Synology Diskstation DS411 Slim Review (2.5 inch NAS)

1. Introduction2. Synology Diskstation DS4113. The DiskManager Operating System4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Acoustics, Temperatures and Power Drain6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

KitGuru has reviewed almost all of the Synology NAS range released in the last year, but today we are looking at something slightly different – the Diskstation DS411 Slim, which is a compact, high performance little unit solely designed for 2.5 inch drives.

The DS411 Slim is created for users who want to reduce their carbon footprint, and not have a large NAS system hogging space in their room (it is only 120mm x 105mm x 142mm). With exceptionally low power demands and minimal noise, could this make the ideal partner as a home NAS system?

The unit may be physically diminutive however Synology haven't compromised with the design as it accepts four hard drives, and offers a variety of raid settings.

Many people get confused with the Synology naming methodology, but on paper it is actually really easy to understand.

“+” series = performance range.
standard series (no digit) = mixture of performance and storage.
“j” series = entry level consumer, concerned about capacity but not performance.

DS = Diskstation
RS = Rackstation
First Digit = number of bays
Second numbers = year for the release

Therefore we can see that the DS411 Slim is a member of the standard series of Diskstation units and can hold 4 drives and was made for the year 2011. It has support for up to 4x 1TB 2.5 inch drives, giving a maximum storage capacity of 4TB.

Product overview:

• Small Footprint
• Flexible RAID Data Protection
• Cross Platform File Sharing & Backup
• DLNA Certified Media Server
• Cool and Quiet

The DS411 Slim is shipped in a stylish white box with the name of the product on the front along with some of the basic specifications.

Inside, the bundle contains a high quality LAN cable, power adapter and cable, literature on the product and a software disc which contains the PAT firmware. There are also some drive mounting screws included.

The DS411 is a tiny little NAS system finished in a glossy piano black finish. Synology also include a rather attractive little stand for the base unit. The DS411 Slim weighs 0.66kg.

Along the front is a row of status lights which indicate drive and network activity. There is also a USB 2.0 port on the front.

The side panels have the brand name embossed into them, and underneath is a small cooling fan to suck cold air up, and over the internal drives.

The rear of the DS411 is home to four plastic removable bays for drive installation. There is also an eSATA port, a USB 2.0 port, a power connector, reset button and 10/100/1000 lan port here. At the side of the chassis is the power button, and a quick access ‘USBcopy button'.

Internally there is a 1.6ghz Intel ATOM processor along with 256MB of DDR3 memory to run the DiskManager Operating System.

With the optional stand fitted, the unit feels more steady on a desk, it also looks rather attractive.

Regular readers of KitGuru may want to skip this page as we have covered the DiskManager Operating System many times before. If however you are new to Synology, then this page is going to be of particular interest. This dedicated software is a fully multitasking operating system.

Synology bundle software called ‘Synology Assistant' which is used to locate all Synology NAS systems on the network. As the image above shows, the DS411 Slim was found and it shows a ‘not installed' status, meaning the PAT file needs to be installed.

Synology NAS systems work in a slightly different manner to other networked storage devices you may have used. A ‘pat' file needs to be installed for the operating system to work correctly, this is available on the supplied disc, or from the Synology download site. It is always best looking at the official download site first, as updates are posted here on a fairly regular basis. The install procedure takes about 5 minutes from start to finish.

Once this is finished, you can control the NAS from a browser panel, via the IP address of the product, or simply by double clicking the NAS name in the Synology Assistant software window. All of the main browsers work fine, such as Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

The Synology software supports, JBOD, Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 5+Spare, Raid 6 and Raid 10. The image above shows a single Intel SSD drive installed, so only the most simple file structures are available.

Wireless dongles can be bought and used with the DS411 slim, for a full list of models, visit the Synology support site.

It is important to note that if you are using more than one Synology NAS system within the same network, then the products will need to be manually set with individual names. All Synology NAS systems default to a name of ‘Diskstation' or ‘Rackstation'.

Once the NAS system is set up with a shared folder, it will be available via the Windows network. Shared folders can of course be mapped to volume identifiers for easy access. The Synology NAS systems also offer full Macintosh networking support and as we use a cross platform network at KitGuru, we always check the NAS units with OS 10.6x. The operation is always faultless.

Once a volume is in place, shared folders can be configured for access from a variety of platforms. The software supports a maximum user count of 2048 with 256 user groups and 256 shared folders. It also allows for up to 128 concurrent connections over CIFS, AFP or FTP.

The DS411 Slim has full support for Jumbo frames as seen in the image above. This can help with larger file transfers, but the rest of the network needs to support it, so be careful or speeds can be negatively impacted.

The Diskmanager software offers drive monitoring panels as well as cache enabling for improved performance with specific hard drives. HDD hibernation, S.M.A.R.T. and Dynamic Bad Sector Mapping are supported.

There is a plethora of media support available from DSM 3.0.

Photo Station

• Supported Image Format: BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, RAW (arw, srf, sr2, dcr, k25, kdc, cr2, crw, nef, mrw, ptx, pef, raf, 3fr, erf, mef, mos, orf, rw2, dng, x3f)•
• Supported Video Format : 3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, FLV, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, QT, WMV, XviD, RM, RMVB, VOB, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR, WMA3

Download Station

• Supported Download Protocols: BT/HTTP/FTP/NZB/eMule
• Custom BitTorrent Port Range
• BitTorrent / eMule Bandwidth Control

Audio Station

• Supported Audio Format: (USB Mode) AAC, FLAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WMA VBR; (Streaming Mode) MP3, M4A, M4B
• Supported Playlist Format: M3U, WPL
• Internet Radio: SHOUTcast, Radioio

DLNA/UPnP Media Server

• DLNA Certified
• PS3/Xbox 360 Support
• Supported Audio Format: AAC, FLAC, M4A, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, PCM, WAV, WMA, WMA VBR, WMA PRO, WMA Lossless
• Supported Video Format: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DAT, DivX, DVR-MS, ISO, M2T, M2TS, M4V, MKV, MP4, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, MTS, MOV, QT, SWF, TP, TRP, TS, VOB, WMV, XviD, RV30, RV40, AC3, AMR, WMA3
• Supported Image Format: BMP, JPG (jpe, jpeg), GIF, ICO, PNG, PSD, TIF (tiff), UFO, RAW (arw, srf, sr2, dcr, k25, kdc, cr2, crw, nef, mrw, ptx, pef, raf, 3fr, erf, mef, mos, orf, rw2, dng, x3f)

IT staff and system administrators can configure messaging, by email or by SMS message. For those who seek maximum security and backup support, the system can also be hooked directly into a UPS device.

We are testing the Synology Diskstation DS411 slim within our gigabit network which is pretty much as good as you will get for a home or small office environment. It is a mixed network with several 1GBit switches for ultimate performance.

Reference Test PC:
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 @ 4ghz
Storage: Kingston 128GB SSD V+ Series
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Gene
Graphics: Geforce GTX285 2GB
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600mhz @2000mhz
Network: 2x Belkin 16 Port Gigabit Switches
Operating System: Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate

Our local PC has a fast Kingston SSD as the main drive and we are using it to ensure no bottlenecks occur on this side of the testing. Our PC is hooked up to the network and we transfer a 10GB MKV file from the PC to the NAS systems. All NAS systems are using dual drive mechanical Raid 0 configurations.

When writing, we recorded an average rate of around 52 MB/s. CPU usage spiked between 40 percent and 60 percent. Memory usage was steady just below 20 percent.

When reading from the NAS we managed to achieve 95 MB/s transfer rates, which is fantastic for such a small device. CPU use would peak around 70 percent as the packets were streamed. Memory usage held steady just under 20 percent.

Next we created a folder of files, 500mb/s in size with a variety of data , from small database documents to larger jpgs and bmps.

Performance fell in line with the RS411 unit at 44 MB/s write and 73 MB/s read. Great results.

We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Noise was measured from half a meter away with two 500GB drives installed.

The DS411, with drives installed barely registered on our test equipment. It is almost silent and the noise of the mechanical drives is actually louder than the fan system.

With 2 drives installed we only registered 15 watts under load, falling back to 9 watts under hibernation mode.

Time to test the cooling system. Our room ambient temperatures are 23c which is a reasonable temperature for an air conditioned environment.

The drives held within 1c and 6c above ambient. The single cooling fan spins between 500 rpm and 1,500 rpm depending on the internal heat.

The Synology Diskstation DS411 Slim is a rather unusual NAS device and one that we feel will appeal to home users who have several spare 2.5 inch drives in storage. Many enthusiast users will have recently upgraded laptop systems with solid state drives, so the older redundant drives can be easily used for networked storage.

The desire of ownership is boosted by the incredibly low power overhead, demanding a minuscule 9 watts when inactive for a period of time. Even under load, the consumption only rises to a maximum of 15 watts which is sure to be a selling point to those people who wish to improve their carbon footprint.

On a performance level, the DS411 Slim might be expected to struggle, however this is not the case with speeds up to 95 MB/s documented across our well configured gigabit network. RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 5+ Spare, RAID 6, and RAID 10 are all supported out of the box. RAID 5 can even be expanded by adding a hard drive on the fly.

One of the strongest selling points of any Synology NAS system is the true multitasking DiskManager Operating System, which responds faster than any other software suite in the networking sector, even with the modest onboard Intel hardware. The interface is truly useful to an experienced user, yet it is uncluttered enough to make sense to a networking newbie. Synology always earn bonus points for their software implementation.

UK Pricing for the DS411 Slim is extremely competitive, with some stores such as MISCO offering the unit without drives for £250 inc vat.

Pros:

• cost effective
• impressive performance – up to 95MB/s in our tests
• silent
• NAS operating system is the best on the market
• very attractive design
• small physical footprint
• tiny power demands

Cons:

• specifically designed for 2.5 inch drives

KitGuru says: If you have spare 2.5 inch drives at home gathering dust, this is an ideal way to put them to good use.

Become a Patron!