The Qnap TS-210 is cute, should save power, and has a long way to go before it is a market killer. The processor is too slow for modern disks and networks. The original software is a true example of sloppy software development.

Positives

• + Low power.
• + Quiet when disks not active and fan slows down.

Negatives

• - The icon is continuously animated. Do you realise how depressing it is to think that something truly insanely bad from the early days of the Web, 1994, could be used by someone today? Someone at Qnap is either totally evil or in marketing.
• - The login is a popup instead of a Web page. Evil. You cannot choose to save the login in the browser or anything intelligent. Evil!
• - No disk noise suppression.
• - Installation settings do not work.
• - For the settings that do work, you often have to reboot to make them work.
• - They use Yahoo Javascript code.
• - No immediate backup.
• - No Wake on LAN. Evil. It makes all the power management useless!
• - Endless options and information are mentioned in the HTML but do not display on the page.

Update August 2010

There is new software you can download for the TS-210. The software is hard to find on the Qnap site plus there are conflicting notes about the available versions. I think the notes mean the software is used for several different models.

The new software is far better than the old but is still full of holes. I would call the current update an early beta version not yet suitable for sale to the public.

If the Qnap had started here and progressed, it could be a good purchase. The horrible original software was such a failure that I decided not to trust Qnap again.

The new software is faster but the Marvel processor is just not fast enough for anything other than a slow backup. I would perform the initial backup to a local disk then replicate the backup to the Qnap.

Web interface

This product is so variable that it swings from brilliant to junk and back second by second. Take just one example. After you have it running, go to Administration, System Status, Resource Monitor. The CPU usage displays as a nice little chart. On the same page you should see disk usage and network bandwidth usage but both those charts are blank because Qnap use a different way of presenting the charts, a non standard way. A quick look at the page HTML shows the working display uses the HTML canvas element and the two failed displays are ancient Flash rubbish. Some script kiddie wanted to put flash on his or her resume and Qnap let her/him damage the page.

When you first start the Web interface, the home page and the admin login page arrive at reasonable speeds. When you login, the next page times out. You then have to login a second time to see the admin menu. Future logins remain fast until you restart the machine then you are back to the timeout. The first time through the admin area you will see many broken images and will have to refresh the screen one or more times to bring all the images into memory.

Temperature

The Qnap is in a room with temperatures in the low 20s (Centigrade) and is fitted with two medium power disks. The machine was going through a continual annoying power down/up whine that sounds like the fan. The Web temperature display said the system was at 50°C (122° F), disk 1 is 42°C (107° F), and disk 2 is 39°C (102° F). The default settings for the fan was way too high and the fan appeared to be continually switching between high and low speed.

I changed the settings. The fan now switches to full speed at 45°C (the lowest setting). The fan switches back to low speed at 35°C (the lowest setting) and off occurs at 25°C (the lowest setting). The fan now seems stuck on full speed most of the time. The System temperature is 36°C(96°F), disk 1 is 27°C(80°F), and disk 2 is 26°C(78°F).

Eventually I changed the middle setting to 40°C in an attempt to reduce the noise but the system immediately heated up to 40°C and the disk temperatures went up so I went back to 35°C and the noise.

You will still save power on a two disk system because the fan is smaller than a fan in a conventional computer case. If you use more than one Qnap TS-210 to store data across multiple disks, I suspect the one big slow moving fan in the right Antec case would use less power than multiple little fans.

Noise

The Qnap TS-210 is noisy with the fan at full speed so do not use it in the same room. Use an Antec Sonata case or similar when you want a quiet NAS in the same room. See FreeNAS and Openfiler for build your own NAS.

Backup

You can plug in external USB devices and create scheduled backups from the Qnap disks to the USB disks. You can also backup to other Qnap NAS devices. My test USB disk drops out frequently making the scheduled backup useless.

There is no option to perform an immediate backup. When you copy something to the Qnap, you have to wait for the next scheduled backup and there can be only one scheduled backup per day. You cannot copy to the Qnap, perform an immediate backup to the USB disk, then safely delete the original from your computer.

Usable disk space

When a 500 GB disk is formatted for RAID, the disk capacity ends up as 465.76 GB. Formatting the RAID array as Ext3 reduces available space to 456.98 GB.

Processor speed

The processor speed is adequate for local use without encryption. The processor is rarely above 10% usage. I did not test with SSL or encryption on and either one might use all the processor resources. For non SSL use the the processor should support several file transfers at once.

Access by a Windows machine using SMB is sometimes slow and sometimes fast but that is a characteristic of Windows and SMB. Windows takes a long while to open a file across a network and can then transfer the file at near network speed. When you transfer one big file, windows will wait up to 10 seconds before starting the transfer then slide the data across reasonably fast. When you transfer lots of little files, the first one might suffer a 10 second delay then each subsequent file a 1 second delay. If you use FTP instead of SMB, you get the same transfer speeds but far less file opening delay.

The Qnap TS-210 uses a Marvel processor running at 800MHz but the clock speed is irrelevant. The AMD Geode processor is available at the same clock speed and performs twice as much processing because of better architecture.

Memory

The memory was never more than half used for NAS applications. You would only run out of memory if you decided to use the Qnap as a Web server. Never mix Web development and serving with backup. Use a faster Qnap device, the TS-219, for Web development and demonstrations or load Ubuntu onto a spare desktop machine.

Alternatives

Thecus produce a range of NAS devices at low prices and some are very slow, slower than the Qnap. The Thecus N2200 is the closest to the Qnap TS-210 but does not have Wake on LAN, making it equally useless as a device that just sits in the corner and powers up only when you need it.

The Thecus N3200 Pro costs more but offers Wake on LAN, space for three disks, giving you the option of RAID 5, and a faster AMD Geode processor. The Thecus N0503 ComboNAS is a slight step up from the N0503 in price and offers a lot more memory in case you decide to run a Web server or something equally silly from the same box. The N0503 and N3200 both have two network connections and could be used as a backup on one network and a Web server or something else on another network. With both boxes, you are up at a price similar to a desktop box or server. The savings compared to a PC are reduced power when in standby mode and a simplified installation process. I-Tech have the best prices on most Thecus models and MegaBuy beat I-Tech on some models.

The Qnap TS-239 Pro II is the cheapest Qnap with Wake on LAN, has similar specifications to the Thecus N0503 but only two disks instead of three, and costs over AU$100 more. The price makes the Qnap TS-239 Pro II too expensive for a 2 disk backup box and more expensive than a regular mini tower based backup.

Conclusion

I will use the Qnap only for backup. I will move the USB disk from the Qnap and connect the disk direct to my computer to create another backup. I am also experimenting with FreeNAS and will use that as a third backup. When FreeNAS or equivalent is working, I will sell the Qnap.

Administration menu

Here are the administration menu options presented in the order displayed. I include the ones I used and some that looked useful. The total list is:

• Overview
• System Administration
• Disk Management
• Access Right Management
• Network Services
• Applications
• Backup
• External Device
• System Status

System Administration

System Administration contains the following options:

• General Settings
• Network
• Hardware
• Security
• Notification
• Power Management
• Network Recycle Bin
• Backup System Settings
• System Logs
• Firmware Update
• System Reset

Power Management

Restart/ Shutdown

Execute system restart/ shutdown immediately. [Restart] [Shutdown]

Restart: The server has been restarted. This page will automatically try to reconnect to the server after several minutes. If the reconnection fails, it may be due to a change of the server's IP address or name. Please find the proper IP address or name, then manually connect again.

Configure Wake on LAN (This option is not displayed. See note.)
[ ] Enable
[ ] Disable

Note: This option might not display because the hardware does not include that basic feature or because the firmware is faulty and does not detect the feature or because the Web pages are so pathetically bad that the option does not display. The option is in the HTML but it set to not show.

Help information: Wake on LAN Enable this option to power on the NAS remotely by Wake on LAN. Note: The function or its content is only applicable on some specific models.

When the AC power resumes:
(*) Resume the server to the previous power-on or power-off status.
( ) The server should remain off.

Set power on/ power off/ restart schedule
[ ] Enable schedule
You get options to restart the machine each day plus power down plus power up.