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Thecus N3200 - 3TB NAS Review

Author	Dave Mitchell
Published	17th Mar 2008
Manufacturer	Thecus
Supplier	Boston
Price	£860.00 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£989.00 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Features
Performance
Value
Overall

1 comment

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The appliance offers a good range of RAID arrays or the drives can be used as separate units

Multimedia services are in abundance and a pile of predefined folders are created during installation

An iTunes server is present and you can password protect your music if you wish

The Download Manager allows file copies independent of your PC to be scheduled

The appliance support all the main methods of user authentication including Active Directory

Latest 1 of 1 Comments

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davea0511 said on 4th August 2008

>whether home users really need RAID-5 is debatable.

Poppy****. Other than that completely defenseless statement the rest of this review was good. You just go ahead try and debate it ...

Saying it's debatable whether home users need RAID 5 is like saying it's debatable whether home users really need computers. As if the computer is more important that the data it contains. In fact, the opposite is true. You can replace computers, but once the data is lost it's lost forever. You think home users don't mind missing movies of their kids as babies? You don't think that's far more precious to them than boring data at work? Think again, buddy.

Every reason that you would want RAID 5 for business also applies to home use but even more so:
1) Raid 5 gives redundant data for safety. You think home users don't care about data persistence?
2) Raid 5 interleaves for better for better speed. You think home users want to wait for RAID 1 speeds when copying a huge movie file?
3) Raid 5 maximizes utilization of the drive space. You think home users want to buy 2X their usable storage they need in order for 100% backup safety, when Raid 5 allows them to do it with only 1.5X of their usable storage?

You can only get those advantages all on RAID 5, and why wouldn't you use it if it's sitting right there in the machine? Media files (the kind home users have on their PVR) take up huge amounts of space. If you have a PC-based PVR you're going to eventually want well over a TB of space if you like to rewatch shows, or if you have kids who love to rewatch all their favorite episodes from dozens different TV series. In just a year we've amassed 300 GB after I stripped out all the commercials ... you think I want to loose all that?! Think again buddy.

Why wouldn't anyone use RAID 1 or RAID 2 when a NAS is RAID 5 capable, regardless how the machine was used? Speed? You'd risk complete annihilation of your data for a speed improvement that will be barely noticeable in 90% of cases in a home environment? That's ridiculous.

>whether home users really need RAID-5 is debatable.

Poppy****. Other than that completely defenseless statement the rest of this review was good. You just go ah... more

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