For my own introduction to Qnap, they have sent the TS-409 pro. It is a 4 bay NAS, with all those basics I’ve just mentioned. The guts of it are powered by a 500MHZ CPU, with 256MB of ram, and 8MB of flash memory for the operating system. 500 Mhz might not seem like a lot these days, but the low power usage, optimized design is more than enough when you pair it up with a custom light Linux installation.

http://www.virtual-hideout.net/revie...AS/index.shtml

At 550 - 600 USD expensive for what you get. A small PC is cheaper, gives your more options, will be faster more likely and consume just a tad more.

yes the price is at the very high side, while the Pro version does add nice integration with NT Domains, it's hard to justify the asking price

Seems like a reasonable price to me, most 4-bay NAS devices cost more than $550! The cheapest 4bay NAS I've seen is the Promise SmartStor for $420, but I have read of no end to the firmware/feature problems with it and poor support. You get what you pay for.

A small PC would consume at minimum twice the power and would perform only the same assuming you buy a hardware RAID controller. I'm very happy with my TS-409. Performance at any RAID level 0, 5, or 6 is well above 100mbit.

Hook it up through Gigabit for real performance boost