Testing

Test Rig

Methodology

Testing a NAS drive usually only involves checking out the features of the drive, but since the DS710+ is almost identical in features to the DS210, we only covered that briefly. The real reason for having the 710 over the 210, is that purportedly its much faster at transferring information. For that test we will forgo the usual synthetic benchmarks and instead test each NAS device in RAID 0, and 1 configurations by transferring different sizes of files to them and timing them with a stop watch.

The files sent were:

• 41 x 48.2MB
• 1 x 700MB

NB.Due to the fact that I don’t have a Gigabit network setup, performance results will be hampered. For the full Synology NAS experience you do need a Gigabit network setup.

Results

Interestingly the DS710 performed slightly better under RAID 1 than RAID 0 which is a little unexpected. Chances are this is down to a limitation in speed from the hard drive sending the information as that drive’s read speed is the maximum rate that either NAS drive could transfer data at.

With that in mind, the DS210j is clearly outclassed, performing far worse than the DS710, especially under a RAID 1 configuration. This gap in performance would likely increase, the more data you pushed through at one time.

NB. It must be noted that Synology plan to release a new firmware for this device in the next few weeks that is said to increase performance even further.

Cost

Unfortunately for anyone thinking that any speed boost is worth a bit of extra money, you may balk at the sheer cost of the DS710+ from Synology. Stready folks; it’s a whopping £400 on average, and that’s without any included drives.