The Thecus N3200 features hard drive bays and a little LCD for quick management.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)I recently got a NAS device from Thecus--the N3200--and was very excited getting it out of the box. Among other things, the device looked as if it would be the first network storage device that incorporates a PCI expansion slot.
Unfortunately it isn't. There's indeed a place that reads "expansion slot" on the back of the device that looks like where you would fit a PCI card on a computer, but that's just a placeholder. As it turns out, the N3200 is the first NAS designed with a chassis to house more features than the internal circuit board has to offer. A representative from Thecus assured me that future products that share the same chassis will come with an actual PCI expansion slot.
Other than that rather disconcerting finding, the N3200 seems a nice NAS device that offers three hard drive bays. Each bay can house an SATA hard drive up to 1TB in size. The hard drives then can be set up in RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, or JBOD configuration. The device also has two USB ports and one eSATA port for storage expansion.
The N3200 would be the first SOHO NAS device that has a PCI expansion slot if that slot wasn't just a placeholder.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)Other than regular NAS features including dynamic DNS, FTP server, iTunes server, and so on, it has a few rather unusual features such as ISO Mount, where you can mount up to 200 ISO files and make their contents available to network users. This is a nice way to compact data to conserve storage space. In addition, the USB ports of the device can also be used to host a printer, USB Webcams for surveillance, or a Wireless adapter if you want to put the device in a corner where there's no Ethernet connectivity. This is the second NAS device I've seen that support Webcams, the other was the Synology DS107+, though the Synology only supports IP-base Webcams.
The N3200 is available for about $320 without hard drives, a relatively good price for a product that offers RAID 5.
This is the first storage product we've got from Thecus so check back soon for our in-depth review of the N3200.
The i4500R
(Credit: Thecus)Thecus on Tuesday introduced two new NAS devices aimed at enterprise and SOHO environments: thei4500R and i5500. Both are iSCSI-based NAS devices that promise to deliver high value for customers looking to store and secure valuable data.
In case you're unfamiliar with the technology, SCSI is a high-end storage interface standard, similar to SATA--used in most desktop and laptop computers to connect a computer's internal hard drive(s) to its motherboard--but much faster. iSCSI is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities by carrying SCSI commands over IP networks. iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage storage over long distances.
The i5500R
(Credit: Thecus)Powered by Intel's Xscale CPU and 512MB of DDR memory, both the i4500R and i5500 are guaranteed to provide very high data transfer speed--from 100MBps and up for read and write under RAID 6. The devices come with four and five hot-swappable SATA drive bays and accommodate up to 4TB and 5TB of storage, respectively. They also support a large variety of RAID configurations, including RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 6, 10, and JBOD.
Both the i4500R and i5500 use dedicated a hardware controller to configure the array, effectively shorting the required to build RAID than a software RAID array solution. This means when larger storage is required, users do not suffer from system downtime.
In addition, supporting block level data transmission over regular Ethernet, both products allows for numerous simultaneous host access through the iSCSI protocol at very high throughput speeds under RAID data protection. The i5500 and i4500R are estimated to cost $1,300 and $1,450 and will be available for purchase in the U.S. by the end of August or early September, respectively.
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