Since we have thoroughly explored Synology's DSM OS in previous Synology NAS reviews, we will only refer to those settings you will have to deal with at least once.

Update & Restore

Updating the OS is a piece of cake, and the best part is that you will be notified as soon as a new update becomes available. You can also backup the NAS's configuration or perform a factory reset through this group of options.

Control Panel

The most important icon on the desktop is that of the Control Panel because it contains DSM's settings and functions. All choices are categorized into four main categories: File Sharing, Connectivity, System, and Application. All icons are also quite self-explanatory and nicely designed. There are two modes, basic and advanced.

Shared Folders - Guest Account

You will have to create some folders and give permissions to them in order to give specific users or groups access. This can be done through the Control Panel's Shared Folder menu. This menu also allows you to modify access privileges for shared folders, delete them, or encrypt them with AES 256-bit encryption, which makes all unauthorized access attempts impossible.


You will have to enable the guest-user-account option if you want some of your shared folders to be accessible by guests.

File Services

You must enable your client PCs' file service system here for the NAS's shared folders to be seen by the network. You can also enable the FTP and TFTP services in the Files Services menu.

Network Settings

Since this NAS only comes with one Ethernet port, there is no option in the Network Settings tab for port teaming. However, the same tab allows you to manage and implement traffic-control rules should you wish to pre-determine which outgoing traffic is allowed when clients access services on your Synology NAS—also use these options to configure HTTPS settings or change port number(s) for DSM access.

Hardware & Power

This menu provides Power recovery, Wake on LAN, beep control, fan speed, and memory layout options. You can also set the system to start up or shut down automatically at a specified time, enable hard-drive hibernation, or connect a backup power device. You can even pick an advanced HDD-hibernation mode, which, according to Synology, reduces the NAS server's power consumption.

External Devices

There is unfortunately no option to format external storage devices into NTFS, although a device that has been formatted to NTFS is properly recognized. The only supported filesystems are EXT4 and FAT32.