Customer Reviews

QNAP TS-210 2-Bay Desktop Network Attached Storage

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have tried a few of these boxes, and settled for QNAP. To make long story short, this box has very low operating and standby power (not counting drive power), it is quiet with smart fan (3 speeds auto/manual adjusted based on drive or system temp), transfer speed for >4GB files from my Dell XPS thru gigabit switching hub is around 10MByte/s write, 25MB/s read. USB drive plugs directly into the box, write/read is about 12MB/s (not fully tested)

I use this to stream 1080p and other media to my Brite-View BV-5005HD streamer box Brite-View BV-5005HD "CinemaTube" 3-in-1 1080p Full HD Multimedia Player/Streamer/Torrent Downloader, Black, cpu loading is only around 10-13% during super smooth playback. Box is not heating up much, keeping at 40 some Deg C. Even if the box is 100% running file transfer, media streaming seems to take precedence over file operations.

Its BT/ftp download manager is a snap to use and performance is comparable to PC utorrent.

The most obvious difference is the speed of its web user interface, it is super fast when compared with other brands, it is also independent of it cpu loads.

SSH is easily accessed using clients such as putty. Neat little Linux box.

The only down side are being its bright LEDs in front, must be covered if you are watching movies with lights out.

Enjoy, this box will not quit on you!

Full Disclosure: I did not buy this item, I ordered a "QNAP TS 209 Pro II Turbo 2-bay NAS" Used VGC from an established Amazon seller. But I received the QNAP TS-210, apparently new in the box {store return?}. Seller is OK with the deal and so am I!

The supplied Mac utility software and browser interface are superb. The 210 itself has all the server software you need. No need to go searching for some hacked wares like other brands require. A bonus is the UPS smart power management built in.

After receiving the unit, I installed an old WD Raptor to test it, all went well and the process was "cave man" simple. Anyone complaining "it's too hard to setup" probably shouldn't use scissors either.

I then bought two of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1 TB ST31000528AS HDs from Amazon for $89 shipped.
Pulled the Raptor, installed the two 1TBs and set it up as Raid-1, so easy.

One tip: make sure your connecting cables are Cat5e or Cat6 {Gigabit} and if your router is only 10/100, get a Gigabit switch {<$20} to connect the TS-210, any other NAS, and computer{s}, etc. then connect the switch to the router. File transfers & Time Machine backups are way faster using Gigabit.

I'm not very technical on my NAS drives, but I was using a TS-109 II until I found that I could really use a shell the offers 2 NAS drives. I highly recommend the brand and would recommend this particular model for folks who only want a set of network drives for a growing home network. I use the NAS for sharing data among 3 PCs, media service for 2 network appliances and primarily serve as a data backup for my 3 PCs data files. The 2nd drive will serve as a backup for the shared data on the NAS which includes digital photos and video clips.

UPDATE: I hate to say this, but don't buy this product unless you know for sure it is compatible with this NAS. Many complaints have been made on so-called compatible HDDs list on Qnap, that some HDDs on the list are not incompatibile that were once thought to be compatible. Several firmware updates have were pushed, but there still seems to have a great deal of 'issues' with which HDDs are compatible and which are not. I wanted to purchase a NAS product that allows HDDs of low-cost to be used in a home network environment, but I have to say - keep looking... or at least until Qnap's technical support can catch up with all the HDD compatible complaints.

I have had this for 3 weeks and couldn't have been happier with the feature and functionality it provides. I have a hybrid windows/mac home network environment and this serves both platform equally well.

This NAS is one of the best solutions for server & backup at a low cost.
It has great features for novice and advanced users.
One downside is the compatibility list of HDDs, so you should check the list
before buying HDDs for the NAS.
The setup is really easy, just follow the on screen instructions and you're done.

This thing is pretty much plug and play, for the abundance of different services that this thing can do I thought configuration was a snap. I like this server, it's compact, quiet, simple and fast. I used it for RAID 1 with two SATA 1TB hard drives from WD - so far it has been online for a month.

There was initial problem with passwords, that is why I took of one star. I tried to set a more secure admin password by using special symbols, but then I was not able to log in. which gave me a headache for a bit, until I figured it out. Using letters and numbers is ok.

Thanks to its web file manager I was able to access my files through the iphone, and there are still features I haven't explored yet.

I would recommend this product.

Either the unit or the drive failed for me.
Set-up was VERY cumbersome. I had purchased this for my Mac because folks had said it was very easy. Do not believe it. The online interface is terrible and for the non IT guy, very confusing.
I returned the unit and the drives. A waste of time and money.

QNAP NAS is cool and amazing. Plenty functions that I can store and share to my DLNA TV. The remote access MyCloudNAS is also very nice that I can connect to the NAS remotely!!

After reading the great reviews on this site on the QNAP TS-210, I decided to buy the unit. For the device I used 2 Seagate QNAP compliant hard drives. I then ran the installation software. After initialization I got the following message "The system cannot detect any hard drives. Please install a hard drive". I contacted QNAP support through Skype chat. I was told to format the drives, which I did but got the same message. I asked the support person if he can offer more help but my request was ignored. I gave up after spending about 5 hours in trying getting the unit to work. Thereafter, I decided to return the unit to Amazon.