Thecus N3200 NAS System Review

[One4yu2c]

"Not too long ago, we looked at the Thecus N5200 storage server system. We liked the N5200 (very much), but felt it might be a bit overwhelming for the typical home user. Enter the Thecus N3200, a NAS system with much of the functionality of its bigger brother, but targeted at the home or small business user. At least, that's what we were told. Is it true? Let's find out!"
Chris Adcock

http://hardwarelogic.com/news/138/AR...008-09-29.html

[owcraftsman]

WOW a lot of very nice features! I might be thinking twice about building a NAS box out of spare parts. I can't think of needing anymore than what it offers.

[Das Capitolin]

Is Hardware Logic planning to finish this "review" with any testing? Perhaps I've missed something, but there was no sign of benchmark testing or performance evaluation.

Essentially, it was pictures and descriptions of their contents; which is not what I was expecting from this article.

[owcraftsman]

No drives included so test would be subjective at best with it so I'd say it's as good as the drives you put in it. Plus which connection Ethernet usb or esata seems to me it's what you attach it to as well. Sure you could run the benchmarks but how would it really apply to any given user to many variables here.

[Capper]

Originally Posted by owcraftsman

No drives included so test would be subjective at best with it so I'd say it's as good as the drives you put in it. Plus which connection Ethernet usb or esata seems to me it's what you attach it to as well. Sure you could run the benchmarks but how would it really apply to any given user to many variables here.

Thats exactly correct, and why we have not benchmarked the NAS box.

[drew and not u]

Originally Posted by Das Capitolin

Is Hardware Logic planning to finish this "review" with any testing? Perhaps I've missed something, but there was no sign of benchmark testing or performance evaluation.

Essentially, it was pictures and descriptions of their contents; which is not what I was expecting from this article.

Oooooh, look at me, I'm gonna go around bashing other site's articles on their forums, cuz I'm teh coolezt intarnet tough guy on teh blok!

[MantaBase]

Originally Posted by Das Capitolin

Is Hardware Logic planning to finish this "review" with any testing? Perhaps I've missed something, but there was no sign of benchmark testing or performance evaluation.

As I am the one that wrote it, I thought I might add to Owcraftsman and Capper in case anyone else is wondering.

This applies to any NAS or similar device.

Yes, there are too many variables - the types and sizes of drives, the number of drives, and the RAID setup -to begin with.

Further, any testing suite has to be hosted on a remote machine. If you are serving up large files as a test, you may actually be testing your network or the drive that's serving up the data/test -or heck, even the bus speed on the local machine.

I did mention RAID. I suspect that one would want to test the NAS with a RAID 0 setup - for performance and all. And that's about the stupidest setup a NAS can have. NAS is about securing and sharing data - not about speed. If one wants superfast data service, one would use a local drive array or an enterprise grade, high speed data server - not a NAS.

NAS is about features - and that is what was reviewed.

For the record, I was actually impressed with the tranfer speed of the Thecus as I got similar results to the N5200. But, again, with so many variables, it's qualitative at best.

Ya know, it's getting so you can't buy a thumbdrive without someone bring up benchmarking. I think it's a whole population of folks that feel having the fastest of everything - dam the torpedoes and the cost - means they will get more performance out of thier system. I suspect in games of course - because who needs 110FPS from MS Word?

Unfortunatly, you can buy the most expensive and best skis on the slope for next week, but it doesn't mean you can ski any better than last week.

Hope that clears things up a bit for Olin et al, and thanks for taking the time to read it folks.

Manta