News - Thecus launches N7700 - the no compromise enterprise-class NAS

[HEXUS]

We've been hearing about Thecus' seven-bay behemoth for some time, and it's now finally here...

Read more.

[Funkstar]

Even if the N7700 comes in around the £770 mark, making it the same cost per drive as the N5200, it's still better value than the Synology DS508.

The article reads like the eSATA port can be combined to be part of the RAID array, is this right? It can't on the N5200 series (mores the pitty).

I also asked Thecus about validating the new Seagate 1.5TB drives for the N5200, sugesting they get in touch with Scan, so hopefully these will be added to the approved drive list soon. That takes the N7700 up to 10.5TB of storage*



*well, no it doesn't, it's more like 9.5TB once you take the kilobyte/kibibyte conversion and some formatting into account.

EDIT: oh and I meant to say, that is a very nice looking unit! far better than the shiney plastic of the N5200s and N4100s

[rjpearce]

Would love to see a benchmark comparison between this and the QNAP TS-509 Pro (http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=104 only 5 drives but should be interesting!

[Parm]

Funk, I've checked with Thecus for you and I'm afraid the eSATA port can't be combined as part of the RAID array. Here's what Thecus had to say:

The eSATA port is for capacity expansion, its funciton is as a USB external storage device.

So N7700 won't support combine the drive on the eSATA port to be one of the RAID member.

[Funkstar]

I'm not surprised. Personally I think it's a real shame, but then they wouldn't want to hurt sales of the N8800 when it is released.

Might be an idea to amend the article slightly to make that clear, something like:

Just in case you do happen to run out of room, there's an eSATA port allowing for the installation of one more external drive, bringing the grand total up to eight, although this cannot be used as part of an array