It might surprise you to know that the bears have an extensive computer network. Part of this consists of a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. The initial purchase by Tiny Ice Bear was of an InfraNT (now Netgear) ReadyNAS NV+. While it seemed a good purchase at the time, Curly was soon moved to comment about the excessive noise its cooling fans made and the sloth with which it copied files.
Subsequently, after a rather short career, the bears were greeted by a smell not dissimilar to singed fur. This unfortunate odour preceded the ReadyNAS burning out its power supply - interrupting a very interesting TV programme when it tripped the fuse. It also (rather unfortunately) took some of the bear's files with it. Since the device was at the heart of Commercial Curly's stock trading operations, a replacement was imperative.
Due to the shortcomings of the previous device, Tiny Ice Bear was charged with ensuring that the replacement was both quiet and fast. Extensive research revealed that the Synology Disk Station DS508 satisfied the criteria. Only the steep price gave cause for a moment's hesitation, but Commercial Curly provided the funding and the purchase was made. Tiny Ice Bear made his purchase from the Storage Depot (UK based) and found them to be speedy in sending the device out.
The DS508 can take up to 5 drives in its hot-swappable bays, and comes with 2 Gigabit LAN ports. It has a very nice software suite, providing easy-to-use management facilities as well as photo, web, file and surveillance camera support through its Disk Station Manager 3 software. It can provide an iTunes server - and through its Audio Station software can directly play back music through USB connected speakers. The DS508 can support access via pretty much all the major standards - including Samba, FTP and AFP.
Perhaps most importantly of all, it shows a clean pair of heels to its competitors in the speed stakes. The very useful SmallNetBuilder site gives a very good review to the DS508 while PC Pro magazine also gave the DS508 a good review - adding it to its "A List" of the best equipment (now replaced by another Synology unit).
However, all of this speed would be less than useful if the device sounded like a Jumbo Jet at takeoff while running (it tends to play havoc with the bear's naps). Pleasingly, the DS508 is virtually silent - and certainly impossible to notice in a room with a couple of computers. The bears have once again been enjoying their naps without interruption.
The Synology supports a number of options for disk organisation - Tiny Ice Bear opted for RAID 5. He re-used the 4 Seagate 250Gb drives from the now dead InfraNT NAS - and they were easily put into the Synology's drive carriers. After initial setup and creation of a volume, the DS508 was good to go. Tiny Ice Bear found that disabling the "Guest" access was a useful move - as otherwise Mac OS X would complain of permission problems. This seemed to occur as the OS preferred to connect using the Guest access rather than the properly authorised accounts. After this initial hiccup, the whole thing went very smoothly indeed.
Following the unhappiness from the rest of the bears when the InfraNT expired, Tiny Ice Bear has acquired a Maxtor One Touch USB 2.0 backup drive to use the Synology's ability to backup to an external drive to ensure full safety of the files (the InfraNT also supported this - Tiny Ice Bear just never quite got round to setting it up...). The NAS is also hooked up to an APC uninterruptible power supply to help ensure a safe shutdown in the event of a power failure - a useful safety precaution with any NAS.
A NAS box may not be the most exciting thing to buy - but the DS508 makes the whole setup experience very painless and the software is a joy to use. Taking into account the speed, build quality, excellent software and silence from the device, the price is a lot easier to bear. Synology also make a range of cheaper machines that also use the Disk Station Manager 3 software, should your needs be more modest than those of the bears.