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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Quiet, fan-less, design with numerous useful features."
Pros: Fan-less. Quiet. Can be bought with or without a disc drive. Numerous features. Qnap seem to take an interest in their customers with hardware & software updates, an active forum and a comprehensive manual.
Cons: Not the cheapest. USB indicator light could have better positioned.
Summary: I have had this running for 5 months on my first attempt at a network - a mixed Windows XP / Mac system.
The fan-less design was the decider for me due to power consumption and noise. Separately I bought a WD "green power" disc drive (reviewed by tomshardware.com) which has hopefully kept power requirements and generated heat to minimum. The cat prefers the Mac to keep warm.
The other appealing feature for me was the USB port on the front which allows you for download data onto the drive without the computer being on. I use this to download photos from the cameras we have. The files get deposited into a folder with today's date as the name. A small niggle I do have is that the USB indicator light could have been positioned within the button used to carry out the download rather than underneath the USB port, where it can get hidden from view.
Backup to another disc can be done automatically or manually. There is a RAID 1 option, but in my mind a good backup is one that is physically divorced from the data you are trying to protect.
At the moment I don't use the significant number of other features available, but the possibilities are numerous.
Due to the nature of how I use it and limited networking experience, I couldn't comment on its speed. However it's in its second incarnation so it should be competitive - keep an eye on smallnetbuilder.com to see if they bring out a review.
Well recommended.
