Synology USB Station 2 Review

It’s all too easy to find that your storage has got out of control with adding additional capacity never being cheaper. It’s at this point that you might consider looking at a NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution to allow your data to become more accessible and organised. Synology was founded in 2000 and are dedicated to developing high-performance, reliable, versatile, and environmentally-friendly Network Attached Storage (NAS) products.

Today we take a look at the Synology USB Station 2 which is the baby of the Synology NAS range. This small device might not feature RAID or data redundancy as it offers no internal capacity for hard drive storage but instead as the name suggests allows external USB hard drives to be used. It does however feature Gigabit connectivity and support for upto 2x 3TB hard drives, It also opens up many options that you can use your attached USB devices for including the ability to use it as media server for your music or a print server to allow your printer to be shared across all your networked PCs.

Specifications

Hardware

• CPU Frequency : 800MHz
• Hardware Encrypted Engine
• Memory : DDR2 128MB
• External HDD Interface : USB 2.0 Port X 2
• Max External Capacity : 2X 3TB external USB hard drives
• Size (HxWxD) : 46 X 122 X 111 mm
• Weight : 147g
• LAN : Gigabit X1
• System Fan : 70x70x25mm x1
• Wireless Support
• Noise Level : 21.0 dB(A)
• Power Recovery
• AC Input Power Voltage : 100V to 240V AC
• Power Frequency : 50 / 60Hz, Single Phase
• Power Consumption : 5W
• Operating Temperature : 5°C to 35°C (40°F to 95°F)
• Storage Temperature : -10°C to 70°C (15°F to 155°F)
• Relative Humidity : 5% to 95% RH
• Maximum Operating Altitude : 10,000 feet
• Certification : FCC Class B, CE Class B, BSMI Class B
• Warranty : 2 Years

Applications

File Browser
File Station
FTP Server

• Bandwidth Control, Custom FTP Passive Port Range, Anonymous FTP, Transfer Log
• Supported Video Format : 3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, FLV, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, QT, WMV, XviD, RM, RMVB, VOB, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR, WMA3
  User can click and download the following video formats: RM, RMVB, VOB, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR, WMA3, but not able to play it in Photo Station as compressed Flash video

Audio Station

• Supported Audio Format (USB Mode) : AAC, FLAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WMA VBR
• Supported Audio Format (Streaming Mode) : MP3, M4A, M4B
• Supported Playlist Format : M3U, WPL
• Internet Radio : SHOUTcast, Radioio

DLNA/UPnP Media Server

• PS3/Xbox 360 Support
• Supported Audio Format : AAC, FLAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, PCM, WAV, WMA, WMA VBR, WMA PRO, WMA
• Supported Video Format : 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, DVR-MS, ISO, M2T, M2TS, M4V, MKV, MP4, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, MTS, MOV, QT, SWF, TP, TRP, TS, VOB, WMV, XviD
• Supported Image Format : BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, ICO, PNG, PSD, TIF (tiff), UFO
• Supported Subtitles Format : srt, psb, smi, ass, ssa, sub, idx, ifo

Download Station

• Supported Download Protocols : BT/HTTP/FTP/NZB/eMule
• Custom BitTorrent Port Range
• BitTorrent / eMule Bandwidth Control

iTunes Server

• Supported Audio Format : MP3, M4A, M4P, WAV, AIF
• Supported Video Format : M4V, MOV, MP4
• Supported Playlist Format : M3U, WPL

Print Server

• Max Printer # : 2
• Printing Protocols : LPR, CIFS, AppleTalk, AirPrint, Multi Functional Print Server (Only PostScript USB printers are supported in MAC environment)

iPhone/Android Applications

• DS audio
• DS file
• DS finder (Only available on iPhone)

General

Networking Protocols

• CIFS
• AFP
• FTP
• WebDAV
• Telnet
• SSH

File System

• EXT4
• EXT3
• FAT (External Disk Only)
• NTFS (External Disk Only)

File Sharing Capability

• Max User Accounts : 32
• Max Concurrent Connections : 32

Backup Solutions

• Desktop Backup (using Synology Data Replicator 3 or Apple Time Machine backup application)
• Time Machine Backup (Mac)

Security

• FTP over SSL/TLS
• IP Auto-Block
• HTTPS Connection

Management

• Email Notification
• DDNS Support
• IPv6 Support
• PPPoE
• Custom Management UI HTTP/HTTPS Ports

Utilities

• Synology Assistant
• Synology Data Replicator

Supported Clients

• Windows 2000 onward
• Mac OSX 10.3 onward
• Ubuntu 9.04 onward

Supported Browsers

• Chrome
• Internet Explorer : 7, 8, 9
• Firefox : 3.5, 3.6
• Safari (MAC) : 4, 5

Supported Mobile Devices (Photo Station, File Station)

• iPhone OS 2.2.1 onward
• Android OS 1.5 onward
• Windows Mobile (IE Mobile or Opera 9.0 onward)
• Symbian OS 9.1, S60 3rd Edition onward
• Language : Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese Brazil, Portuguese European, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish