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The Synology DS210+ arrives in a strong box with the name of the company clearly highlighted. All Synology boxes are identical in design, just in various sizes. This is around half the size of the DS1010+ we recently reviewed. Windows and Macintosh cross platform support is also clearly documented.
Inside, the DS210+ is well protected between two strong pieces of cardboard and a foam cover to protect against scuffing. The packaging, as always is exceptionally good and will stand up to considerable courier abuse.
Inside, there is a Cat 6 cable, a power plug with seperate adapter, mounting screws and a manual and software disc. All the items you will need to complete your installation.
After the product is unboxed we are immediately familar with the Synology design ethic. The front of the DS210+ has a plastic fascia with a metal chassis underneath. On the front we have an eSATA port, USB port, a few status LEDs, power button and quick transfer button. At the rear is a power connector, Gigabit Ethernet port and several USB ports. There is also single 70mm fan in the center to aid hard drive cooling. The ports on the rear can be used to share extra storage or even a printer across the network.
The Synology DS210+ NAS looks great from all angles and we particularly like the Synology branding on both side panels.
To help with stability and vibration dampening Synology have installed rubber feet at the bottom of the enclosure.
Opening the chassis is easy, you simply tug backwards on the side panel and it slides open.
Inside, the two hard drives are installed by sliding them into a rack mounted tray system. The design is clean with all sensitive components sealed behind a metal cover. As this is KitGuru, we obviously need to take this apart.
The DS210+ uses a 1.06ghz Freescale mpc8533e PPC processor and there is 512MB of ram installed out of the box. Although you can upgrade this if you wanted, you will invalidate the warranty. Interestingly the DS210+ also offers 256 bit AES hardware encryption offloading from the CPU.
Installing the drives is a straightforward process and we noticed that they are seperated by a tray system to allow for direct airflow between them – they are held in place by 2 screws on each side. We are using two 1TB Samsung drives today, however the DS210+ can handle up to 2x2TB if you need more space.
JBOD, Raid 0 and Raid 1 are the available modes on offer and the DS210+ also offers RAID migration from basic to 1, as well as support for iSCSI targets.
