Reviews - Thecus N4200: Zero-Crash NAS reviewed and rated

[HEXUS]

Four-bay NAS promises speed and security for the home or business user. We take a closer look.

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[spoon_]

Price is a bit of a shocker really!!

£540 quid? Jesus...

[deanpm]

can also purchase the Thecus from http://www.span.com for £438.00 +VAT

[Champman99]

I have to say, (and am open to convincing) that I dont really understand these premium NAS products. Once you go above say £200 doesnt it become a better solution simply to build a dedicated PC for the job, for example an Atom mini-itx jobby.

Have it running a linux distro or FreeNAS and you are good to go. Help me out here dedicated NAS users, am I missing something?

[Funkstar]

I have to say, (and am open to convincing) that I dont really understand these premium NAS products. Once you go above say £200 doesnt it become a better solution simply to build a dedicated PC for the job, for example an Atom mini-itx jobby.

Have it running a linux distro or FreeNAS and you are good to go. Help me out here dedicated NAS users, am I missing something?

The idea is that they should "just work", no messing about, and proper support from the vendor or manufacturer. Whether this happens in reality or not is another issue, but that's the idea.

Also the majority of companies are pretty adverse to 'home built' systems of any kind. they like turn key solutions. And that's if they have someone capable of building it in the first place. There definitely is a market for them, that's obvious by the number in the market, but they are not for everyone.

[GaryRW]

I'll admit I was expecting lower power figures. I recently built a core i3 system that idles around 30w at the wall (though admittedly with only 1 drive, not 4). But that is with a 330w power supply that is clearly not going to be ultra efficient at just less than 10% of it's rated output.

Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I thought low power was the other main advantage of these ready built systems on top of the plug and play/reliability issues Funkstar mentioned.

What I have been looking for for some time is a pineview atom board with 6 (or at least 4) sata ports. The only one I've seen was iirc a supermicro one that you could only get for around £200 in the UK.

EDIT: to answer my own question, this was a useful link http://www.linuxtech.net/features/in..._overview.html

A nice list of all (?) pineview based boards. Seems the limit of 2 sata ports on most boards is because that's all the intel NM10 chipset provides. a few boards have 4 or even 6 sata ports though that's managed by adding a separate Sata chip supplying the extra ports.

[Tobeman]

can also purchase the Thecus from http://www.span.com for £438.00 +VAT

Span seem very cheap (generally) - any experience with them?

[Funkstar]

I've bought cables from them before, but nothing major.

Had no problems at all.

[Tobeman]

Got an order going through with Scan at some point (they're doing a build for me...), will see if I can twist their arm

If not, I'll give them a whirl. On the credit card, obviously... tempted by a QNAP 8-bay beast. Not a huge amount of NAS experience, will just throw myself in the deep end!