REVIEWS / NAS / THECUS TECHNOLOGY

Thecus N5200XXX NAS Review

04 Apr, 2012, 10:47 am IST | by Francis D'sa | NAS

NAS

Drive Bays

Drive Bays
Front panel when open
Rear panel
The Motherboard
The Thecus N5200XXX NAS

PRICE IN INDIA

47,500

TECH2 RATING

8.5

AVERAGE USER RATING

5.5

How we test

CONTACT

Thecus Technology

If you are in need of an enterprise-level network storage drive for a small office or a large networked home, the Thecus N5200XXX should be on your list. The NAS is a powerful device for a secure and centralized data storage solution. The Thecus N5200XXX was in our labs and here’s what we have to say about it.

 

Design and build quality

The Thecus N5200XXX looks like a mini tower cabinet, which is half the size (in height) of a regular PC or gaming case. The exterior is an all-black, powder finished metal shell, which is rugged and robust. The front bezel features a plastic flimsy door, which opens up to the storage bay. The storage bay consists of five hard drive bays, which can accommodate up to five 3.5-inch hard SATA drives and are also hot-swappable. Each bay has a lever for ejecting the drive, which is also secured by using a physical lock and key mechanism to prevent accidental removal or theft. The drive bays do not feature a screw-less design for installing the hard drives. Each bay has two LED indicators, one for drive power and the other for drive data activity.

The Thecus N5200XXX NAS

The Thecus N5200XXX NAS

 

 

Towards the left of the drive bays are five status LEDS—NAS data transfer/activity, two for network activity and connectivity status for the two Ethernet ports, one for error status and one for USB data copy status. Below the LED indicators is a USB 2.0 port for plugging in a pen drive or an external storage drive for data backup or syncing. Below is the control panel, which comprises of a power switch, a reset switch, an LCD display for status and minimum configuration (which is password protected) and four buttons for controlling the display features. The LCD displays the status of the NAS in terms of hostname, Ethernet link, cooling fans, date and time, disk info, RAID status and WAN and LAN IP addresses. The main door comprises of a mesh grill, which enables air intake for cooling of the drives behind it. Sadly, the door does not have a physical lock, which can prevent anyone from powering off the device which can cause data loss.

 

The rear panel of the N5200XXX has three thumb screws which helps internal component maintenance such as fan cleaning, motherboard replacement and RAM installation. The rear panel comprises of two Ethernet ports, a serial port, four USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA port and power. An 80 mm exhaust fan is provided on the rear panel, which helps cool the entire NAS internals. Additionally a cooling fan is also mounted on the processor for CPU cooling.

Front panel when open

Front panel when open

 


Features

The Thecus N5200XXX runs on an Intel Atom D525 processor and has a 1GB DDR3 SODIMM RAM. It can support up to five SATA hard drives with RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and JBOD support. The top two bays are meant for RAID 0 and 1, while the bottom three bays are for RAID 5 and above. Each drive bay can support up to 3TB hard drives, which can combine the five bays to create a total 15TB of storage on your network. You can stack up to five of these units together and create up to 75TB of storage on your network. You can install even a single drive for storage and house extra hard drives as spare disks, which can be configured to automatically be activated as soon as they are needed. Hot swab, auto rebuild, hot spare, online raid expansion and migration are all possible including 56-bit encryption for additional data security. Additionally, each drive can be scanned for bad blocks, SMART info and SMART test and also data roaming to another N5200XXX is possible.

The Motherboard

The Motherboard

 

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Build - Features


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Would you buy it?




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How We Test

The Tech2 Labs receives many products every single week and each of them is tested with the utmost care and highest level of objectivity. There’s a constant effort to reduce and totally eliminate subjectivity. Each product is tested according to set test processes so the same test scenario is used.

Verdict
The ratings awarded to a product are derived from a number of tests and calculations, keeping certain important factors in mind. These factors consist of features, performance, quality and value for money. In case of software and some other categories, build quality might be replaced with ease of use or ease of installation. Products are compared with other products in a similar price range or product category.


Features
The features component of the score is rated based on the kind of features present on a particular product. Features are a big part of what people look for when they’re buying a new product such as a phone or a camera.

Performance
The performance score is derived from the benchmarks and tests run on the product. In case of the subjective scores, an average of the scores given by the group of reviewers is considered.

Build Quality
The build quality of a product is important so that it doesn’t fall apart after some use. The build quality scores from the way the product is designed and the kind of materials used in the product.

Value
Value for money comes from the fact that a cheap product is able to provide most of the performance of a higher priced product. Once again, value for money is judged by comparing pricing and performance of products in a particular price range or category. 

There are many other aspects of the product that are looked at such as the bundled software and accessories. All of these scores are aggregated together to form the final score.

What do the ratings mean?

Ratings are simple - higher the score, the better the product. A brief listing of the features and what they mean are given below.

1 - 3

The product is bad in almost every aspect. We strongly advise against purchasing this product.

4 - 6

An average product that isn't the best you can buy, but isn't the worst either.

7 - 8

Product with this rating is highly recommended because it's priced sensibly, has a good set of features and performs well.

9 - 10

Exceptionally excellent product with features and performance unlike any we've seen in the past. A must-have for everyone!

What is the Average User Rating?

We at Tech2 take product reviewing very seriously and every product is tested with the utmost care and level of objectivity. The end user who buys a particular product and uses it over an extended period of time has his own take on a product and there might be nuances that he or she can shed light on. The Average User Rating is present to help readers get the complete picture of how good or bad a product is. The Average User Rating is calculated by averaging the ratings by the thousands of readers visiting Tech2.com every single day. To record your own rating of a product, simply click on the user rating bar. If you disagree with our ratings or our community's product rating, please don't hesitate from voicing your opinion in the comments section below the review.

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