SmallNetBuilder

Feature Run-Through

Jim Buzbee recently reviewed the Synology DS-106e NAS and liked it. If you are seriously considering a Synology product, be sure to read his review as well as this one. Since the CS-406 uses a superset of the firmware in the DS-106e, the CS-406 does everything that the DS-106e does, and it also adds some tricks that multiple hard drives perform such as RAID 0, 1, and 5.

The CS-406 chassis is 6.5" x 9.125" x 7.25" with 4 hard drives in it. It weighs 10.5 pounds. The inside is metal and the cosmetics are plastic. Figure 3 shows a disassembled back view of the CS-406. Once the 4 thumb screws are removed, the top and side covers come loose and can then be pulled off. Then, the back of the CS-406 can be flipped down.

Interestingly, it has an 80 mm fan in back instead of a 120 mm. Although the unit probably doesn't need the extra air (it never blew hot air when I was testing it), it did have the extra space, and a bigger fan would have allowed the rotor to spin more slowly.

Figure 3: Cover Off

To connect the CS-406 to your network, plug the power and the ethernet in the back of the unit. Then, hold down the power button in front of the unit. The power for the CS-406 is supplied by a laptop-style external brick. This configuration prevents the CS-406 from drawing more power than it requires, a problem that exists with the DIY. When the CS-406 powers up, each drive spins up individually. Like enterprise RAID systems, drives are individually controlled to draw the minimum amount of electricity that the job requires.

Figure 4: Back of CS-406

The front panel has activity lights for each hard drive, for the LAN traffic, and for the status of the CS-406. To start the NAS, hold down the power button for a couple seconds until the blue light in back begins to flash, indicating that startup has begun. To power down the CS-406, reverse the process: hold down the power button until the unit beeps, indicating that the safe shutdown of the Linux system has begun. The "one-drive-at-a-time" startup and shutdown requires a minute or two. I found the Synology CS-406 push-button interface reassuring and intuitive to use.

Figure 5: Front of CS-406

Synology appears to sell two versions of the CS-406: a "bring-your-own-drive" model that goes for just over $600 and a CS-406e model with four 250-gigabyte SATA drives that goes for around $900. Even with four 3.5" hard drives I was pleased with how quiet the CS-406 was in my office. The drives emitted spin up/down noise but you could only hear it if the unit were on the desk next to yours. As far as I can tell, the fan was inaudible.

I did realize one thing about my home office server as a result of reviewing this product: the noise I attributed to my server hard drives really came from the CPU fan that kept my Pentium 3.2 from melting down. Since the CS-406 has no CPU fan, it has an added advantage of being quiet.