| Thecus N5200 |
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| Written by Jeff_Tom | ||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 28 July 2008 12:19 | ||||||||||||||||||
Storage: is it ever possible to have enough of it? Digital media and ever expanding game content can easily suck up hundreds of gigabytes filling up multiple hard drives in short notice. And getting content from one PC to another can be quite a pain even in the days of USB flash drives. Fear not though, for whatever your uses whether running a web server, streaming media, or simply needing a large file server in RAID Thecus is here to help with their N5200 network storage device.
The Thecus 5200 is cubed size and measuring in at 230mmx190mmx230mm and for a file server features quite a bit of power. Inside lies an Intel Celeron M processor which runs at 600MHz and 256MB of DDR memory. The Thecus 5200 features easily hot swappable ports for 5 SATA hard drives and support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, JBOD, supporting over 3TB of storage. Even in the area of high-definition that is an astounding amount. Our unit shipped with two Gigabit ports allowing for maximum speed in file transfers, an E-SATA port and 3 USB connections to add even more storage capabilities onto the device it is quite feature packed. A printer can also be hooked up to the device to share on your network though the 5200.
Installing hard drives into the drive bays is a snap. Pull out the bay, screw the hard drive into place and pop it back in. Done, there are SATA connectors at the rear to connect the device and the drives are also as mentioned hot swappable is a bonus. Turning on the device is easy and fully boots up within a minute and is ready to go for all your file needs. You can watch it cycle through the boot up process and access features and delve into setup from the LCD and a few easy to use onboard buttons. Main configuration of the device though is done through the web GUI.
Inside the GUI you can access virtually everything and man is the N5200 loaded. RAID is done with a few simple clicks, you can setup folders with various access privileges, setup MySQL, setup an FTP for the web, setup a media streaming server, backup all your files with Thecus NSync program, HTTPS, monitor your hard drive's status and firmware revision, and on and on. The N5200 is packed with features. You can set it up either to be DHCP or static IP. We'll leave the specifications page to the rest and man it is long with all of the feature this little box supports. Here are the specifications:
Let's take a look now at Thecu's handy GUI.
Here is our current test system.
Our test OS was Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 with Nvidia's 175.19 of Forceware drivers. Being on a network makes the N5200 somewhat difficult to test but we ran Sandra's Network test fine and also measured the upload and download rate transferring a 1.8GB Crysis demo file to to the storage server
Overall the upload and download rates are very similar to other Gigabit connections we've seen on high-end NICs and so the performance was quite good, more than enough to stream HD media.
Conclusion: The N5200 is simply an excellent file server with almost every option you can think of and then some for what you might need to transfer and hold files. There might be a slight learning curve but for people who need it there is a lot to get out of it. That said of course you could also try building your own but that doesn't come with the software the N5200 features which is very impressive in it's own right. Pricing: The N5200 does have a fairly high sticker price though so it won't come cheap or be a purchase for most who don't need it. For those who can afford it or need NAS though the Thecus N5200 is a great buy. The cheapest price we could find was $639 at Newegg. Score: 97%
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| Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 September 2008 09:13 |
