Thecus just dropped the news that it is putting out the “World’s Smallest NAS”. The new device is called, in a bust of originality, the N0204 miniNAS4, and is roughly the size of a traditional 3.5-inch enclosure at 132 x 88 x 63 mm and still maintains options for file and print serving, as well as media server (iTunes or DLNA) and backup and sync functions found in larger NAS devices.
The tiny N0204 sports two bays for 2.5-inch SATA drives allowing for RAID configurations of 0, 1 and JBOD [Just a Bunch Of Drives] giving options for speed, capacity or redundancy. The bays are also hot swappable and when combined with the Auto Rebuild feature makes for replacement of a drive very simple if you are running RAID 1. The N0204 is also a very portable backup device and can even work with other Thecus NAS devices through their Nsync and Thecus Backup Utility.
With the N0204, Thecus is not just dropping a new external drive on the market though, the N0204 has more features under the hood, as mentioned it is capable of running as an iTunes server, a media server and as a print server. With the single USB 2.0 port on the front you can also transfer data from a USB external drive direct to the N0204 or plug in a USB Web Camera for a small Home surveillance system. A part of the embedded Thecus management application allows you to schedule image captures of up to 640x480 you can also preview these from a connected system.
Advanced power management reduces the power consumption of the N0204 to roughly 30% of what a regular 2-bay NAS would use and can even be scheduled to power off and back on at certain times to help with power usage.
The N0204 miniNAS is compatible with both Windows and Mac OSX. Currently, there is no mention of price or date of availability yet. This looks to be an impressive device on paper. I hope it stands up in real life.
Thecus has more details on the N0204 miniNAS available on their website.
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