I recently got the Thecus N2200Plus and I must say I am slightly disappointed with the interface and usability. However, with theprice that I am paying, its one of the best value for money NAS out there. However, Thecus should not take this as a compliment because you can't just market sub-par products and sell it cheap (or at least they should not).
Anyway, more about the performance of this NAS.
I have 2 Seagate 1TB ST1000DM003 Hard Drive (7200rpm, 1TB / Platter) on RAID 1.
My network is a TP-Link Gigabit Wireless N Router
Transfer Performance:
Win7 to NAS on N-WIFI: ~2.0 - 2.5MB/sec
Win7 to NAS on Giga Ethernet: ~20MB/sec
I would like to close one eye on the Transfer Speed. Its a bit slow but I am ok with it. My complain is how terrible those modules are, how poorly written the manuals are and general usage. For example, under NFS Setup, the manual should very briefly describe what is it rather than just "Enable or Disable NFS Support". I can overlook this issue since I can google it
I tried using the Thecus Smart Utility and Thecus Setup Wizard. The Smart Utility is a dumb utility that cannot detect the NAS. But that ok as I can't easily look it up through the DHCP list.
The entire web interface felt like as if its written in 2010. Boring. Navigating the menu isn't intuitive but again, I can overlook this because it will take time to learn and get used to it.
When creating RAID 1, I was asked to configure a couple of items and what stuck me at how many percent should i set for Data Percentage. I tried reading the manual and it says "The percentage of the RAID volume that will be used to store data". How is that going to help me?? Store what data? I need to google it again and find out that this is the percentage you reserved for USBCopy function.
Creating the RAID 1 took a long time (>3hrs) but again, I am ok with it. Time will depends on your hard disk size but if you create JBOD, its very fast.
After creating the RAID 1, there are certain folders created by default. I am one of those people who are very picky about folder names. Folders names like "_NAS_Picture_" or _NAS_Module_ just looks ugly and there is no way to rename it unless you install a command line module to access root.
Lets talk about DLM2. Installation seems easy. You install and then you enable. The annoying part is the DLM2 BT funtion. First, you go through a simple setup asking a few questions which is good but when it comes to Upload Speed Limit, default is 11000. Wat is 11000? 11000 kbps? 11000 KBps? 11000 Mbps or 11000 MBps? Suprisingly, the manual doesn't says anything. Then the worst part is after the setup. You click on the browse torrent file, and you click Upload. Then nothing happen (blank screen) BUT I can see through my router that there are some activity.
I will try Transmission and see how it goes but meanwhile, I am a bit frustrated at the software design of the modules.
- Charles