Synology Disk Station 409Slim

Laptop storage drives nano Nas box

Home users will love the unattended BitTorrent and eMule downloads and UPnP media streaming. You also get an iTunes server although, sadly, there’s no DLNA certification. You can even plug a set of digital USB speakers directly into the device and listen to stored music using an optional wireless remote control.

IP cameras can be connected directly to the NAS and managed from the built-in Surveillance Station 2 application, which will allow video recording direct to hard drive. When any of these optional functions is enabled, it’s given its own icon at the top level of the web interface, making the whole system very simple to configure and use.

Read Transfer Speeds (MB/s)

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Longer bars are better

Write Transfer Speeds (MB/s)

Longer bars are better

Really, we’re just skimming the surface of what the DS409 Slim can do. The extensible nature of the operating system means you can download additional packages from Synology to expand its capabilities still further. For example, the Mail Station package allows you to run a full mail server on the device with support for Webmail, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP.

What’s more Synology regularly updates its firmware, often including many user-requested features. The version 2.2 firmware due in September, promises such goodies as support for iSCSI, Apple Time Machine, a DLNA music server and a built-in firewall. It will also add support for writing to external NTFS hard drives.