Buying choice Synology DS410J or DS409 vs Qnap TS410

[DrNeutron]

Hi Folks,

First of all, great site, its really the definitive location for NAS info on the net.

I've narrowed my choices for a 4 disk Raid 5 NAS down to three options and could do with some advice to make my purchase choice,

• Synology DS409 £342
• QNAP TS-410 £ 303
• Synology DS410j £263

My use of the device will be as follows:-

• Streaming of movies to a Mac Mini running Plex
• File share of digital photos, to be used a working drive over GigE (Windows + AFP)
• TimeMachine backup of 2 Macs
• Backup target for a Vista PC

Feature wise from what I can tell from the online demos and the forums Qnap and Synology are pretty much evens. In terms of performance however its hard to judge as I've not seen an independent test of the TS410 or the DS410j yet, any educated guesses how these boxes will stack up against each other.. From the vendors data it seems Synology might be quicker but its might be hard to say these are equivalent test cases..
http://www.qnap.com/images/products/comparison/Comparison_TS419P.html
http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS410j/perf.php

Do you think the DS410j will be ok for digital photo serving, avg file size around 10Mb, as a working drive or should I just pay the money and go for the DS409 ? I'm a pretty serious photographer so working with this data is very important.

Qnap are ahead in expansion ports and the easy to replace drives, does anyone know what the inside of the Synology 410j looks like yet ?

Finally, the last critical factor is Mac support, any feedback on the TimeMachine and AFP support from the vendors, both say they do it, but in practice is one implementation better than the other ?

Many thanks,

Gordon

 

[thiggins]

A NAS' CPU is probably the biggest factor in its performance. All three of your candidates use the Marvell Kirkwood. The TS-410 and DS410j use the 800 MHz version, the DS409 uses the 1.2 GHz flavor.

You can use the Seagate BlackArmors as an example of the performance difference. The 440 uses the 1.2 GHz Kirkwood, while the 110 and 220 use the 800 MHz. RAID 0 filecopy write is 27 MB/s for the 440 vs. 20 for the 110 and 220. You can use the NAS Charts to look at the other benchmarks.

Any of the products will work for your applications. Just depends on how fast you want large file transfers to be. I can't speak to the Time Machine issue. Check the QNAP and Synology forums. I've seen posts complaining of problems with multi-user Time Machine use.

 

[sphereboy]

i'm looking at the DS410j after looking over the 3 options. What do you guys recommend.? any thoughts.

 

[thiggins]

You might want to take a look at this thread
Synology DS-410j video streaming problems HELP!

 

[TanGu]

Finally, the last critical factor is Mac support, any feedback on the TimeMachine and AFP support from the vendors, both say they do it, but in practice is one implementation better than the other ?

Many thanks,

Gordon

It seem the support for Time Machine is there and working, and there is a faq:
http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/How_to_setup_your_QNAP_NAS_with_Apple_Time_Machine

Personnaly i need to backup 3 Mac, will that work... we will see

 

[nightviper]

Same position, but comparing either Qnap's TS-410|419p vs Synology's DS410. Would love to hear any users' experience on any of these.

DrNeutron, how's your experience w/ running Mini + Plex, in terms of the Mini's startup times, or do you not turn it off at all? I have used Synology 207+, with an AppleTV + XBMC combo, but was wondering how a mini + Plex would perform.

Thanks a bunch.

 

[TanGu]

Same position, but comparing either Qnap's TS-410|419p vs Synology's DS410. Would love to hear any users' experience on any of these.

DrNeutron, how's your experience w/ running Mini + Plex, in terms of the Mini's startup times, or do you not turn it off at all? I have used Synology 207+, with an AppleTV + XBMC combo, but was wondering how a mini + Plex would perform.

Thanks a bunch.

Hi there. Since i have the 419P streaming to my mac mini i can answer you on this.

I use Plex too with the mac mini, it's the 2Ghz model with 2 gig ram. I can play 1080P .MKV files without any problem (over 10 gig file) over 1GB ethernet (no wireless!). The only problem i have with plex is that i have to offset by 2 seconds the audio playback so it can be in sinc with the lips. The remote control that come with iMac are working very good with plex and the mini...

 

[pmcd]

It seem the support for Time Machine is there and working, and there is a faq:
http://wiki.qnap.com/wiki/How_to_setup_your_QNAP_NAS_with_Apple_Time_Machine

Personnaly i need to backup 3 Mac, will that work... we will see

That is for Leopard (10.5) and not Snow Leopard. I wonder if it will continue to work. In any case Synology officially supports Time Machine as far as I can tell. QNAP seems to be less clear on that.

philip