So, having finally tired of the limitations of the QNAP TS-101 NAS's I consigned them to the junkyard. They're not bad vanilla single-drive NAS's but when you try to take advantage of their other functions they don't fare so well.
I looked for something more capacious or with RAID1 capability not using USB external storage (i.e. two internal drives), still quiet, and better compatibility with iTunes. The Thecus N2100 came up as a potential buy, so I got one.
You know what, this ain't bad.
As I mentioned above, the Thecus N2100 has two SATA drive slots - which can be run in JBOD, RAID0 or RAID1 configurations. JBOD just provides contiguous storage. RAID0 improves performance (in theory) by striping the data but provides no resilience against data loss. RAID1 duplicates your data on two drives of the same capacity (but of course halves your storage capability).
LAN speeds haven't been a huge upwards jump from the TS-101 which was pretty dire, but there has been a slight jump for the better. It has two LAN sockets so can sit on two networks at once - not so useful for many perhaps, but if your network runs to slightly more sophistication then this is a nice feature. The documentation also makes reference to the fact that it will work with some USB wireless dongles - so it seems that you can fairly simply make this a wireless NAS. Havent tried it. Failing that you can stick this on a low-cost wireless Access Point / Bridge anyway.
Noisewise, the N2100 has a 'smart fan' which powers on when necessary. I expect it'll be on full-time in summer, but for now since it's in the cold kitchen cabinet (What? You don't have CAT6 structured wiring run throughout the house including your kitchen cabinet? How do you survive?) the fan is off all the time. I won't delve too far into the network features, and while it can be a little hard to get in for NAS beginners on the whole this is a competent NAS.
So onto the big point - iTunes compatibility.
The Thecus is one of the first I've seen which doesn't use the (now I realise to be) dire Twonky middleware - it actually appears as a shared iTunes library on any iTunes machine configured to look for shared libraries. You simply drag your music files into the iTunes folder of the NAS, the N2100 parses the files at a predetermined interval and it appears in the shared iTunes library list of any PC with network connectivity and iTunes installed. Library showing-up time is about the same as a shared library on a regular PC. Track selection / library browsing performance hit is zero from what I can see. Search - as fast as searching your own library. And as long as the machine you're looking at the shared library is authorised, you can play back iTunes DRM tracks as well. It doesn't however work with video - not even for video podcasts.
The things you can't do are in common with other shared libraries. You can't create a playlist, etc. It also doesn't keep a play count because there's no shared library file. If, apart from the usual stuff to do with a NAS - backup or use as main storage - you just want to casually share music throughout your home while keeping one PC for iPod syncing and library management (which will directly address the iTunes folder of the NAS), then this could be quite a good solution.
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=1
I looked for something more capacious or with RAID1 capability not using USB external storage (i.e. two internal drives), still quiet, and better compatibility with iTunes. The Thecus N2100 came up as a potential buy, so I got one.
You know what, this ain't bad.
As I mentioned above, the Thecus N2100 has two SATA drive slots - which can be run in JBOD, RAID0 or RAID1 configurations. JBOD just provides contiguous storage. RAID0 improves performance (in theory) by striping the data but provides no resilience against data loss. RAID1 duplicates your data on two drives of the same capacity (but of course halves your storage capability).
LAN speeds haven't been a huge upwards jump from the TS-101 which was pretty dire, but there has been a slight jump for the better. It has two LAN sockets so can sit on two networks at once - not so useful for many perhaps, but if your network runs to slightly more sophistication then this is a nice feature. The documentation also makes reference to the fact that it will work with some USB wireless dongles - so it seems that you can fairly simply make this a wireless NAS. Havent tried it. Failing that you can stick this on a low-cost wireless Access Point / Bridge anyway.
Noisewise, the N2100 has a 'smart fan' which powers on when necessary. I expect it'll be on full-time in summer, but for now since it's in the cold kitchen cabinet (What? You don't have CAT6 structured wiring run throughout the house including your kitchen cabinet? How do you survive?) the fan is off all the time. I won't delve too far into the network features, and while it can be a little hard to get in for NAS beginners on the whole this is a competent NAS.
So onto the big point - iTunes compatibility.
The Thecus is one of the first I've seen which doesn't use the (now I realise to be) dire Twonky middleware - it actually appears as a shared iTunes library on any iTunes machine configured to look for shared libraries. You simply drag your music files into the iTunes folder of the NAS, the N2100 parses the files at a predetermined interval and it appears in the shared iTunes library list of any PC with network connectivity and iTunes installed. Library showing-up time is about the same as a shared library on a regular PC. Track selection / library browsing performance hit is zero from what I can see. Search - as fast as searching your own library. And as long as the machine you're looking at the shared library is authorised, you can play back iTunes DRM tracks as well. It doesn't however work with video - not even for video podcasts.
The things you can't do are in common with other shared libraries. You can't create a playlist, etc. It also doesn't keep a play count because there's no shared library file. If, apart from the usual stuff to do with a NAS - backup or use as main storage - you just want to casually share music throughout your home while keeping one PC for iPod syncing and library management (which will directly address the iTunes folder of the NAS), then this could be quite a good solution.
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=1&pid=1
