QNAP TS-219P

Product Survey: NAS

The Qnap TS-219P is a NAS enclosure with two bays which can hold up to two 2.5'' or 3.5'' SATA drives with a maximum capacity of 2 TB. The drives, which you can hot-switch, can either be set up as a Jbod array (meaning you can share the total maximum capacity of both disks), a RAID 0 array (data split across both disks) or RAID 1 (the second disk mirrors the first). The hardware involved is a 1.2 GHz Marvell processor with 512 MB of RAM. Behind the enclosure, there is a Gigabit ethernet port, but also two eSATA ports and two USB 2.0 ports--as well as a third on the front. That makes it easy to connect an external hard drive or a USB key. The USB ports can also be used to share a printer or to manage a UPS. If you're familiar with the old version of the Qnap software, you'll be glad to hear that it has been entirely updated. The new version is much simpler to use and easier on the eye. The TS-219P has everything you need, with support for the CIFS/SMB, AFP and NFS protocols allowing it to work on Windows, Mac and Linux networks. You can access your files remotely over FTP and secure FTP (with SSL/TSL).