QNAP Brings Enterprise-Level Storage Home
Perfect for small office and home office users, the QNAP TS-219P is a serious piece of equipment, and is not just another NAS. We’ve reviewed a few different storage solutions, but QNAP’s offerings are different from those that we have tried before- in both good and bad ways.
Network attached storage devices are the more modern form of backup, aimed at users who have more than one computer and a home network. If you don’t have multiple PCs, you probably don’t need a NAS- though they are handy for a few other reasons, like being able to access your media from your Xbox 360 or PS3 (as a DLNA server with no computer needed). NAS devices are basically dedicated computers- this one runs on an ample 512 MB of RAM (4 times that of some others) and a 1.2 GHz processor. It offers not only the typical gigabit ethernet but also three USB ports for printers or thumb drives. There isn’t direct wireless support, but folks who need a NAS typically need the stability and extra bandwidth of a wired connection.
The looks of the case won’t impress the ladies- you’ll probably be hiding it anyway, but the case is form over function, offering easy access to the two drive bays. You can use either 2.5 or 3.5 inch drives, which is nice, but one likely downside of the device for most people is that it comes without any hard drives. For some, this might be a nice advantage- they can toss their old drives in and upgrade later as they need- but the price is certainly a bit steep considering that you’ll need to shell out extra for drives or use your own.
We loved the feature set though- other NAS software can be awkward and frustrating, but QNAP’s was surprisingly user-friendly and attractive. Compatible across Macs, PCs, or pretty much anything else, we used the DLNA server capability to serve media to our console systems, tried printing through it, and also were transferring some large files across our network- and the QNAP TS-219P handled it all with nary a hitch. But the biggest surprise was the ease of hot-swapping and handling RAID failures- we tried out the RAID 1 mirroring, which worked as well but no better than others. At least, until we simulated a failure, at which point the QNAP shined- we were alerted by email, hotswapped out the “damaged” drive without shutting the system down, and everything was handled nearly automatically with no data loss or downtime.
This was our first hands-on experience with QNAP, and we frankly weren’t sure what to expect. But it was hard not to be impressed by the robustness of this device- it can take a bit to setup and configure properly, and of course is only as reliable as the disks you put inside. But the feature set is excellent, from the simple BitTorrent downloading that is often hard on other devices, to iSCSI support, the iTunes shared library, and USB print-server capabilities. We also liked that the power consumption and noise levels were quite good for a dual-bay NAS. If you’re in the market for a serious NAS, and don’t mind doing some of the drive installation yourself, the QNAP offers out-of-the-park performance and stability and a decent price point of $400.
