Synology introduces high performance DiskStation DS214

Arguably the go-to brand for NAS among the KitGuru faithful, this company never seems to stop innovating and developing its already popular product line-up. Today, we're hearing word of a brand new, high-performance product at a sensible price. KitGuru stands by with a pair of drives. You know. For back up.

If you ask someone from Synology what the company is all about, they'll probably tell you that their prime focus is on finding reliable and affordable ways for home users and small/medium sized businesses to back up their data – safely and efficiently – across multiple platforms and make that data available on-the-go.

In most cases, they have succeeded – but how will the DiskStation DS214 fair in a tough market against the likes of Thecus and QNap?

According to Chad Chang, Synology's product manager, “The DS214 is built to deliver optimal multi-tasking experience at best price/performance ratio. Powered by a dual core 1.066 GHz CPU and 512 MB DDR3 memory, the DS214 outperforms its predecessor and delivers an average read and write speed of 111 MB/sec and 105 MB/sec respectively under RAID 1 configuration in a Windows environment”.

Areas where Chad is expecting a big boost in performance, centres on the improvement of floating point maths.

“Huh?” we hear you cry.  No, we weren't sure either, but Chad explained, “The built-in Floating-Point Unit further enhances the overall capability of the main CPU, which makes the DS214 particularly good when it comes to speeding up thumbnail processing and enhancing photo viewing at different resolutions”.

But Chad did not stop there, also telling us about other speed improvements, “With an encryption engine, it also offloads the encryption calculation task away from the main CPU, helping improve file transfer speeds and the DS214 is equipped with two USB 3.0 ports that offer 10 times faster file transfer rates than USB 2.0 for more efficient data transfer to external hard drives.  Designed with both safety and convenience in mind, DS214 contains the brand new tool-less hard drive trays, allowing users to integrate 3.5 inch hard drives without a screwdriver. Front mount hot-swappable hard drives are available on the DS214 to simplify hard drive replacement and maintenance”.

The device will run DiskStation Manager 4.3 and is expected to be way under the £220 mark when it hits stores.

To summarise  Chad's technical info, the Synology DiskStation DS214 offers:-

• Dual Core CPU with Floating-Point Unit
• Excellent Reading/Writing Performance over 100MB/s
• 512MB RAM for Increased Multi-Tasking Power
• Features SuperSpeed USB3.0
• Hot-swappable & Tool-Less Hard Drive Tray Design

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You can find full details over here.
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KitGuru says: No matter how hard you try, when it comes to buying anything like a NAS box, you do find yourself wondering what Synology has available at the same kind of price.

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