IF YOU ARE looking for a device to store all of your photo albums, music, movies or important documents in an easily accessible device then Thecus' N4100 Pro
NAS (Network Attached Storage) Box is a great device. Not only does it serve your home and office storage needs from a centralized connected location but it also manages a perfor¬mance that is nothing short of impressive.

Like other NAS boxes, the N4100's primary objective is to act like a centralized hard disk, one which can be accessed by any computer on the network at any time.
The N4100 is about the size of a toaster and is encased in gley brushed metatl)ll the 7ides and top and the front consists of glossy plastic door. The door swings open to reveal four drive bays that can be locked. The front also sports a couple of LEOs and a display that can shows among other things the box's IP address, the temperature at which it's running and its RAID status.

The N4100's drive bays accept regular SATA drives and can be configured in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 modes. This means that the drive allows you enough options to either back up your data or to utilize the entire available space for storage. Among other features that the N4100 offers in terms of storage includes data backup thanks to a bundled CD of Drive Clone 5 Pro. You can also create a number of folders on the N4100 and it also allows you to mount a maximum of 50 ISOs with out installing any additional software.

The Nsync option lets you backup particular folders and sync between folders and it does them pretty well. The N4100 further allows you to share data in a number of ways including creating FTP servers with no compatibility issues with either Apple or UNIX based machines since it supports both AFP and NFS file protocols.



The N4100 also acts a media server which means you can stream media off it and can access that media through compatible devices. It has specific support for iTunes and when we tried streaming music off the N4100, the iTunes library on our machines were suitably updated. Accessing and configuring all the features is done through a Web-based interface, which although simple could have been designed to make it easier to a new user.

In our real world tests (in RAID 0), the N4100 managed to copy multiple files totaling 1. 7GBs in 120 seconds while copying a single ISO of 4.3GBs took 180 seconds. Copying the same files in RAID 1 took us 95 seconds and 183 seconds respectively. Our next set of tests were conducted through Intel's NASPT software which conducts an intensive set of operations that mimics actual usage including HD video playback, using office productivity tools and copying files and folders to and from the NAS box. Out of the whole gamut of tests, we gleaned that the N4100 was able to receive files at a speed of 19MBps and a set of folders at 8MBps. Copying files and directories from the N4100 gave us speeds of 32MBps and 18MBps.

The Thecus N4100 Pro NAS BOX is plus taxes and that is certainly no amount that can be ignored. Looking at the performance and features, we wished that it could have cost about Rs. 10,000 lesser. However, if you can shell out that much money, it will be well invested.