Does Thecus have "personal cloud" feature?

[flowrider]

Hello all,
I'm looking at purchasing the N5550 but have not been able to find out if it has a personal cloud feature similar to dropbox. I currently have a 2 bay Synology but need more drive space so I've been looking for 4+ bay units.

 

[thiggins]

It's unclear. The N5550 is fairly old and doesn't have an OS6 firmware. I'll ping my contact to reply.

 

[flowrider]

Thanks Tim. It's all pretty unclear.

 

[stevech]

... I currently have a 2 bay Synology but need more drive space so I've been looking for 4+ bay units.

what size are your current drives in the Synology?

5TB drives are amazingly affordable now.

 

[flowrider]

I have 2 - 3tb drives in Raid 1 but I have 5 of them!! Hence the reason to get a 4+ bay NAS instead. I'm a photographer who dabbles in video. I have about 2.5tb of raw images that I keep on the NAS and on my Smugmug acccount I have about 200 gigs of images and video (mostly images). I do cull quite a bit but would like to have more expandability.

I posted in the NAS buying advice section as well about a few NAS units I'm looking at. Price is a concern for me.
N5550 - mainly because of the fast speeds, atom processor and expandable ram
QNAP TS-431 - great OS but only 512mb of ram and an ARM processor
WD EX4 - easy to work with UI but slow.

I want to really like the Thecus but a bit worried after hearing numerous complaints about tech support, lack of updates, and I'd like it to be accessible from outside my own lan (personal cloud).

Edit: Just looked at the Asustor AS-304T as well. It looks very nice for the price.

 

[flowrider]

To add a bit more information.
I'd like hot swapability and auto raid expansion. I don't need the NAS to do any transcoding but I'd really like to get the most out of the gigabit wiring that I have in the house.

 

[coxhaus]

I would be very careful with RAID expansion. You really need to be techincal about what is happening with the expansion. I always felt better moving the data off and building the new RAID and then copying the data back. I think it is safer and faster.

Hot swap is a nice feature but I don't see it being neccessary for a home NAS. You usually have time at home to power the device down and change the drive out. If you are under a time crunch or losing money then buy hot swap.

 

[flowrider]

Thanks for your advice coxhaus.

 

[thiggins]

I would be very careful with RAID expansion. You really need to be techincal about what is happening with the expansion. I always felt better moving the data off and building the new RAID and then copying the data back. I think it is safer and faster.

Hot swap is a nice feature but I don't see it being neccessary for a home NAS. You usually have time at homr to power the device down and change the drive out. If you are under a time crunch or losing money then buy hot swap.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/...-roll-into-trouble-when-expanding-nas-storage

 

[stevech]

don't bet the bank on RAID. In small NASes, my view is that it shouldn't be used.
There's no substitute for external backup - like big USB3 drive(s).

 

[flowrider]

No worries Steve. I'll use the external backup feature that most NAS units have as well. I do that already with my current Synology. I have 2 bare drive in an Plugable drive bay that I rotate and keep one at work. I know that a NAS and RAID isn't a backup. On the photo forum that I belong to it's been beaten to death.

 

[coxhaus]

don't bet the bank on RAID. In small NASes, my view is that it shouldn't be used.
There's no substitute for external backup - like big USB3 drive(s).

When I use RAID5 I always use a hardware RAID card in a Microsoft server. I am not recommending RAID5 on a NAS as I don't think you can add a hardware RAID card to a NAS. I would use a server instead of an NAS. But if you are going to do use RAID5 on a NAS this is what I recommend.

 

[flowrider]

Thanks for your input but the original question remains. Does the Thecus N5550 have a personal cloud feature? I still haven't been able to find this out definitively but I'm thinking no.

 

[thiggins]

I am asking Thecus. Please hold.....

 

[flowrider]

Just saw the Thecus N4310 as well and it seems okay except for the underpowered single core processor that seems to be overwhelmed by Raid5. It does have cloud access which is nice.

 

[coxhaus]

Just saw the Thecus N4310 as well and it seems okay except for the underpowered single core processor that seems to be overwhelmed by Raid5. It does have cloud access which is nice.

I think you find this true with most software RAID. Server guys use a hardware RAID controller card. The controller card has a processor on it built to run RAID.

 

[Tailuke]

Hi Guys,

The N5550 does provide cloud access via DropBox, Amazon S3 or ElephantDrive. More info concerning the features of the N5550 can be found here: http://www.thecus.com/product.php?PROD_ID=76. Cheers!

 

[flowrider]

Thanks everyone for your input. After reading numerous reviews and looking at charts and features, I ended up purchasing the Asustor AS-304T. It should be here in a few days.

 

[stevech]

DropBox et al have limits on file sizes, etc.

After using many, I am using ADrive. Good enough. And lots lower cost per yr.

 

[Tailuke]

Thanks for the input guys. If you dont mind me asking Flowrider, what was the trigger that made you pull the decision for the Asustor AS-304T?