Thecus N5550 Review

The latest iteration of the Thecus firmware finally provides you, the user, with some easy to find and read statistics about your NAS. The new information page provides you with 4 customizable graphs that range from CPU usage and Memory Usage to Bandwidth. There still is not a graphical representation of disk space, like QNAP, but I am hoping that will show in a later release as the firmware continues to mature.

The McAffee antivirus module is welcome, but the implementation is somewhat disappointing. The inability to update virus definitions in the current release will leave you wanting, however, the power of the community comes to the rescue and provides information as to how to correct the issue through some simple tweaks.

Along with the McAfee antivirus module, Thecus has been adding new features such as:

• Data Burn – NAS data can now be burned directly to CD, DVD, and Blu-ray discs with Data Burn, this hassle-free module makes burning data to a disk effortless. In addition, burning ISO image file is also supported. Whether you’re managing audio, media or essential files; Data Burn copies information fast while significantly reducing waiting time. The process of burning file to disk is now easy and smooth with Data Burn module.
• Cloud Backup – The private and public clouds meet with Thecus’ new DropBox, Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive cloud backup functionality! Guard your data with RAID at home and an additional level of protection in the Cloud. Just drag and drop files into the folder on your NAS and access them on any computer or mobile device with DropBox, Amazon S3 or ElephantDrive. Still waiting for Thecus to catch up to QNAP and provide a Google Drive module.

The Thecus Firmware is logical. Things are where you would expect them to be. The firmware is broken down into 9 basic sections which each include various items to administer the NAS

• System Information: General, Status, System Log, Online Registration, Syslog Management, System Monitor, Hardware Information
• System Management: Date and Time, Notifications, Firmware Upgrade, Scheduled On/Off, Administrator Password, Config Mgmt, Factory Default, Reboot & SHutdown, File System Check, Wake-0n-Lan, SNMP, UI Login Functions.
• System Network: Networking, DHCP/RADVD, Linking Aggregation.
• Storage: Disk Information, RAID Management, NAS Stacking, ISO Image Mountin, Share Folders, iSCSI
• User & Group Authentication: ADS Support, Local User Configuration, Local Group COnfiguration, Batch Input, User Qyota, User Group Backup, LDAP Support
• Network Services: Samba/CIFS, AFP, NFS, FTP, TFTP, Webservice, UPnP Service, Bonjour, SSH, DDNS, UPnP Port Management
• Application Server: iTunes Server, Module Installation, Auto Module Installation
• Backup: DOM Backup, Rsync Target Server, ACL Backup/Restore, Data Burn, Data Guard, Amazon S3
• External Devices, Printers, Uninterrupted Power Source

If you are looking to give the ThecusOS 5.0 a testdrive: ThecusOS Demo

• Username: thecus
• Password: thecus

RAID migration in the N5550 is no different than it is for other models in the Thecus linup. You still have the ability to migrate from various RAID levels, but not from a single disk to RAID:

• RAID1 -> RAID5
• RAID1 -> RAID6
• RAID5 -> RAID5
• RAID6 -> RAID6

The Users and Group Authentication menu option contains all the things you need to create users on your NAS. It allows you to create users individually for ACL (access control lists) or groups for a more generic permissions structure. You can even configure the NAS for ADS (Active Directory Server)/NT support. For home users or small office users, you can batch import users by means of a CSV file.

Submit files containing user names, passwords,
and group names separated by commas without any spaces,
each line represents one user.
(ex. Student1,password1,student_group)

Creating shares with the NAS is straight forward. All you have to do is click the “Add” button, name your share, provide a description, and choose whether it is public, and if you want to enforce a Quota or not. You can set the permissions for each folder by user or by group after the share has been created by entering ACL and dragging either the user or the group to Deny, Read Only, or Writable.