This is my first review here on the PC Authority forums so hopefully it's in the style people want. A little while ago, I decided to go down the path of a dedicated NAS for shared file storage. My choice was the
N3200 from Thecus.
As you would expect, the N3200 comes in a small compact box. I chose 3 x Samsung 500Gb SATA II HDDs to use.
Included in the box were cables, power adapter and the set-up software which works on Windows and OSX.
The unit also offers the ability to attached an external USB and eSata drive. There is an additional USB port in the front. The use of a compatible wireless USB adaptor can provide wireless connectivity incase the Gigabit port isn't enough.
Installation of the hardware was as easy as A-B-C. The front panel slides off and the internal clips unscrew. They just click into the HDDs which are then screwed back in. Less than 1 minute per drive.
Powered up, the LCD display provides some useful information like internal temps, status of RAID, LAN/WAN IP, etc..
I ran the set-up on my MAC so not sure if it's a MAC issue or not but the only options I had were JBOD, RAID0 or RAID1 (no RAID5). After a fews hours of creating the RAID1 array (probably should have chosen JBOD, would have been quicker), I was able to remove and create a RAID5 array via the web configuration tool. It took ~300mins to do, an extremely slow process.
With the 3 drives in RAID-5 I have an effective storage of around 1TB. The software I currently use is Microsoft's SyncToy to sync the data from various machines to the NAS. But that's for a different review.
PROs:
* Looks good
* Small and compact
* Easy to install
* 3rd party modules
* Have I mentioned it looks good?
CONs:
* Slow RAID build
* CPU not beefy enough for intensive tasks
Edited by nogi: 7/11/2008 09:08:52 AM