Thecus N4200 Pro 4-Bay NAS Review

In the UK, the number of SOHO and SMB users is on the increase and at the centre of any business and even the home is data. This can be in the way of photos, music, video, databases and general files. But as we touched on in our QNAP NAS review, centralising all this data to one point can be costly and with the markets as they are today and the cost of energy on the rise, the need for a economic and financially viable option is on the increase. In the UK, there are a number of companies that offer up network attached storage and Thecus are one of the biggest brands in the market in this segment, and that's why it made sense for us to work with them, as they offer some of the best, and most popular products around, for users wanting a NAS box. NAS boxes come in all shapes and sizes, varying from a simple single bay drive for the entry level end of the consumer market right upto the huge rack mounted 16 bay systems that would be found in larger businesses and corporations. In the SOHO and SMB market though, a rack mounted solution is not necessarily going to be the first port of call as for instance the budget for purchasing a NAS may not be as great and their running costs are much greater in the long run. So keeping this review focussed on the lower end of the scale with the N4200 Pro that we have here today to look is where we will be leading on. The Thecus N4200 comes packaged in a big square box with plenty of information upon the front. This includes a huge array of features such as multiple RAID and VMware support and also includes the main system specifications involving an Intel Atom processor and DDR3 memory. One side of the box displays the features of the NAS but in a lot more detail. The opposite side displays the various ways of using the NAS and the different functionality behind it and how it can be connected to various devices. Opening things up, we find a large bundle of accessories including plenty of useful leaflets, software including Acronis True Image and an Ethernet cable. Also included is the two part charger, which looks very similar to a notebook/laptop charger, but has a different fitting. Also bundled in is an emergency backup battery which slides into the rear of the NAS unit. The NAS unit itself is quite small in size and can only be described as resembling a Shuttle style computer. Dimension wise sees nothing out of the ordinary when comparing to other 4-bay NAS servers on the market. Even with the added battery which assists when power has been disrupted, Thecus have designed things in such a way that no extra external space is needed. The whole unit is black and looks very sleek and stylish and should blend in with most other units such as your printer and fax machine. The front of the NAS is quite different from most as it features a dual screen layout, with one orientated vertically and one horizontally. By positioning things in this way, the layout is compact and allows the front to look stylish without being cluttered. The horizontal OLED screen is capable of displaying your IP address, NAS name once you supply it with one and status updates depending on the task it's doing. Below this is four buttons for scrolling through to front panel display options. The front is where we find the drive bays, of which their are four in total and sit behind the door. Each individual tray includes its own independant lock which allows you to secure each drive into place. Due to the mounting points on the bays, various size drives can now be installed with the included screws. The front door to the chassis has a mesh back panel to allow air to flow through the chassis, keeping the drives cool whilst running. Along with the active display to the right, there is a secondary display to the left which gives a real time status of each drive individually, USB status and in the middle activity lights for each of the network connections. Below the left hand screen, there are two USB 2.0 ports for connecting flash drives and similar devices to the NAS for easy data transfer and device backup functions. At the bottom we find the power button which when pressed, prompts the user via the top screen is they really wish to power down the unit. Moving round the the back end of the NAS and working top down, we find a single PCI-e x1 expansion slot for adding in an optional USB3.0 expansion card. Below this there is a blanking plate which covers the bay where the built in battery is inserted, the battery is secured into position with a single screw stopping it from sliding out. To the right of this is the four pin power connector. Moving down from the power and onto the I/O, the N4200Pro comes with four USB 2.0 and two eSATA ports for connecting extra drives and the likes Removed from their bays we can see each of the four drive trays have simple latch come handle for sliding them out of the NAS. Each of the trays can be individually locked once inserted for improved security. With a 3.5" drive installed, the cage neatly hugs the drive with a gap to the front to allow airflow to come through and around the drive when installed and running. Underneath the drive the cut outs in the tray function in two ways, firstly they allow for air to flow through and to the PCB on the base of the drive and secondly they also make the cages a bit lighter. Whilst this may not be so significant on a 4 bay NAS, on the systems with more capacity this weight all adds up. From the underside we can also see the two sets of mounting points for 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Looking inside the N4200 Pro we can see the motherboard to one side powered by an Intel Atom D525 CPU and 1GB of DDR3 SDRAM. On top of the drive bay area we can see the installed backup battery which functions for around 10 minutes allowing the disks to store unwritten data and safely power down the device in the event of a power failure. In general a NAS box is just an external hard drive caddy that is attached to your network rather than by USB or even Firewire. Because of this we can find a whole host of other features and utilities bundled into them giving them the leading edge over the other options available on the market. Hardware Platform Item Spec Processor Intel® Atom™ Processor D525 System Memory 1 GB DDR-3 SDRAM LAN Interface RJ-45x2 : 10/100/1000 BASE-TX Auto MDI/MDI-X LCD indicator HDD Power, Activity (Yellow) / Fail (Red) LAN_WAN Activity (Green) USB_COPY_Busy (Blue) USB_COPY_ Fail (Red) OLED Module 2.8” OLED display 4 buttons (ENTER, ESC, UP, DOWN) Multi-lingual supported Power Supply External power adapter 19V input (support 2TB and above HDDx4 ) Disk Interface SATA x4 for internal, 2x eSATA for external Expansion Slot PCI-e x1 USB Interface USB 2.0 host port x6(Front x2, Back x4) (A Type) Thermal/Fan control Thermal sensor on system and processor System fan speed controlled according to temperature Real-time clock Battery backup system clock Buttons Power button Reset to factory default button Chassis Metal chassis Lithium-ion Battery Built-in battery backup module (Mini-UPS) Environment Temperature : 5°C to 40°C Humidity : 0 ~ 80 % R.H. (Non-condensing) Software Functions RAID RAID Modes RAID 0, 1, 5, 6,10, JBOD Auto-Rebuild Supported Hot-Swap Supported Hot Spare Supported Online RAID Migration Supported Online RAID Expansion Supported SMART Info Supported SMART Test Supported RAID Volume Encryption AES 256bit Disk Power Management Configurable automatic drive spin down Roaming Supports roaming to other N4200PRO NAS Bad Block Scan Supported Volume Management Multiple RAID Supported Selectable File Systems Ext3/ XFS/ZFS Network Configuration Fixed IP address, dynamic IP address IP sharing mode Can be enabled/disabled Link Aggregation 802.3ad, load balance, failover, Balance-XOR, Balance-TLB, Balance-ALB Transport Protocols TCP/IP, AppleTalk File Protocols SMB/CIFS, HTTP/HTTPS, FTP, NFS v3, AFP Data Access Client OS support Windows 2000/7/XP/2003/Vista UNIX/Linux Mac OS 9 / X WebDisk Web-based file access FTP Built-in FTP server with bandwidth control Secure FTP Built-in Secure FTP server with bandwidth control Download Manager (module) HTTP / FTP / BT / eMule / NZB Printer Server (IPP) Supports USB printers Supports IPP various printers Client can manage print tasks (list/delete) via web user interface TFTP Server Users can download and upload files with TFTP programs. Data Backup USB copy via OLED operation Copy USB mass storage device contents to specified locations on NAS NAS data backup to external USB disk (module) Incremental with schedule supported Client schedule incremental Acronis True Image (OEM version) Client system Disaster Recovery Acronis True Image (OEM version) Battery Backup Module (Mini-UPS) Contingency Battery Power Supply NAS Remote Replication Via Thecus proprietary Nsync NAS Remote Replication (module) Via Rsync to replicate data between two systems. Snapshot Supported Mac Time Machine Supported Bi-directional USB Copy (Module) Supported Block Level Access iSCSI Target Supports Microsoft/Mac/Linux Initiator iSCSI initiator For stackable with N4200/ N4200Eco/N4200PRO/ N5200PRO/1U4600/N5500/N7700 series/N8800 series iSCSI Thin Provisioning Virtual size adjustable up to 16TB Multimedia Support iTunes Server Supported file types: AAC, MP3 w/ ID3 tag, WAV Photo Web Server Supported file types: GIF, JPG (JPEG), BMP, PNG Supports EXIF display Supports slide show Media server Supports uPnP AV streaming protocol User Authentication Local User Supports built-in user accounts Local Group Supports built-in user groups Windows NT/ADS Supported File System Type Journaling file system Capacity Multi-terabyte Language Support Unicode Support Authorization Read, Write or Deny options on individual users or groups Authorization (ACL) Read, Write or Deny options on individual users or groups for shared and sub-folders Administration Multi-Lingual Web-based Administration Web-based server management interface supports English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish and Portuguese. Utility Program MS Windows / Mac OS X Setup Wizard, Supports multilingual Supports Windows 2000/7/XP/2003/Vista, Mac OS X backup utility Email notification Sends system messages via email to system administrator SNMP Management Supported Power management Scheduled On/Off Supported Wake-On-LAN (WOL) Supported Auto Power On After Power Failure Supported Others Recycle bin Supported Dual DOM Supported Web Server + MySQL (module) Supported ISO Mount Supported Web Disk Supported with remote access Auto Module Installation If Thecus IP storage is capable of connecting to the Internet, then it will automatically link to Thecus’s official website and list available modules. IP CAM Surveillance Server (module) Supports up to 5 IP CAM Supported Web Browsers Internet Explorer 7 or higher Firefox 3 or higher As we find with many network devices, the main management portal is via a web based interface and here we find a JS based interface giving the user an easy to navigate interface. Once connecting to the web interface via the NAS' IP address, the splash page gives four common options for the user to navigate to. Out of these the most popular link will be to the main admin page. Once logged in and into the admin panel, the first page that comes up has the most common navigation links in the main window and down the left hand side are the managmetn sub categories making for a friendly user experience. The system information tab breaks down into five separate pages and here on the system status we can see which of the N4200 Pro's network services such as the FTP server are running and which are stopped/disabled. Above this there is a detail into the systems current CPU usage, fan speed and current uptime. Moving onto the general system management, this section contains pages for amongst other things; updating firmware, changing the admin password, date and time alterations and as we can see below setting up scheduled on and off automation. This particular function would be ideal for those who are energy conscious and would see the benefit from having the NAS power itself down overnight when access to the storage is not going to be required or over the weekend for example when a small business is closed to trade. The system network group is very concise and has a setup page for each of the network ports on the rear. On the primary controller page there is a little bit more involved and this is where you can set the devices host name and domain settings, and also setup LAN link aggregation for utilising both posts as though they were one. At the bottom is the IP setup where a dynamic or static IP can be assigned to the NAS. As its name suggests, the storage tab focusses on the disks themselves and this is one of the areas where all users will find themselves visiting during setup. From here the RAID configuration is set and managed along with the facility to add extra folders onto the drives for network access. The network service pages are not going to be so important for vast majority of home users but SMB or SOHO users may find the need to setup the likes of an FTP or TFPT access to their NAS from here. The application server is a bit similar to the network server section but a few home users may find themselves wanting to setup the iTunes server function for ease of audio content sharing across their network. The backup area is another one that is quite self explanatory and one the may come of use for users with critical data. By default the NAS is enabled to bacup the DOM file which contains the NAS' configuration which it loads during startup. Should the active one become damaged or corrupted, the system will automatically restore the backup to save on system downtime. Finally the external devices area shows items such as connected printers and their current status. If a connected printer for example is failing to print or is unreachable, then the printer service can be restarted without having to power cycle the NAS. On the whole the GUI management portal is pretty easy to navigate around with no real troubles. Those that find themselves accessing this on a regular basis can 'favourite' particular section from the top right of the interface for quicker access at a later stage. Similarly at any time there is a help menu available for each section should the end user find them self at a lose end. When testing a device of this sort, the system that we use to test with is not a major factor in its performance. The performance of the NAS box comes down to the network its running on and its own internal hardware. With a device of this sort having so many different applications, Intel's NASPT software covers all the bases and also gives us a set of results that we will be able to utilise and therefore give a benchmark against other similar systems in the future. Intel NASPT (Network Attached Storage Performance Toolkit) performs its test by transferring varying sizes and quantities of data to and from the device based on twelve different scenarios. To eliminate any bottlenecks that would occur during testing on our gigabit switch, we bridge the LAN connections on one of our test benches and connect the NAS box into the secondary LAN isolating it from the main network and giving it the most bandwidth we can. The system that we use to run the Intel NASPT software does require us to drop the memory right down to 2GB as any more than this leads to data caching and therefore skews the results from the NAS box. Following on from this we test the NAS box performance under each of the RAID options that it has available, to show, depending on the end users needs, the relational differences in speed from the drive and thus one can decide which particular RAID configuration will be best for them. HD Video playback is a read test, where a single 2Gb file is read in 256kB blocks sequentially from the drive. This simulates where a 720p HD video is being watched across the network to a media player on the other end. Across the board there was a close performance level between each RAID configuration but we did find that RAID 10 showed a marked difference to the others pushing the 80MB/s barrier at 83.2MB/s. 2x HD Video Playback works with exactly the same data set as the first HD Video test, however this time the same content is streamed twice from the NAS box simulating two simultaneous streams being made to external media players. Like we found on the single video playback, there was little speed difference between all the RAID types with RAID 0 and 10 just nudging in front at over 90MB/s. In the same way that the 2x Video Playback streams to the equivalent of 2 external media players at the same time, the test here doubles that again upto a simulated 4 media players. Pushing things even further with 4x playback, RAID 0 really stood out over the likes of JBOD and here went over the 100MB/s barrier. The HD Video Record test is as the name suggests a write test to the NAS box. A single 2GB file is written to the device in 256kB blocks sequentially to the disk. When recording data to the drives, the spectrum of speeds was not as large as we were expecting with only 15MB/s separating the fastest and slowest arrays. We found here the the JBOD configuration proved to be the fastest here (with RAID 0 just behind) and at the same time we found the speeds to be not far from the theoretical maximum of 125MB/s at 115.2MB/s The HD playback and record test now put the drive under the same single record and playback tests as before, but now at the same time. This will factor for the quick changes needed to switch between reading and writing two large blocks of data across the network to the device. When playing back and recording video data, the RAID 0 clearly shows that it has the advantage over JBOD with speeds around 10MB/s faster. For content creation, Intel have simulated access to via video creation applications. This is made up of 98 files with 12MB reads and 14MB writes in varying sizes of blocks. The activity is predominantly non-sequential with the majority of access time made up of writing to the drives. There are quiet periods of read/write activity interrupted with busy periods to present a difficult workload on the drives. Content creation again shows the advantage of having the RAID 0 array and the speed factor that it can give over the parity based arrays. The office productivity simulation is very similar to the content creation, with a total of 607 files written to and read from the drive. A total of 1.4GB of data is written to and read from the drive with a close balance between each made - the majority of write access is made up of 1kB writes. Office productivity showed the same conclusive results between the parity and non-parity based arrays but with a speed difference in excess of 25MB/s between RAID 0 and RAID 1. This test quite simply put copies a single large file from the test system to the NAS box to show how well the system can sustain a single write speed. The 1.4GB file is copied to the drive and written in 64kB blocks. The file copy test across the board gave an impressive set of results and at its fastest we found speeds of just under 7MB/s from the theoretical maximum possible over gigabit LAN. File copy from the NAS works in exactly the same way as the copy test, however it works in the opposite direction. The single 1.4GB file is read off the NAS in 64kB blocks. Pulling data from the NAS proved to not be as quick as when writing data, however the write speeds experienced were still pretty reasonable at a maximum of 85.5MB/s under RAID 0 conditions. In the directory copy to NAS test, a directory tree representing that of a typical commercially available office suite is copied to the NAS to trace the bulk copy of a complex directory. A total of 2833 files making up 247MB are moved but the file sizes vary considerably with an average size of 41.4kB. Due to the varying sizes of the files, only around 50% of the writes are sequential. As we know, RAID 0 and small file sizes go hand in hand for the best write performance, but across the remainder of the arrays, the speed variation was negligible, varying by only 1.7MB/s. In the same way that the file copy from NAS traces the same file back across to the test system, the directory copy from NAS does exactly the same but to the entire directory that it copied across previously. When copying the data back from the NAS, the performance RAID 10 again came close to the performance of RAID 0, with RAID being the slowest as expected at 14.2MB/s. Last of all is a test based around a photo album. When a photo album is viewed on screen, only the images that you see are loaded from the drive and so when you scroll through the album, the new images have to be fetched and read. The album here contains 169 photos with varying file sizes based on the size, quality and detail in the image. Reading the files in a photo album puts an unusual read load upon the drive as the metadata is read, a thumbnail constructed and finally the image viewed. Small reads are never favoured to nay particular array, and this is shown above with no significant difference across the board. Starting with the design and build of the N4200 Pro, the device is solidly built with no flaws to its quality at all, the it features a clean matt black shell with an easy to use OLED GUI. Installing the drives in to the caddies and then into the bays was very easy with no hassle at all. The drive latches are firm and secure which is something that we are glad is slightly tighter as the last thing you want is for a drive to slip out of place and cause a RAID array for example to fall over. The locks are smooth and once engaged secure the drives in place for added security. Booting the system up does take its time (~2 mins) but during this it does have to boot the config file, load the network settings, mount the RAID arrays and enable each of the required network services, but any server does take longer than usual and the system does give a clear bleep once done to say that it is done and active on the network. Whilst on the note of the system and software, the management portal is clear and easy to use and if at any stage along the way the user finds them self at a lose end, the help option clearly guides as to what each function does and how it works. Performance wise I can with out a doubt say that that I was surprised as to how close the N4200 Pro came to the theoretical maximum bandwidth possible on Gigabit LAN. In some tests it fell short by only around 7MB/s. In a scenario where there are multiple users connected to the NAS this factor of utilising this much available bandwidth is critical and for the N4200 Pro is a major selling point. Across all of our tests in general we can see that the onboard SATA controller is fantastic and gives outstanding results across all the RAID configurations. Naturally what the end user will experience will not match this same performance level one for one but I would imagine that it would be very close to the results that we have seen here. With the SOHO and SMB NAS market growing, there are a growing number of places where one can be purchased from along with the drives, and retailing at £418.78 for the bare device or £918.82 with the same four Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 3TB drives that we use here four our testing, really add the bang for buck value to what can be had. As we have said before, this may be a large cost to justify, but in the long term the economic poay off from using a low powered system like this and along with its auto On/Off function justifies the reason to buy. Rounding things off, the N4200 Pro from Thecus with out a doubt deserves an award and due to the sheer capability to maximise the network bandwidth where it can and across the board giving an impressive set of speeds, I'm happy to award the Thecus N4200 Pro with our Extreme Performance award.