Synology USB Station 2 review

The missing features include a web server, Photo Station, Surveillance Station (IP camera monitoring), network backup and Windows ACL and Domain support, but we can’t see many people complaining at this price. There’s also no RAID capability, as you might expect, and no way to back up the contents of one connected disk to another. You still get Data Replicator 3 for backing up files and folders from your computers onto the USB Station’s disks, and support for Apple Time Machine.

Those with iPhones or Android phones can use the DS Audio app for streaming music from the USB Station 2, while the DLNA/UPnP support means you can stream video, photos and music to Xbox 360s, PS3s and other devices.

File transfer speeds usually depend on which disks you connect, but it’s the file system you choose that will dictate performance with the USB Station 2. Most people will want to connect an existing external disk with their files already on it, so we first tested with an NTFS-formatted disk. Fortunately, the USB Station can share these immediately without requiring a format, but performance was well below our expectations. Large files were read at just 10.6MB/s and written at 6MB/s. Small files were written and read at 3.5MB/s. This is disappointing compared to even Synology’s cheapest Disk Station enclosure.

We reformatted our Freecom Mobile CLS disk to EXT3, and were rewarded with a large-file read speed of 22MB/s and a read speed of 19.6MB/s – almost four times faster than with NTFS. Small files were read at a faster 5.5MB/s but – oddly – written more slowly at 2.2MB/s. We also tried formatting the disk as EXT4, but performance remained the same.

Obviously, the USB Station 2 makes sense if you already have one or two USB2 disks and want to share their contents among multiple PCs. The facts that it draws just 5W and is completely silent are two other advantages over a Disk Station. However, you’ll see poor performance unless you reformat your disk to EXT3 or EXT4. This is inconvenient if your disk is full of files, and also means it can’t be connected directly to a Windows PC or laptop as you need extra software to read these formats. If none of this bothers you and don’t need any of the USB Station 2’s ‘missing’ features, it’s great value.