Features In Detail

With so much on offer, the Cube Station offers solutions for just about any aspect of data management, along with a host of other useful applications.

Photo Station

One of the top features on offer from the CS-406 has to be the Photo Station, offering a mix of public and private picture albums than can be accessed from a HTTP address. If you want to make them available over the internet, you'll need a static IP address too - most broadband connections for home users come with dynamic (means it changes everytime you connect) IP addresses so you might need to enquire about a static IP. Building a photo album is very simple. Enable the Photo Station from the admin console and it creates a folder on the Cube Station ready to receive pictures. To create an album is a simple case of dragging and dropping files on to the mapped drive. You can then type your address into your browser - ie: 192.168.1.2/photo - and the CS-406 indexs your files, create thumbnails and builds your gallery. You can keep pictures in folders but unfortunately subfolders are not supported at this time. Folders keep track of the amount of visitors who view each album - great fun for friends and family - and picture control including slideshows allows all sorts of viewing options. It really is a great tool and perfect for getting all your pictures up on the web without the need for complex html coding.

Backup Solutions

Protecting data is serious business and the Cube Station offers three solutions to cover every eventually. Local backup allows data to be copied from the NAS server on to an external hard drive connected via the in built USB ports. Connect up the drive and the unit is detected by the Cube Station and configured ready for use. Fat 32, Native Formats and now NTFS thanks to a recent firmware upgrade. The external drive can either be shared or used for backup security. A schedule can be figured to run at set intervals or an immediate backup carried out. It's a bit basic but functional enough to get the job done. On a plus note, the higher performing USB 2.0 spec is supported by the Cube Station allowing faster file transfers.

Network backup allows the option to backup and restore data between two Cube Stations. There's no support for FTP backups so data syncing for web development isn't possible which is somewhat disappointing as the Web Server is so good. It really would have been the icing on the cake.

A software backup solution is included on the disk called Data Replicator II. Once installed it can perform immediate backups, synchronization and scheduled backups as required. Options are limited but it does perform all the basics and is very easy to configure and use. A 1.6GB test folder was backed up in around 12 minutes and restored in a similar amount of time. As with all software backup solutions you have to remember to start and run it. If you are the kind of user that can never remember daily chores like this, you'll probably groan at the thought of software solutions. For everybody else, it's a welcome addition.

Overall, we can't help feel a little underwhelmed by the backup solutions on offer. Perhaps the Photo Station and other features wowed us so much, we were expecting something with a little more X Factor. Incremental backups and data sync over FTP would be handy for webmasters and web developers. Automatic backups without the need to run software would be another. With the ability to run RAID 1 and 5, we expected Synology to throw in the works. Instead we have adequate solutions but there is plenty of room for additional improvements.

The Cube Station can also act as a multimedia server over uPnP. The ability to stream media files from the Cube Station will not doubt impress Home Entertainment enthusiasts with digital media adapters. Gamers with Xbox 360 consoles and the like will struggle without the use of third party software such as Twonky Vision installed on another PC. If Synology could crack the Xbox 360 and allow the easy streaming of files between the two systems they would have a real winner on their hands! We tried hooking up the Cube Station and our Xbox 360 over a home network but failed miserably. Synology are looking into this and hope to bring support for Windows Media Connect in the near future. If and when this happens, look out! The Cube Station will become a powerful multimedia server for just about any environment and the system to have for Home Entertainment.

In The Labs

Performance across networks will no doubt depend largely on your equipment and network environment. With support for Gigabit lans, the Cube Station is certainly no slouch. A 690Mb movie file downloaded from the Cube Station over FTP using FlashFXP to our PC was accomplished at around 26MB/s. Dragging a 1GB iso file from the Cube Station to a PC attached to the gigabit network took 2 minutes and ten seconds. We've pinched Synology's own test results showing a more detailed comparison in RAID 0 and 5 environments, to give you an idea of what to expect for the network experts out there.

In The Labs (continued)

The Bottom Line

The Synology Cube Station is a remarkable device offering so many features in such a small package. Terabyte server, multimedia server, web developer, picture gallery, file downloader, backup solution - it really is the king of NAS appliances. With RAID 0, 1 and 5 and support for up to four 500GB hard drives, it packs a real punch for Data storage and security. The system is a joy to use and might even show Apple a thing or two about user friendliness. With Synology's handy walk through wizards and software, even an inexperienced network user will be up and sharing files, backing up data, creating picture galleries and downloading files in a matter of minutes. The unit looks smart too, with clean lines and bags of style. Everything works from the front, so no fiddling round the back with on/off buttons. The CS-406 is controlled via a brilliant admin console that is accessed from any web browser installed on your computer. We loved the ability to set Bit Torrents downloading without the need for a PC and the Photo Station for creating picture galleries. These two features are worth the admission price alone!

It's worth mentioning that Synology constantly strive to improve their products through updates and customer feedback. Firmware upgrades with new features are released regularly through their excellent website. There's even a vibrant community forum for users to share tips and tweaks. When you are spending this amount of money, it's important to know there is a company ready to support consumers with excellent customer service. Synology earn a big thumbs up in this department.

So there we have it. The Cube Station CS-406 deserves super hero status as one of the most accomplished products in its class. Ideal for home and business networks. In fact anywhere data storage and sharing is required. If you're in the market for a great NAS appliance, the Cube Station should be you're number one choice.