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Thecus N2200 Review - Your ideal home NAS?

Storage/Other by geoffrey @ 2010-07-07

Network attached RAID 0-1 and JBOD, iTunes server, photo server, media server (uPnP), USB/IP webcam support, ftp/bt/eMule support, hotswap and autorebuild functions, all that you can get in one solution which is easy to use and requires only a minimum of knowledge to set up properly. The Thecus N2200 also comes at a very respectable price, could it be the ideal home NAS? We find out for you, read along.

Features explored

Features explored

Main goal here is RAID Network Attached Storage, aside of that we see many extra features to extend the usability and the value of the product. Let's overview the N2200 configuration menu:

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System Information: under system information one can check the product info, revision, online time, cpu load and which services are running (FTP, NFS, ...). Aside of that there's also a log section where you can see all system events.

System Management: in the system management module one can properly manage the machine behaviour of the N2200. You can set up the time zone and sync it with an NTP server. You can set up email notification events, upgrade the firmware and configure scheduled power on/off actions. If your UPS is supported this is also the place you would want to look for to check/monitor its status. More? Yes, in the utility's tab you can change the admin password, return to factory default configuration, upload/download a saved configuration file, reboot & shutdown and perform a file system check.

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System Network: much like the system management module this is another setup module but much more network orientated. Here you can set up, enable and configure the various network services. For starters you can configure the LAN network connection (static/dynamic) and set up FTP access. You can enable uPnP, Samba, AFP, NFS, Bonjour and Media server services, but you can also enable and set up the http TCP/IP port which you would want to use when trying to access the N2200 from WAN. Furthermore here you can enable which directories you would want to share or not over the network/WAN.

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Storage: all this related to disk storage you'll find in the Storage menu. You can view disk and raid status and properties, you can create or edit your RAID array, there is the option to manage the disk power management and it is also the place to add/delete new directories on the RAID setup. Plus, when you want to load ISO files, look in the storage menu because that where it's placed. The content of the mounted ISO will be displayed as part of the directory where the ISO file is located.

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User and Group Authentication: the menu title explains everything, user and name and password can be made here plus you can link them with certain user groups. Batch input is supported via files containing following content: (ex. Student1,password1,student_group).

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Application Server: aside of the casual storage server services you also have to ability to enable and use applications which you can find on more traditional desktop pc systems. the Printer sub menu let's you add a USB printer and share it over the LAN, in the iTunes sub menu you can enable and configure iTunes an Apple iTunes compatible media server. The server will now appear in any iTunes program running on the local network.

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Module Management: in the module management menu one can add new applications, set them up and use them properly. New modules are available on the Thecus website and can be uploading using the N2200 web interface.

DLM2: a download manager which lets you manage Bittorrent, Emule and HTTP/FTP downloads.

Simple surveillance: a tool which recognizes USB webcams and shares them over the LAN

BI directional USB copy: synchronises external USB storage apparatus with the internal eSATA drives in a shared folder.
Some of these apps are also compatible with other Thecus N2200 devices which might make it interesting for future program developments.

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Backup: backup capabilities are added and utilize the LAN interface. Over the network you can make backups to target servers/NAS/Rsync servers using login usernames and passwords. Backups can be scheduled on a daily, weekly or monthly base, synchronized or incremental and per shared folder. The Nsync menu also let's you restore from older back up files.

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