Product Reviews

Synology's Disk Station DS107e is a NAS enclosure, to which you add your own SATA hard disk. The DS107e can act as a central file server for all the computers on your network, but it has plenty of other useful features, too.

Disassembling the attractive white enclosure and fitting a SATA hard disk involves only a couple of screws. Configuring the DS107e isn't difficult but some tasks, such as setting access privileges for different groups of users, are harder than they should be, thanks to some poorly laid out pages in its web configuration interface.

We fitted a 300GB SATA hard disk and ran our file transfer tests. The DS107e performed well in our large file test, but was sluggish copying small files. It was suitable for sharing large files such as videos or photos but copying lots of small files was frustratingly slow. Files copied to the DS107e retained their Windows file attributes, so hidden files remain hidden. We had no trouble sharing the contents of a USB flash drive or an eSATA hard disk across our network. The DS107e can

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also share a USB printer across your network, saving you the expense of a dedicated Ethernet printer, although documents can take a minute or two longer than usual to spool.

We had no trouble using the DS107e as an iTunes music server, although it wouldn't recognise DRM-protected music bought from the iTunes Store - an ability reserved for Apple's own products. The DS107e can also be used as a Universal Plug and Play media server, and we had no trouble playing back video using a PC or an UPnP network media player. We saw no blurring, skipped scenes or sync issues in the fast-paced action sequences of our DVD film.

The DS107e can be used to download files from a website or using BitTorrent while the PC is turned off. It can also be used to share photos organised into albums, but there's little advantage in using it over a photo-sharing service such as Flickr, especially as you can't import existing albums from a program such as Picasa or Photoshop Album. If you need to access your files remotely, the FTP server is highly customisable. You can control how much bandwidth is consumed by FTP uploads, which is essential if your ISP enforces broadband usage caps.

The DS107e's iTunes server is one of the few we've seen on a NAS device that works. But its slow small files performance is disappointing. It isn't for you if you regularly need quick access to your files. At £167 including VAT, it isn't particularly cheap either, especially if you don't already have a spare SATA hard disk. If you have no need for its distinguishing features then Maxtor's Shared Storage II is a better-value and slightly faster NAS.