Introduction

Synology, a name that most will not be familiar with being a company that manufactures and focuses on home office, as well as server grade backup solutions. Being based out of Taipei, Taiwan Synology has strived to design and manufacture new generation NAS (Network Attached Storage) solutions for the home user as well as the corporate environment. Founded in the year 2000, Synology has since been manufacturing revolutionary NAS servers, now these are not your average NAS servers. They incorporate one click web hosting, FTP serving, as well as built in PHP, MySQL, and other goodies. While I was not familiar with their name myself until last year when I first reviewed their DS107, they have since then released a new line of products and were kind enough to send me a DS207 for review. This is a dual hard drive unit that features RAID 1, as well as RAID 0 support.

Packaging

The Synology DS207 comes in a box that is equipped with a carry handle which is mostly only seen on heavier or larger boxes though handy none the less for transport as well as carrying. There is a picture of the unit on the front as well as the back of the box, on the side there is a picture depicting all the features that the unit has.

Contents

Once you crack open the box there is the unit itself in its protective end caps, and then the accessories box as well. Unpacking the unit and lying it down to have a look at it I was surprised about the material it seemed to be made out of. A very smooth plastic with a glossy finish, the odd thing was that the unit was almost "sticky" which a plus as it just makes it easier to hold onto.



Opening up the box of accessories there are two SATA cables, as well as two power cables, the instruction books, a power adapter, and a driver CD. About what I would expect for a unit like this, though I will have to see how easy it is to install these little SATA and power cables as it will most likely be a tight fit.



Moving on to the unit itself it seems to be a very well constructed, very solid feeling construction. The outside of the unit is relatively plain; the bottom of the unit has a vent near the front as well as four non-slip rubber feet. Synology is printed on each side, the back of the unit has the cooling fan, two USB ports, an Ethernet jack, the DC-in jack, as well as a little reset button.



Flipping the unit around to get a look at the front going from top to bottom we can see four LED indicators to show you the status of the unit at a quick glance: Status, LAN, Disk 1, Disk 2.
Moving on down there is an e-SATA port, a button labeled "c" and then the power button.