Thecus N0503

[ssp0987]

Hi,

I just saw Thecus having a new NAS N0503. I have been waiting for the 2.5"HD NAS for a long time. Does anyone bought this machine already? Is it running as good as it described?

Thanks

 

[jwpatt]

I am very interested in this NAS as well. Thinking about getting 2 of them and using the first in JBOD with the second connected to the first for back-up.

 

[zygote]

I got one of these delivered last week. What do you want to know?

Got mine set up with 3x3.5" 1Tb drives in a RAID5 and performance is excellent. Also have 200Gb portioned off to use as an iSCSI target and it works flawlessly. Superb bit of kit, glad I didn't go for the QNAP now.

I opened it up last night and have to say it all looks very high quality. The Intel Atom CPU is the N270 (1.6GHz, 533, 512) and with 1Gb RAM I reckon this must be one of the most powerful SOHO NAS boxes around. I'll post the pics as soon as one of the Thecus forums adds a N0503 section!! (not much chance of that considering Thecus can't be ar5ed adding the N0503 to it's own support sections)

 

[ion_null]

Morning zygote,

I'm curious as to why you are glad that you did not go with the QNAP. Which model were you looking at?

Right now I am debating between the N0503 and the QNAP TS-439 Pro. I have reviewed Thecus and QNAP online and some websites offer the opinion that Thecus' products such as the AJAX implementation is less "robust" than say Synology and QNAP.

I am a purely MAC household - iMac 3.06 and MacBook Pro 17" 3.06 and want a strong AFP or SMB solution with strong iTunes Server implementation.

Lastly, how many iSCSI volumes can you create on the N0503? It appears from my review of the manual, you can only create 1; whereas the TS-439 you can create upto 8.

Many thanks,

Eric

 

[zygote]

I was looking at the QNAP 219P which is at the same price point as the N0503, (I paid £280 inc VAT from Span Worldwide for the Thecus) so the reason to go with the N0503 from the off was that I could have RAID5 for the same base price.

I also looked at various reviews of RAID NAS devices and the Thecus products always came out well for performance, usually beating the QNAP's by a reasonable margin so that was what swung it for me.

I run a mixed OSX/Win environment and the N0503 is extremely strong in both environments. AFP access to shares is very fast, way ahead of SMB, and my iTunes library loads almost instantly (about 6000 songs). I am continually impressed with how well this NAS works in a Mac environment.

Regarding iSCSI, as far as I know you can configure as many targets as you have allocated space. The problem on the Mac side is that there aren't very many iSCSI initiators and only one that's free (globalsan). This initiator has an issue where it only mounts targets with a LUN of 0 so you can only attach the first iSCSI target that you configured on the NAS. The N0503 (IMHO correctly assigns LUN's incrementally) but the globalsan initiator only looks for 0. This is a shortcoming of the initiator IMHO and you would probably see the same behaviour with any iSCSI target platform until globalsan fix their software. The Vista initiator mounts all of them simultaneously.

For me there was no real decision to make once I'd done my research.

Give me a shout if I can be of any more help.

Cheers.

 

[ion_null]

Thanks for your prompt reply Zygote!

Which part of the UK are you located. My family is scousers ... =)

Presently, Thecus does not specify compatible harddrives on their website. What drives did you install?

Do you think the drives which are compatible with the N5500 or the N3200Pro would be ok for the N0503?

I would like to load the maximum 6TB for 3.5 drives.

One thing that I think is a negative against the N0503 is the inability to host a website. Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Eric

 

[zygote]

Hi Eric,

Scotland. My girlfriend's a Wirral girl though so quite often down at that part of the country.

I'm not sure what drives are fully compatible, I put 3x1Tb Hitachi Deskstar (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150256) drives in mine and they're fine, if a little on the noisy side when accessed. Are you planning on 3x2Tb JBOD? Wouldn't recommend that personally as you lose redundancy but hey, everyone to their own. I would do a little research on the web though as the Seagate 1.5Tb drives have caused all sorts of problems not only on Thecus NAS's but in general. Seagate issues a firmware upgrade to fix it but I'm not sure if it does in all cases. Also not sure if the problem affects their 2Tb models.

I'm not sure that the N0503 doesn't allow you to host a website. The system adds a "naswebsite" folder to the file system by default and it's empty. If I browse to the IP of my NAS on port 8080 I get a "nothing there" error in the browser. I'll try putting an index.htm or something in the folder tonight and report back.

Edit: I tried uploading a website to the 'naswebsite' folder and it still isn't browsable. I think port 8080 is for the Mediabolic media server however on other Thecus NAS's the 'naswebsite' is for hosting a web site using an add-on module. The N0503 supports modules so I guess it's only a matter of time before these modules are converted for the N0503. Also, Thecus now have a HDD compatibility list for the N0503 at http://www.thecus.com/Downloads/HDD_List/N0503_HDD_list_2009-08-27.pdf

 

[HW Miumiu]

Regarding to discuss about iSCSI, NAS admin could create up to five iSCSI volumes in a RAID, which means if there are two RAID volumes existing in N0503, then up to 10 iSCSI volumes are possible.

 

[Jowl]

I'd be interested in the power consumption/management of the N0503.

I've been searching for a long time for the right NAS for home. Currently I'm testing a FreeNAS box as I struggled to get a NAS box with Wake On Lan. But the N0503 seems to tick all the boxes - WoL, Raid Expansion/migration and claimed low power consumption.

Can you say how much it uses - idle and in use?

I will start with 3 x 3.5 500gb drives in Raid 5. It would be accessed by a self-built Windows desktop, a Mac Mini and a couple of Apple Laptops running OS X Leopard/snow Leopard. I would like decent transfer speeds from the gigabit enabled desktop and Mini.

Cheers

 

[Chaplin]

N0503 Wins Digital Home Magazine’s Editor Choice
http://www.thecus.com/news_contentx.php?nid=1487

 

[zygote]

I'd still recommend this having used it for a while now. However, anyone thinking of buying any Thecus product be warned, their after sales support is absolutely hopeless. Expect to wait around 2 weeks for a reply from technical support.

I'd say for domestic markets it's fine but I wouldn't dream of using Thecus products in a business environment until they can sort out their tech support. 2 weeks is completely unacceptable.

 

[Chaplin]

About Thecus®
Thecus® Technology Corp. specializes in IP Storage Server solutions, including Network Attached Storage (NAS) , DAS, External Storage and Wireless Media NAS (Bank ) products. The company was established in 2004 with the mission to make technology as transparent and easy-to-use as possible, and to make products that are not only the best on the market, but are accessible to experts and novices alike. With a best-in-class R&D team highly experienced in storage hardware and Linux software and with a keen customer focus, Thecus® stays close to the market to develop high-quality products to fulfill the storage Server needs of today's world.
For sales inquiries, please contact us via email: sales@thecus.com
For marketing inquiries, please contact us via email: marketing@thecus.com

 

[thiggins]

About Thecus®...

Chaplin, what is the purpose of that post?

 

[Chaplin]

A link with the comment of zygote. I found funny that Thecus posts this description at the bottom of each of the products and that he says himself centred on the customer but that there is a bad service...

Do you go to test this product Tim?

 

[thiggins]

I currently have no plans to test the product.

 

[Chaplin]

I currently have no plans to test the product.

Why? It seems interesting...

 

[Daveh]

UPNPDLNA and printer server features.

Hi zygote,

I am interested in getting the n0503 as well. Have you tried using it to stream videos to a upnp/DLNA device?

Have you also tried to connect a printer to it and sharing with its printer server functionality?

If there are 3 1TB HDDs, is it possible to run raid 1 between 2 of the 1TB HDDs?

DaveH

I'd still recommend this having used it for a while now. However, anyone thinking of buying any Thecus product be warned, their after sales support is absolutely hopeless. Expect to wait around 2 weeks for a reply from technical support.

I'd say for domestic markets it's fine but I wouldn't dream of using Thecus products in a business environment until they can sort out their tech support. 2 weeks is completely unacceptable.

 

[zygote]

Hi zygote,

I am interested in getting the n0503 as well. Have you tried using it to stream videos to a upnp/DLNA device?

Have you also tried to connect a printer to it and sharing with its printer server functionality?

If there are 3 1TB HDDs, is it possible to run raid 1 between 2 of the 1TB HDDs?

DaveH

Hi Daveh

I stream videos from my N0503 to my PS3 no problem, I think the media server is pretty good. I also have a Samsung colour laser attached which is shared to Windows and Mac's without any issues. All very good.

As for your raid question, I'm not sure if this configuration is supported as I only intended to have a raid5 array in the first place and that is how it has remained. Obviously if you only put 2 drives in then raid 1 is possible but whether you can have 3 drives with 2 as a raid1 and one as a stand alone drive I'm afraid I can't answer.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Z