NAS Attack: Network Storage From Thecus And Western Digital

[MBinder]

Thecus is first company to offer an attractive little 2.5” NAS solution that works well in your living room, while Western Digital’s dual-drive NAS delivers up to 4TB of capacity with RAID 0 and 1. Today's we're testing the two very-different devices.

NAS Attack: Network Storage From Thecus And Western Digital : Read more

 

[usasma]

Nice review. I would have appreciated it when purchasing my latest NAS device (Netgear DNS-323).

I've lost faith in the W-D MyBook type devices recently - having had several that have failed due to issues with the circuitry in the case (NOT with the hard drive itself).

 

[evongugg]

It would be nice to benchmark a FreeNAS or Openfiler box next to these units. My FreeNAS was free, made of left over parts and is very fast.
It also has a whole lot of features.

 

[jblack]

Why in the world would RAID 1 perform better than RAID 0? --- You'd think at BEST they would be equal.

 

[fromeast2west]

An Atom powered mini-server should be able to match these on both price and power consumption, and destroy them when it comes to features.

I like the idea of a NAS, but haven't seen any company produce one for a price that is in line with performance they offer.

 

[jasperjones]

Thanks for the review!

Can you comment on fan noise? Is it audible when the devices are idle?

Asking cause I live in a cozy Manhattan studio

 

[jawshoeaw]

The NAS concept continues to be overpriced I think. Still haven't seen a fast 802.11N device. There is something to be said for a simple design with fewer parts to go bad (so the homebrew NAS box is cheaper but more fault prone) - I'd like to see some longevity figures, though of course I would not expect toms to sit around for a couple of years waiting for the NAS to break. Maybe something like the consumer reports long term testing of cars.

 

[dje007]

Thecus’s support is the crappiest I have seen in a long time stay away from them plus there code is bad the only thing it has going for it is linux, if you are looking for a good nas with the ablitly to fix issues your self try QNAP they have a VGA output and give you root access.

 

[SchizoFrog]

This review is rubbish... out of the whole genre of NAS it includes 2 individual items, is that it, 2, just 2???
But lets get to the real nitty gritty... Nas is all about network performance, so where are the details about the inbuilt processors and technical specs? There is so much more to account for when buying and setting up a NAS item than just 'Oh look, we can open this box... OOOHHH!!!'
Talk about N00B article... FAIL!!!

 

[SchizoFrog]

[citation][nom]jblack[/nom]Why in the world would RAID 1 perform better than RAID 0? --- You'd think at BEST they would be equal.[/citation]
You obviously have no understanding of RAID and its configurations... No offence intended but go read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Standard_levels

 

[deanbug]

I see both points. In theory 0 should have better read/write than 1, but it is limited to the source/destination speed of the drive.

IMHO raid 1 or 5 is for consumers that really want their data, or for businesses. 0 is for people that don't care about data, gamers for fast map load times, or Ninja's

(had to have some fun

Obviously there are other uses, for both, but I think those are the most common.

 

[deanbug]

I see both points. In theory 0 should have better read/write than 1, but it is limited to the source/destination speed of the drive.

IMHO raid 1 or 5 is for consumers that really want their data, or for businesses. 0 is for people that don't care about data, gamers for fast map load times, or Ninja's

(had to have some fun)

Obviously there are other uses for both, but I think those are the most common.

 

[elbestion]

I have a Western Digital My Book World Edition II. The reason I bough it is to
have it as a FTP server, that way I can access files across the LAN and WAN. The NAS came
with MIONET, which in my opinion it simply sucks!! I want to give users the right to download
files across the internet, you could use that with MIONET, but first of all the interface
sucks, it requires JAVA, and it's slow. Plus, in order for me to give a user permission
to access a folder on my NAS, that person must first create an account on MIONET,
WHAT KIND OF CRAP IS THAT ???? Now, I am trying to find a way how to do this without MIONET.

The manual says you can do this but it says you must be an "advanced user", I called Western Digital
customer support and they said they can't provide me with that information because only
advanced users can do this and I must know how to do this myself. WHHHAAAT!!!

I can't seem to find anything on google so I am asking all of you if you can perhaps help
me set this up, I have already been able to access my NAS from the WAN by opening ports 21
on my router and enabling FTP on my NAS, however, it is extremly unsecured, Why? because
any person can simply type in my private ip address in their browser and somehow they
are able to access my NAS. I don't know how this happens, it's driving me nuts. really. I want
users to access my NAS with a password and username. Can someone Please help me with this problem,
I would gladly appreciate it. PLEASE HELP!!! Thank You.

 

[Guest]

Answer: Login to your NAS as admin using it's ip. Goto users and start making some accounts and assign what folders these accounts have access to. Give password and your done. I cant even get mine to be seen from the internet - only my LAN and I have it set as a freakin DMZ in my router!

 

[elbestion]

Never mind that posting because I found an alternative to that worthless MIONET service. You have to "hack the device" and open some ports on your router, it is not something diffcult. Here is the link to hack it, once you do that you pretty much install like another service on the NAS. Now, I can access my NAS and download files from my school, and I can make folders for my friends in my NAS so they can access it across the web and download anything I put there, pretty much it is a FTP server. You can set a username and a password, it is awesome. It's a shame that Western Digital couldn't implement a nice and easy way to turn that NAS into a FTP server.

http://highlevelbits.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=42&Itemid=68&lang=en

 

[Guest]

I don't want to hack my device. Could you please explain how did you access your files through WAN with FTP? When I tried to access my files through local IP it asks for a pass. So i think it'll also ask for a pass for the WAN access.. But I couldn't access my NAS. What knd of port forwarding shoud I do to access my NAS on WAN?

 

[Guest]

10 mb / second .. and fast ?? you do not know what is fast and whatt is slow man.

 

[gmiller2575]

I agree that that FreeNas should have been compared as well. On that note, why hasn't anyone from Tom's built one yet??? I would love to see what you guys come up with. Also, what about adding DLNA/Media Sharing as a test/benchmark. Many people are using NAS as a media hub now instead of just storing Word documents...

 

[gmiller2575]

I agree that that FreeNas should have been compared as well. On that note, why hasn't anyone from Tom's built one yet??? I would love to see what you guys come up with. Also, what about adding DLNA/Media Sharing as a test/benchmark. Many people are using NAS as a media hub now instead of just storing Word documents...

 

[eppitapp]

so how does i know what harddrive to change if one of the has failed? or what drive to buy and insert again? so the backup build up on both disk again, so i got the same files at both disk??

 

[eppitapp]

from the My Book World Edition II?

 

[Guest]

Unfortunate Outcome:

Mac's won't mount after (1st few days) the WD MyBook II World Edition 4TB NAS

Well - I did not receive any responses via the forum, I realize these take some time, so I called Western Digital Support Directly today and though they had to accellerate me to 3 different support levels over 60minutes - they were very helpful.

The Senior Technician in Calif. stated that the WD MyBook II has a problem with APPLE AIRPORT EXTREME wireless basestations (router).

Still seems weird that Everything worked flawlessly for 3 days - but then after that, NO Mac would mount the drive, the only way was to connect via smb:\\ IP which is not what you want to see as you loose all of your 'mac' like look and feel and every file now looks like a unix file (like MS word doc without the .doc)

Unfortunately - the Sr. Tech stated that they have nor will be working on a solution for this - which is a Sad statement as the drive showed great potential at first, I had been surprised that it was so cross-platform compatible initially.

Luckily - I purchased it from BUYDIG and they have a wonderful return policy - so I'm sending it back! I think I'll just bit the bullet and go with the more expensive QNAP product. Sometimes saving money and buying the 'deal' is just not the ticket.

Oh well - best wishes to everyone, but being a dual platform user (Mac and Win) I need a NAS solution that's solid.

Thanks to Western Digital - you're about 90% there but you really need to go the next step as if this had worked you would have had a Great Home Media Server Solution.

See you in the QNAP forums...

 

[daimono]

As observation, a bit late perhaps, but still, this review makes a lot of assumptions. Not a lot of testing was involved. Simply because the disks are easily removable that doesn't mean they are easily replaceable as well. In fact, this operation is not supported by WD in the slightest of ways. There are no official bootstraps offered or anything. The community (distinctively disassociated from WD) struggles to offer some solutions, but, alas, with poor success.

 

[daimono]

As observation, a bit late perhaps, but still, this review makes a lot of assumptions. Not a lot of testing was involved. Simply because the disks are easily removable that doesn't mean they are easily replaceable as well. In fact, this operation is not supported by WD in the slightest of ways. There are no official bootstraps offered or anything. The community (distinctively disassociated from WD) struggles to offer some solutions, but, alas, with poor success.

 

[Guest]

Interestingly enough, and related to Mac issues when AFP mounting the drive, I have found that I can use seamlessly my new WD MyBook II, but for this I have to use an old Comtrend switch at home (100 Mb/s ports), if I try using my brand new D-Link switch (with 1 GBit/s ports) then my Mac loose the connection to the drive regularly and only recovers the connection when I restart the NAS; well, will keep searching for some error in my D-Link configuration.