QNAP SilentNAS HS-251 2-Bay NAS Review

Basic Setup

If you do not know the IP address your new NAS has gotten, you can find it easy with the Qfinder tool you can download from the official web page, as described in the setup guide as well.

Setting up the QNAP HS-251 is a breeze. Once you connect to the admin interface you can either choose the Quick Setup or the Manual, to make sure everything is set correctly I chose the manual. You can safely do the same as it’s both easy and very direct, as shown below.

First you can choose a name for your new NAS, this can be anything you’d like and used to recognize the NAS when connecting from other devices. Next you’ll have to set your administrator password, make this something long while at the same time something you can remember.

The next step is to select your time and time zone. You can either set the time manually or let it get the time automatic from an NTP server. I recommend you set it to the last one, that way it’ll always be set to the right time; one thing less to worry about!

Setting up the network is easy, as it already should have all your relevant network settings from your router; you can however change them if needed.

We’re almost done, but we still need to tell the NAS what system we’ll be connecting from so it can load the corresponding file sharing. Since I don’t have any Mac devices I didn’t turn that on. You can also select which of the built-in station apps you’d like to have.

Only one final step for us to do now, we need to decide what setup we want our hard drives to run in. If you aren’t sure which to choose, you can skip it and do it later from the web administration panel.

That’s all, our NAS is ready to be used. The setup will give you a summary of the settings you’ve made, so you can double-check for any errors or typos. With only the administrator user-created so far, the next thing you should do is to create the one you’ll use to login with on a regular basis.

Now that the basic setup has been done, you can login to the administrator page. If there is a new Firmware available it will let you know. You should agree to this and download it, after all we don’t want to risk losing any data due to bugs or intruders.

The update runs by itself and nothing you need to worry about. Once it’s done, it will reboot and you can update the installed applications. As you can see in the screenshot below, the NAS OS will let you know with notifications when actions need to be taken.

The QNAP NAS features a very long list of apps you can install, for almost any function you can think of for a standalone server like this; one of the things special about the QNAP HS-251 is the HTPC function it has on top of just being a NAS.

You can attach it to your TV, or route it through your HDMI capable amplifier if you have one thanks to the built in HDMI 2.0 port; but you’ll need to enable the Hybrid Desk Station first via the administration interface. Selecting everything and it will install the Chrome web browser and YouTube app, allowing you to browser your favourite places directly on your TV screen. It will also install an advanced codec pack to support a wide variety of media formats, and the surveillance station to monitor connected IP cameras, if used. The awesome feature is however the award-winning XMBC app, a media player and entertainment hub for digital media; a Spotify app is included as well.

Another thing I’d recommend you enable is the antivirus app. It is disabled by default because it’ll takes up some extra resources, but it is worth having enabled to keep your data safe, special if you use download station.