STORING the vast amounts of media files and cataloging them has become a priority for me and I believe it is that way for many. It is amazing how all the photos and videos pile up taking up gigabytes and gigabytes of storage. Part of my problem is I’m also not a very tidy or meticulous person when it comes to filing. I’ve got hundreds if not thousands of photos just sitting in folders that are automatically created by my Canon dSLR’s programming. I never bothered to tag them with additional EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) information so I can easily sort and search. As it is, my best hope of finding files is to search using creation date.

I have been using an external 500GB Western Digital box for some time and the other internal hard drives coming to over a terabyte worth of storage capacity but realise that to optimise my storage I need to get the files into a common store that can be accessed by my many systems. Having direct access to videos or photos on my XBox 360, Playstation 3, Notebook or even my BlackBerry would be ideal. So, I liked the idea of a NAS (Network Addressed Storage) device but I wanted a very small footprint. I also wanted a device that would not suck a lot of juice and in the process exhaust additional heat into my place. 

I ruled out (for the time being) a Windows Home Server and chose a box and brand I am familiar with. This brand was also highly recommended by a good friend of mine. The brand, Synology has built-up quite a name and reputation in the NAS arena. In fact, I had the opportunity to hands on with an older unit, the DS209 reviewed here. So, when something even smaller came along with the powerful built-in Synology operating system I was thrilled. The DS409slim is an awesome compact little box that is smaller about the size of a compact box of Kleenex tissues. It has 4 drive bays to accommodate 2.5-inch notebook hard drives. So,with the current 2.5-inch capacity drives you can fit 2-gigabytes inside by using 4 pieces of 500-gigabyte drives without running RAID 1.

Thanks to Western Digital for helping me out with two pieces of the Blue WD5000EVT 500-gigabyte drives. I was looking at something more Enterprise but the box is so cramped that the slightly taller Black Western Digital series 2.5-inch hard disks wouldn’t fit properly. So, I had accept the fact and use the Blue series.

Here’s a photo documentary of the DS409slim.

Overview

 

 

 

 

External Connectors & Controls

The DS409slim is a NAS device so it naturally has a 1-Gigabit ethernet port but in order to allow for expansion capacity outside the four 2.5-inch drive bays the unit has an eSATA port and two USB ports. One of the USB ports is on the rear while the other is on the front. The front of the unit has all the indicator lighting for power status, hard drive activity and local area network activity.

 

 

 

 

Internal Storage

The DS409slim gets its name from the fact it uses the slimmest profile 2.5-inch hard drives for storage. This limits your hard drive selection. The drive cage is made of plastic but that is forgiveable because this was not a device targeted at businesses. For that reason the drive cages are also not lockable.

 

 

 

 

 

Internal

The DS409slim is basically a purposed computer system with the necessary ‘Server’ style operating system capable of running blogging tools and even more. I’ll look at the DiskStation software in greater detail in part two of this review. For now take a look at the internal setup.

 

 

 

 

It took less than a minute to fix the 2 pieces of 2.5-inch drives to the plastic removable trays and slotting them in was not a complicated affair.

The only way to configure the DS409slim is to connect via the assigned IP Address. If your network has an assigned IP address you open your Internet Browser and input the IP Address. Immediately you should have access to the secure login asking for user name and password.

 

 

 

 

You’ll be happy to know the list of included applications is not the end. It is possible to install additional applications on top of those included. Included:

• Internet Photo, Video and Blog Sharing
• BitTorrent
• FTP
• HTTP
• eMULE download

If you need more applications just visit the Synology forum and website for a list of third party applications that have been tested.

The DS409slim is now available in Singapore, previously it was not a model carried by the local reseller/agent. The product has a Recommended Retail Price (RRP) of SG$668 excluding hard drives. That may sound a little expensive but given the entire array of software that is included and the compact nature it is a small price to pay.

Available from:  Memory World (S) Pte Ltd and Storage Studio Pte Ltd at Sim Lim Square

Thanks to Western Digital for supplying the pair of test hard drives on short notice. The WD5000BEVT drives are available from all Western Digital resellers for SG$125 each.