In the past we have reviewed quite a few Synology products, all of which were of course NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices. NAS is a beautiful thing, as it allows a number of users to quickly and easily share vast amounts of data, while Synology has also built in a number of other impressive features.

Already we have reviewed devices that can hold Terabytes worth of data using multiple hard drives, and while these devices are impressive, they also tend to be extremely expensive. The last affordable NAS devices that we reviewed from Synology was the single bay Disk Station 107 way back in mid-2007 and at the time it cost around $200 US.

Furthermore, at the time a typical 500GB hard drive was priced at around $120 US, so it would be possible to create 500GB’s of NAS for a little over $300 US with the DS107, not bad. However while 500GB’s may not be considered a lot of storage these days, capacity was not the key weakness of the DS107.

Although this was a budget NAS device, the 266MHz CPU and 64MB of memory did mean that the DS107 could only serve a limited number of users. Furthermore, despite Gigabit LAN support, we found when copying files we were often lucky to break 100-base speeds. Therefore, while the DS107 did get the job done, and when compared to competing single bay NAS devices it was very good, we knew there was room to improve.

Now roughly 2 years later Synology has refreshed their entire product line up and the DS107 has been replaced with the new DS109. On paper the DS109 is considerably more powerful than the DS107, as it now features a 1.2GHz CPU and 128MB of memory. Despite the huge improvement in specifications, the pricing of the DS109 remains similar to that of the DS107, as we have found it retailing for $230 US.

While the DS109 hardware has undergone a total rehaul, the Disk Station Manager software has also been subject to major upgrades. In fact it was the Synology software that won us over originally, as we found it to be the most powerful, flexible and easy to use of any NAS device. Back then we were talking about DSM 2.0, where as the new DS109 comes with DSM 2.1 installed, so we will be keen to check it out.

As with the original, the only disappointing aspect of the DS109 design is that it comes in just one color, being white. This was also the case with previous Disk Station models as well as the Cube Station CS407e, which again came exclusively in white. While they do look impressive in white, I am confident most users would have preferred black.

The Disk Station DS109 is an attractive unit that leaves a very small footprint. Measuring just 21.8cm long, 16cm wide, and 6.3cm thick, the DS109 is roughly the same size as a 5.25” optical drive, which is impressive given what it houses. The front of the DS109 features four green lights that indicate status, LAN, HDD and eSATA activity.

There are also USB and eSATA ports for copying from external devices on the front of the DS109. Furthermore there is a copy button next to the USB port which is simply labeled “C” for copy. Then at the very bottom there is the power button which glows blue when active. This is all very similar to the DS107, with the addition of eSATA support.

The rear end of the DS109 is nothing unusual, featuring a single 60mm fan designed to extract heat generated by the hard drive from within the unit. There are two more USB ports, along with a single Gigabit LAN port, and a power input socket. All up the DS109 weighs less than a kilogram, at just 810 grams (without any hard drives installed).

Inside the DS109 there is a PCB board which makes this NAS device very unique when compared to your typical hard drive enclosures. Featured on the PCB is a 1.2GHz processor with 128MB of memory. The original DS107 came armed with a much slower 266MHz processor using just 64MB of memory, so we do expect to see a significant gain in performance here. Please note that the memory capacity cannot be upgraded, as the memory chips are fixed to the PCB and there are no DIMM slots.

The large PCB board also features a Marvell Alaska 88E1116R Gigabit LAN controller, which is a single multi-Interface transceiver. There is also the Marvell Kirkwood chipset, and the particular model featured on the DS109 is the 88F6281, which houses a “Sheeva” CPU designed to operate at 1.2GHz.

The Kirkwood 88F6281 is designed for complex applications, like digital home media servers, because of its extensive I/O integration, low power consumption, and high performance. The 88F6281 allows direct integration of wireless chipsets, USB peripherals, VoIP devices, hard disks, and other components that are required for digital home media server products.

Although the Kirkwood 88F6281 is designed for digital home media servers, this purpose makes it ideal for use in network attached storage as well. The fact that the Kirkwood supports dual SATA ports makes it ideal, as does its 16-bit DDR2 memory interface. The Marvell Kirkwood certainly is an impressive chipset and it is amazing to think that such a tiny chip can house so much.

Features such as the Surveillance Station 2, Photo Station 3, File Station 2, Audio Station, Web Station, Download Station 2, along with various backup solutions all exist.

The Photo Station 3 feature is impressive, featuring the ability to publicly or privately share picture albums, which can also be accessed via the Internet. Using the Photo Station 3 feature is very easy; simply enable the feature in the admin console and it creates a folder on the DS109 which is ready to receive pictures.

One of the coolest Synology applications is called Download Station 2. This feature allows users to turn the DS109 into a 24/7 BitTorrent, FTP, or HTTP download centre. The user can even turn their computer off while files are being downloaded to the DS109.

Furthermore, users will be able to use the Windows utility Download Redirector or a Web-based Download Manager to manage other download tasks. These features are again very easy to use, and Synology has made it quite easy for users to understand how to use them.

The Web Station is another favorite of ours, and while this feature can be built into Windows, we prefer to use it on the DS109. This feature is excellent for website owners and developers. For example, if we wanted to make a major change to the way Legion Hardware worked we could quickly configure the website on the DS109, which would allow us to effortlessly make changes without delay.

The Disk Station DS109 is a master at backing up data and can do so in a number of ways. The local backup allows data to be copied from the DS109 to an external hard drive, which is of course connected via one of the rear eSATA or USB 2.0 ports. This allows for quick and easy backups of any data located on the NAS device.

The ability to carry out a network backup also exists. Network Backup allows users to back up files and data from one Synology Disk Station to another Synology Disk Station (or other rsync-compatible servers) over the network. With the Encrypted Network Backup option, Synology's Network Backup offers excellent security and privacy protection. Users can encrypt data when a backup task is being processed. So the important data will not be exposed to uninvited guests.

These features are all very impressive, work well, and can certainly come in handy. While most users will not use all these features, there is sure to be one or two that you will find useful. For example, we really liked the Photo Station 3, Download Station 2 and Web Station; all worked really well for us.

There are no power or data cables required, as the drive simply slots into the bay, connecting it to the DS109. The drive should then be secured inside the DS109 using the four supplied screws. Then it is just a matter of sliding the lid back on. Once this has been done the power and network cable should be attached so that the software setup can begin.

The software setup process could not be much easier really, and it is obvious that Synology has had a lot of experience in this area. In the past I have come across a few impressive network storage devices that have been a let-down due to having a poor user interface. Many NAS feature slow and ugly GUIs that offer very limited functionality.

The Disk Station 109, like all Synology NAS devices that we have reviewed to date, is significantly better in this regard when compared to previously tested units from other manufacturers, and to be honest there is nothing we would really change.

Upon plugging the DS109 into the network and giving it power, it is then simply just a matter of jumping on to the nearest networked computer and inserting the users CD. An auto play screen will appear which will detect and allow the user to quickly configure the DS109 and this takes no more than a few minutes. Once completed the setup wizard loads your default Internet browser and takes the user to the administration section of the NAS device.

Intel Core 2 Duo Test System Specs - Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 (2.60GHz) - x2 2GB DDR2-1066 G.Skill (CAS 7-7-7-18)- ASUS P5Q Pro (Intel P45) - OCZ GameXStream (700 watt) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - ASUS Radeon HD 4550 (256MB) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 9.5 Synology Disk Station 409+ - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) Synology Disk Station 109 - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) Synology Disk Station 107 - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII)

First up we are checking out the buffered performance of these various configurations using SiSoftware Sandra 2009. The read results are dominated by our desktop test system, which produced a throughput of 85MB/s with a single hard drive. The Synology DS109 did do surprisingly well in this test, with a read speed of 65MB/s, making it faster than the DS409+ by 8MB/s and almost twice as fast as the old DS107.

The read performance was certainly impressive, though we found it was actually the write performance where the Synology DS109 truly shone. Here the DS109 was 10MB/s faster than the single drive desktop test system, while it was again almost twice as fast as the old DS107, which is a truly spectacular result.

While the buffered performance of the Synology DS109 was quite simply incredible, the random read/write performance was not so impressive. That said, the results were far from disappointing, as the DS109 was 41% faster than the DS107 in the read test, and 57% faster for the write test. While the DS109 was easily able to outpace the old DS107, it was considerably slower than our desktop test system and the DS409+. It would appear that RAID0 also has a huge impact on the random read/write performance, though this is obviously a technology the DS109 cannot support.

The final SiSoftware Sandra 2009 test measures network throughput, and while the desktop test system can manage up to 66MB/s, the Synology DS109 was limited to 55MB/s, while the old DS107 provided a throughput of just 38MB/s.

The desktop test system running two drives in RAID0 set the benchmark with a read speed of 68MB/s and a write speed of 80MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark sequential read/write performance test. The Synology DS409+, which is configured with four drives in RAID0, managed a read and write speed of roughly 60MB/s.

The Synology DS109 was not far behind, with a write speed of 60MB/s and a rear speed of 54MB/s. Interestingly while the DS109 read speed was much greater than that of the single drive desktop test system, the write speed was in fact slower. Still the DS109 set a decent pace in this test and proved that it was significantly faster than the old DS107, three times faster in the read test.

Now we are running the same test, but this time smaller 512KB data samples will be used. Interestingly, while the desktop system using RAID0 was impressive in the original CrystalDiskMark test, it struggled in this 512KB test. While the write performance was still very strong, peaking at 72MB/s, the read performance was weak at just 30MB/s. Then with just a single drive the desktop system really struggled, with the write performance reaching 44MB/s, and the read performance just 28MB/s.

The Synology DS409+ performance went unchanged with both the read and write results reaching roughly 60MB/s. The DS109 also smoked the single drive test system configuration with a read speed of 43MB/s and a write speed of 58MB/s. This was an excellent result for the DS109 and it means when dealing with large amounts of smaller files it will likely be faster than your typical desktop computer.

Finally we have the 4KB sequential CrystalDiskMark test, which deals with very small data files. In the real world files this small would be tiny pictures and plain text files. This kind of test would resemble the kind of performance you would see when backing up a website for example. The desktop test system performs very poorly when working with these small files and even the old DS107 puts the much more powerful desktop system to shame.

The Synology DS109 is very impressive here, reaching 2.42MB/s in the read test, which is impressive when compared to the 0.71MB/s of the RAID0 desktop configuration. The write performance was also impressive reaching 4.53MB/s, opposed to the 2.19MB/s of the desktop system using RAID0. However it was the DS409+ that owned this test, with its quad RAID0 setup reaching 10MB/s for both the read and write tests.

In this next test we take a 5.59GB single file and measure the transfer rate when uploading and then downloading the file from each configuration. As you can see, the desktop test system with its RAID0 configuration delivered the best results, with an upload speed of 71MB/s and a download speed of 80MB/s. When configured with a single drive the desktop system was considerably slower, though it did manage an upload rate of 54MB/s and a download speed of 48MB/s.

The Synology DS109 was slower than the desktop system, with a read and write transfer speed of 37MB/s. This made the DS109 on average 27% slower than a desktop computer featuring the same single hard drive configuration. Still this made the DS109 more than twice as fast as the older DS107 in both the read and write transfer tests.

This last set of transfer results directly relate to those above, though rather than looking at the transfer rate in megabytes per second we are measuring how long it took in seconds. This means that the RAID0 configured desktop test system downloaded the 5.59GB file in just over 1 minute, while it took a minute and twenty seconds to upload it.

In comparison the DS109 took almost 3 minutes to both upload and download the 5.59GB file, while the old DS107 would make you wait almost 5 and a half minutes to download and a whopping 7 minutes to upload the file. So when compared to the old DS107, the new DS109 is a significant improvement!

This is where the Synology DS109 has a significant advantage over a desktop system such as ours. Whereas our test system consumed over 50 watts of power, the DS109 never sucked down more than 15 watts, using a third of the power. The DS109 also appears to use less power than the older slower DS107, which was also impressive.

Although the Synology DS108j for example, costs just $110 US, its 200MHz processor and 32MB of memory delivers less performance than the old DS107. The new DS109 on the other hand crushed the DS107, making it look its age. In terms of price and performance Synology has hit the sweet spot with the DS109. Those looking for a more powerful single bay NAS device must look to the DS109+, but with a retail price of $400 US we find it far less appealing.

The DS109+ features 512MB of memory opposed to the stingy 128MB of the DS109. Furthermore, although the processor featured on the DS109+ is clocked lower, it is a more powerful alternative and therefore helps the plus outperform the standard DS109. Realistically the DS109+ makes more sense for heavy users, but for general usage the DS109 is every bit as good.

What we also like about the DS109 is not only that it provides users with an impressive level of performance, but that it also sports the new Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 software. When buying a Synology NAS product this is partly what you are paying for, the excellent software. In fact, it was this software that originally won us over to Synology’s products, and since then it has only continued to get better and better.

The DSM 2.1 software lets the DS109 become much more than just a simple storage device, allowing it to serve several purposes. This software enables the DS109 to become a printer, mail and web server, while it can also serve as a surveillance hub, backup, download, audio and even a photo station, to name just a few. Not only does the software let the DS109 to carry out these tasks, but it allows it to do it well.

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Reviewed By Steven Walton