QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS 4-Bay Network Storage Review

Introducing the QNAP TS-419P Turbo NAS

My home based network is a mix of two windows based workstations (XP and Windows 7), two XP laptops and two Linux servers (Redhat 5 and Fedora Core 10). External storage on these systems has always been on my todo list and a simple solution would be to add a network attached storage device or NAS. Up to this point, every time I looked at a NAS, they always seemed poorly made or way too expensive for a home based system. Recently I was asked to review the QNAP TS-419P and was hopeful that this system would fit my storage needs, be priced right and have the quality I have been looking for in a NAS.

There are two main reasons for me wanting a network attached storage device at home. One is for backing up the various computers on my network and the other is a centralized storage area for streaming media in my house. I wanted my NAS to have at least RAID 5 capability and the ability to expand in the future. After reading some of the features such as Advanced RAID Management with Hot-swap Design, Online RAID Capacity Expansion and S.M.A.R.T & Advanced HDD Health Scanning (HHS), I realized that this system would do what I wanted and a whole lot more.

After reviewing the hardware specifications I noticed that the system is shipped without hard drives. The max hard drive size this system can hold is 4 x 2 TB for a total of 8 TB. At this time, 2 TB drives are still a little pricey, but it good to know that I can expand when the price of those drives come down. After receiving the TS-419P, I went down to my local Frys electronics store and was able to get a great deal on four Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB drives. Four 500 GB drives with RAID 5 would give me about 1.3 TB of disk space, not a bad start.

Lets take a look at the hardware and software specifications before we move to the installation and configuration of the NAS.

Hardware Specifications:

CPU Marvell 6281 1.2GHz DRAM 512MB DDRII RAM Flash Memory 16MB HDD 4 x 3.5″ or 2.5 SATA I/II HDD NOTE: The system is shipped without HDD. For the HDD compatibility list, please visit http://www.qnap.com/pro_compatibility.asp HDD Tray 4 x hot-swappable and lockable tray LANPort 2 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port LED Indicators Status, LAN, USB, eSATA, HDD 1, HDD 2, HDD 3, HDD 4 USB 4 x USB 2.0 port (Front: 1; Back: 3) Supports USB printer, disk, pen drive, USB hub, and USB UPS, etc. eSATA 2 x eSATA port (Back) Buttons Power button, USB one-touch-backup button, reset button LCD panel Mono-LCD display with backlight and buttons for configuration Alarm Buzzer System warning Form Factor Tower Dimensions 177(H) x 180(W) x 235(D) mm 6.97(H) x 7.09(W) x 9.25(D) inch Weight Net weight: 3 Kg (6.61 lbs) Gross weight: 4.6 Kg (10.14 lbs) Sound Level (dB) W/o HDD installed: 33 dB Stand by: 33.2 dB In operation: 35.1dB (Background: 25.5 dB) Power Consumption (W) Sleep mode: 11W In operation: 26W (with 4 x 500GB HDD installed) Temperature 0~40C/ 32~104F Humidity 0~95% R.H. Power Supply Input: 100-240V AC, 50/60Hz, Output: 12V DC, 10A, 120W Secure Design K-lock security slot for theft prevention Fan 1 x quiet cooling fan (9 cm, 12V DC)

Software Specifications:

Operating System	Linux-embedded system
Networking	TCP/IP, DHCP Client, DHCP Server, CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, DDNS, NTP
	Multi-IP setting
	Gigabit Jumbo Frame
	Port Trunking – Balance-rr (Round-Robin) – Active Backup – Balance XOR – Broadcast – IEEE 802.3ad – Balance-tlb (Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing) – Balance-alb (Adaptive Load Balancing)
	Network Service Discovery (UPnP & Bonjour)
File System	EXT3 (Internal/ external HDD)
	EXT4 (Internal/ external HDD)
	FAT (External HDD)
	NTFS (External HDD)
Supported Operating Systems	Microsoft Windows 98/ ME/ NT/ 2000/ XP/ 2003/ Vista/ Windows 7 (32bit & 64bit)
	Mac OS X Linux and UNIX
Disk Management	Sngle disk, RAID 0 (Disk Striping), RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring), RAID 5, RAID 5+ Hot spare, RAID 6, and JBOD (Linear Disk Volume)
	Multiple RAID Online RAID Capacity Expansion Online RAID Level Migration RAID Recovery Bitmap support for faster RAID rebuild (RAID 1/5/6)
	Disk usage status management
	Check disk (Check Linux file system)
	HDD S.M.A.R.T.
	Bad blocks scan
	Built-in iSCSI target service
	Virtual Disk Drive (VDD) for storage expansion (max. 8 Volumes)
User Management	User quota management (per user)
	Windows AD
	User account management (max. 4,096 users)
	User group management (max. 512 groups)
	Batch creating users
File System Management	Network share management (max. 512 shares)
	Network volume status management
	Share folder level ACL support
	Hide share folder on Windows network
	Unicode support
	Journaling file system
	Web File Manager
System Tools	E-mail alert (SMTP authentication)
	SMS alert
	HDD standby mode
	Disk usage alert
	Automatic power on after power loss
	System firmware upgrade SNMP
	Back up, restore, reset system settings
	Smart fan setting
	Configurable management port
	Policy-based unauthorized IP blocking
	Secure remote login by SSH connection
	Remote login by Telnet connection
	USB, SNMP UPS support
	Schedule power on/ off (max. 15 settings)
	Network recycle bin
	Import SSL certificate
	Real-time System Resource Monitor
LCD	When the system is ready, users can check or configure the IP settings, physical disk info, volume info, system info, shut down or reboot the NAS, etc.
Event Logs	Complete system logs (file level): system events management, connection logs, current connection of on-line users
Multilingual Support	English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and Polish
Backup Management	PC-client backup software-NetBak Replicator: Instant/ Schedule/ Auto-sync backup
	Remote replication supports Rsync
	Encrypted remote replication
	One touch USB copy for different destination folders
	Data backup to external storage device
Multi-browser support	Internet Explorer 7 & 8
	Safari 3 & 4
	Firefox 3
	Google Chrome