Synology DiskStation 713+ review

Although compact, the Synology DS713+ is one of the most powerful business-oriented NAS devices on the market, having a dual-core Intel Atom D2700 processor running at 2.13GHz and 1GB of DDR3 memory. This means that it’s well-suited to running some of the most resource-hungry add-on packages that you can download and install, such as an Asterisk phone server, which involves real-time audio processing.

Other packages available to download from Synology’s Package Centre include media servers, Content Management Systems for websites, mail servers, support ticket systems and almost any other applications a business is likely to need.

Synology’s DSM operating system has one of the best user interfaces we’ve seen on a NAS, with clearly labelled and comfortably familiar icons and windows to help carry out any task you require, from setting up FTP access and backup schedules to downloading and installing additional packages. The NAS can even act as a DHCP server for the rest of your network.

Synology’s interface is the best in the business and really easy to use

There are two Gigabit Ethernet ports at the back of the NAS, as well as an eSATA port and two USB3 ports to which you can connect printers and additional storage. At the front is a USB2 port, along with a copy button that lets you transfer the contents of any connected USB drive.

There are plenty of ports, including two Gigabit Ethernet and two USB3

Installing drives is simple: just screw your hard disks into a pair of removable trays and slide them back into place. Neatly designed locks on each of the bays lets you secure the drives and prevent their removal from the NAS.

Installing hard disks is easy thanks to the removable trays

The DS713+’s installation disc includes Synology Assistant, an application that locates the DS713+ on your network and helps you install its firmware operating system DiskStation Manager (DSM), the NAS’s operating system.

DiskStation Assistant automatically finds your NAS on the network

With the operating system in place, you can format the NAS’s hard disks, create shares and install any additional applications or services you might require. Your first stop will be the Storage Manager to create a new storage volume.

Synology devices, by default, use the company’s own Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) standard, but you can also configure this two-disk NAS to use RAID1. RAID0 and JBOD options are also available, but provide no redundant storage to protect your data, so we strongly advise against using them. In our tests, we put the NAS through its paces in both SHR and RAID1 configurations. We test transfer speeds using both a standard SMB share, which is a shared folder that is accessible to all machines on your network (assuming they have appropriate access permissions), and an iSCSI target, which allows a specific computer on the network to mount and format space on the NAS as if it were a local disk.

In general, Synology Hybrid RAID is very slightly slower than RAID1, but gives you a few hundred megabytes of extra storage. The difference is fairly inconsequential in either case. Using SHR and an SMB share, we got an average large-file transfer speed of 72.6MB/s, based on a write speed of 88.9MB/s and a read speed of 56.4MB/s. Small file throughput averaged 18.2MB/s, based on a write speed of 17.8MB/s and a read speed of 18.7MB/s. These speeds are excellent, making this the fastest NAS we’ve tested. Using the NAS as an iSCSI target produced even faster speeds, with an average large-file throughput of 103.6MB/s and a small-file throughput of 62MB/s.

Using RAID1 instead of SHR doesn’t provide any significant advantages, but our SMB transfer tests averaged 72.2MB/s for large files, based on 88.6MB/s write and 55.7MB/s read speeds, and 17.9MB/s for small files, with a 17.3MB/s write and 18.5MB/s read. iSCSI speeds were averaged 106.4MB/s for large files and 55.2MB/s for small ones.

The DS713+’s built-in File Station file manager app lets you manage shared folders. Although many people will want to create a simple share that’s accessible to everyone on the network, you can also configure your shares to be hidden when people browse the network, indexed by File Station to make it easy to find specific files and folders using the NAS’s own file manager, or encrypted. You can assign different access privileges for every user you’ve created on the NAS, and for guest users. If you want to make it easily accessible to everyone on your network without requiring them to log in, you’ll want to give guest users full read/write access.

Although powerful, the DS713+ costs as much as many four-disk enclosures. Synology’s own DiskStation DS413j is cheaper at £280, while the outstanding Thecus N5550 is almost as fast and is currently cheaper. If you just need a simple file server, the DS713+’s processor power might be overkill. If, however, you want a compact two-bay NAS to use as a versatile server, or if you need the fastest transfer speeds possible, then the extra power of this DiskStation is worth the cost.