I am in the market for a small cheap NAS too, and the impending release of N299 in the States made me wait.
I agree and find it wholly unacceptable for a dual bay NAS like N299 to NOT support drive spindown. I suspect it should just be a firmware issue? It's the main reason why I stayed away from likes of Buffalo Linkstation Pro and the highly hackable NSLU2 (the SLUG). It just makes no sense for its target segment of home/SOHO users.
If the speed is as described and there's no drive spindown, I don't know why one shouldn't just get the cheap NSLU2 and a cheap USB enclosure. I still don't know how much N299 will be selling for in the US, though. From the way it looks, it needs to be on par with Linksys's NAS200 price range ($129) and less than DNS-323 ($180) to be attractive at all.
I learned that the CPU in the N299 is about half the speed of it was in the N2100. I know theoretical speed should never be near the gigabit limit, but N2100 was at least very competitive (ref smallnetbuilder's NAS performance chart). Maybe there's a point of diminishing return where the low cost no longer justify the serious degradation of performance.
Thanks for the expose. Maybe i'll stop waiting and get something like DNS-323; maybe not as feature packed but at least got the basics nailed.
Ciac
Originally Posted by racerx 
2. The spin down feature is one of the main reasons for the purchase of this device. I dont want these drives spinning for weeks at a time consuming power & wearing out when Im only accessing the N299 sporadicly. I thoroughly read the full user manual before committing to the purchase of the N299. The manual is located here:
I also received another copy of the CD supplied with th N299. On page 71\72 the manual lists the full hardware & software specifications of the N299. Page 72 describes the power management features in particular.
- Disk Staggered spin-up
- Disk idle spin-down
are two of the features listed. I based my purchase on the information available on the Thecus.com site, can you please explain to me how this discrepancy has occurred.