Thecus N3200 NAS Review :: Thecus N3200 Bundle and installation

• External Power supply
• Software CD
• Ethernet cable
• Quick Install Guide

Thecus decided to go the bare route with the N3200. The software CD came with all of the software necessary to run the N3200 as the various files can be used on Windows, Linux, MacOS and more. The server also includes an ITunes file server that supports AAC, MP3 and WAV files for those with ITunes. The N3200 supports FTP, HTTP, HTTPs (secure Hyper Text Transfer Protoccol) and Microsoft Networking.

The hardware side of the bundle includes the External Power Supply, a Quick Install Guide and the Ethernet cable. The External Power Supply connects to the DC In jack on the rear of the unit, making the unit smaller than it would have been had the PSU been on the interior of the unit. The Quick Install Guide is only currently in English compared to the 20 languages on the N5200 but it does the job nicely.

So you have this new NAS Server and want to set it up what's the first step? Taking the unit out of the box and taking the enclosure out of the packaging foam material you can see the shiny black finish of the N3200. The unit is fairly lightweight as it is made out of aluminum which is of course lighter than SECC steel used in most cases today.

To install the HDDs you need to pop out the front panel which has a mesh cover for each of the hard drives. Behind the front panel are six rails to hold the hard disk drives into the N3200. To install a HDD simply remove the rail, attach it to one side of the hard drive repeat, slide the rail back into the N3200 and repeat twice for the other two HDDs. At the rear of the unit are Power and data ports for SATA drives so no cables are necessary.

Once the face plate is returned, attach the power supply and power on the unit. The first screen upon boot is the device discovery screen which automatically detects the N3200 the IP address and the MAC address. Next is the Network Configuration tool which specifies whether the unit will use Static IP address or DHCP.

The next step is setting up the hard disks. The software will automatically detect what hard disks are on the N3200. The choices for what configuration you want to set them up as are JBOD, RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID 5. Note that RAID 5 requires three hard disks to be installed otherwise only JBOD, RAID-0 or RAID-1 will be displayed as choices.

The next screen is where you set up the RAID array. The disks are listed again, with the capacities and model numbers, health and RAID, Set Stripe size, Create RAID and Cancel. To set up a RAID array simply check RAID for each drive you want in the array, set the type of RAID you want to set up, set the Stripe size and click the Create RAID button.

The file storage system sets up folders for Photos, Music, Video, USBCopy, USBHDD, and external SATA HDD. You can grant or deny access to each folder by using the Edit button on each folder. The iTunes server configuration allows other computers on the network to access music files in the Music folder of any iTunes equipped computer. This is a great feature for those that have multiple computers with music on them.

As to performance on the NAS 3200, it was very fast at transferring files between two computers on a 802.11n Wireless network. Copying a 8GB file took a little under 5 minutes between a PC with a RAID 0 array of two WD Raptors to the Thecus N3200, which means the N3200 was a little slower than the N5200 running the same file transfer.