Thecus N2100

[Rob Williams]

If you are looking for a quality NAS, the N2100 from Thecus is worth your consideration. It can act as a music and photo sharing hub and even an FTP server, among others. Though, the best part might be it's price.

You can read the review here and discuss it here!

Can you please provide information on data throughput speeds.

Specifically, time to transfer a large file to and from the device (a little math should yield a good speed approx.) (Few hundred megs to a gb)

Similarly a speed test transferring a large group of smaller files to and from the unit (Think lots of files in the kb range ).

And finally, throughput tests for transferring files to and from multiple computers.
In other words, what happens to the speed when the data sets above are transferred to or from more than one computer at once.

Given the processor choice, the system may be greatly affected by such high workloads and I'm interested in the affect.


A final note that is far less important - any idea on the OS? If its a linux/BSD variant, there maybe some great community add-ons in the future.

I was checking the Thecus website and noticed the following on the latest firmware:

NAS performance has been improved in firmware v2.1.01 or later. However, it won’t take effect just by firmware upgrade; you have to re-create the RAID too. In case you need it, backup all data, remove the RAID, create a new one, and then put all data back.

In either case if you decide to update the article with these tests, please use the latest firmware to ensure maximum performance.

Thank you.

PS: There are revisions of the units that also include a Bit Torrent Client, and a DNLA complient media video streamer, though I'm not sure of the abilities. I just saw the models available on NewEgg.

I was checking the Thecus website and noticed the following on the latest firmware:

NAS performance has been improved in firmware v2.1.01 or later. However, it won’t take effect just by firmware upgrade; you have to re-create the RAID too. In case you need it, backup all data, remove the RAID, create a new one, and then put all data back.

In either case if you decide to update the article with these tests, please use the latest firmware to ensure maximum performance.

Thank you.

PS: There are revisions of the units that also include a Bit Torrent Client, and a DNLA complient media video streamer, though I'm not sure of the abilities. I just saw the models available on NewEgg.

Additionally there is a wiki with great OS/Hardware info, and Add-On modules

http://onbeat.dk/thecus/index.php/N2100_Links

These Thecus products use embedded Linux. (Its a fact.)

They also provide the source code. But I suspect some parts could be in binary form.

For example, at their download page for this product, you'll see two entries...

N2100_2.1.05_Firmware
=> This is the pre-compiled binary firmware that you just install without a thought.

n2100_2.1.05_GPL
=> This points to the source code section of the site. This is especially useful for experienced Linux folks who want to customise and fine tune. Obviously, you need to cross-compile to support the X-Scale CPUs in that Thecus box.

Anyone know if you can upgrade the RAM to 1GB?

[Greg King]

To answer you all...

The data speed tests will be coming shortly. I am comparing transfer speeds on a 100 base and 1000 base network although, I don't expect to see much of a difference. We will see though.

As far as upping the RAM, that is something that I can try out tonight. We can see how it goes and if it helps.

if i remember you can add WIFI in this NAS

USB and Minipci

http://www.thecus.com/downloadx.php?cid=1&pid=1