James Bannan29 February 2008, 4:24 PM
As with most NAS units on the market, the devil is in the detail — specifically what services each device supports.
The TS-209 Pro uses two hot-swappable SATA drive bays, each capable of supporting the newest 1TB drives, so you can have a 2TB non-redundant striped data store, or a 1TB redundant RAID-1 mirror. The device itself is powered by a 500MHz CPU, 128MB DDR2 RAM and a single Gigabit LAN port.
The TS-209 is well-stocked with networking services: File, FTP, iTunes, TwonkyMedia, web, MySQL, SQLite, DDNS, Printer and Backup. It also has an onboard BitTorrent/FTP/HTTP download station, integrates with Windows Active Directory for security/permissions, supports AppleTalk, automated backup and data replication to other QNAP NAS.
There are two USB ports on the back for attaching USB printers, and one on the front for USB devices like flash drives and cameras. The TS-209 has an autocopy feature to copy all the data off USB devices onto the local disk. You do need QNAP software to initially set up the device, but once done it has an attractive and intuitive web interface. You also need client software installed to manage download tasks on multiple QNAP devices and set up automatic backups.
Read/write performance was very good, taking three minutes to copy across 3GB of assorted MP3s, videos and large executables, and just under that to copy it all back across again. There’s an inbuilt Recycle Bin which catches all data deleted from the NAS (just in case), and all the multimedia contents are accessible by networked devices like the PS3 or Xbox 360.
Although pricey, it offers power users and businesses the flexibility to run their data and entertainment network effectively from one unit, with the power to keep important data protected and secure.