Synology DiskStation DS110+ review

The DiskStation DS110+ is Synology’s premium single-bay NAS device aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. The price doesn’t include a hard disk, but the DS110+ supports 2.5in or 3.5in drives up to 2TB in size, and installation is simple. The side of the plastic chassis unscrews at the rear, slides off and the drive simply screws into place on the mount inside.

Two rear-facing USB ports accompany the main Gigabit Ethernet socket at the rear, and there are eSATA and USB ports at the front. These ports provide an easy way to share devices such as hard drives or printers across a network, upload data from connected drives, or just back up the DS110+’s contents.

Setup is gloriously refined. Synology’s Assistant software swiftly locates the DS110+ on the network and then runs through the process of uploading and installing the Linux-based operating system on the mounted hard disk. Via an 802.11n wireless connection, the Synology was up and running in around 12 minutes.

Synology’s DiskStation Manager 3 software is a far cry from your average web-based front-end. With its window-based approach it’s more akin to a swish Linux desktop interface, and even has multi-tasking support. It’s gloriously easy to navigate: an ever-present search box makes it easy to find the feature you need, while a taskbar lets you view and switch between open windows.

The DS110+ is capable of handling multiple users (up to 256 individuals) with passwords, quotas and separate access permissions for shared folders, and it’s also possible to limit access to the various features, including FTP access, the file explorer or BitTorrent client.

Scheduling backups is simple, too, and it’s possible to backup to locally connected USB disks, other Synology NAS devices or Amazon’s S3 cloud-based storage. Regardless of your needs, the wizard-based setup routines make it easier to setup than any NAS device we’ve ever encountered.

Among other features, the DS110+ has hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption to keep sensitive data away from prying eyes, plus support for network-attached IP cameras via Synology’s Surveillance Station plugin, and iSCSI connection.

Performance, meanwhile, is pretty impressive. Via the SMB protocol the DS110+ wrote large files at 57.4MB/sec and read them back at 99.7MB/sec. Small files were more of a strain, with read and write speeds dropping to 12.8MB/sec and 8.5MB/sec respectively, but overall it’s an impressive performance.

That, coupled with fantastic ease of use and a comprehensive range of features, goes a long way towards justifying the DS110+’s high price. If you don’t need the hardware encryption features, though, you can save cash by opting for one of the more affordable members of the Synology range.