ZyXEL Central Media Library NSA-220 Plus

ZyXel Central Digital Media Library NSA-220 Plus

Central Media Library NSA-220 Plus Review, by Jon L. Jacobi and Melissa J. Perenson, PC World March 24, 2009

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• Reviewed by: moconnor

  Strengths: Works as advertised, great price, ease of installation, quiet and sleeps when inactive and wakes up without problems. Great copy function from cards or disks plugged into the USB port.

  Weaknesses: If powered off improperly the reset button needs to be pressed and admin password reset. Cannot directly connect to a computer USB port. No USB port on the back, only the front.

  Overall: General comments: I?ve managed RAID systems in work environments for almost 20 years. This NAS is just what I?ve been wanting for home use. But ? if you are used to more sophisticated systems you may get tripped up like I did. 1) I thought I could take a pre-existing disk and create a RAID 1 with it but the NAS initializes the disk for it?s use so all is lost (I was backed up). 2) I had one 1TB disk with the intention of purchasing a second in the future but I found out that you cannot create a RAID 1 without both disks in place. The single disk can only be JBOD or RAID 0. Since I did not have the ability to backup a full 1TB disk, since it will be initialized when creating the RAID 1, I immediately purchased a second 1TB disk. Once I was finally set up it has worked very well. Additionally, I really like having a printer on the network but the printer setup would not recognize my much older printer. It did recognize the newer printer. Lastly, if you try to do multiple copies over the network from the same computer at the same time there may be timeouts causing the copies to abort. I have not tried to do simultaneous copies to/from the NAS from different computers (not usually done at my home).The mfg?s mail in rebate is for money off other products by ZyXel which I don?t need.

• Reviewed by: Lurker3

  Strengths: solid metal build not plastic, dual SATA drive support with RAID, front USB, Gigabit Network, media server, autobackup, FTP Server. Best of all: BitTorrent server!!

  Weaknesses: included manual is very basic and lacking in detail. Get the online one at http://us.zyxel.com/upload/download_library/NSA220 User Guide.pdf

  Overall: Overall a very nice product, with more features and better quality construction that other manufacturers. It is solid metal build not plastic. It has dual SATA drive (up to 1TB each) support with RAID, front USB ports. It also features Gigabit Networking, which is much better tehan the 100MB many other products have. It also has a built in media server, FTP Server, and autobackup functions. But the best of all features, and one not found in most other products of this type, is a built-in BitTorrent download service!! You don't have to have your computer on to download torrents any longer...this will take over the workload, freeing up your computer for other tasks. It can also do direct downloads via FTP and HTTP, again bypassing your computer and reducing load on it. The paper manual that comes with the prodcut is just a Quick Start Guide, that doesnt go into very much detail. You can get the latest online full user manual at http://us.zyxel.com/upload/download_library/NSA220 User Guide.pdf Overall a very nice product, one I would easily recommend to anyone looking for this type of device. It is certainly one of the most solidly built, and feature-packed items out there.

• Reviewed by: fguo79

  Strengths: excellent build quality, dual drive slots, gigabit network

  Weaknesses: speed on Gigabit network could be improved

  Overall: I love this NSA-220 network storage from Zyxel. It's made of metal with a 6cm fan attached at the back panel to get better airflow. The fan itself is pretty quiet in operation, you can also change it yourself if you want a even quieter fan. There are two hard drives slots in this unit, you can configure 2 HD in RAID 0,1 or JBOD. I currently use two 320G sata drive in RAID1 to give me safer data storage. On the software, Zyxel uses open source running on this Linux machine, therefore we can expect future features to be added on soon.It's also DLNA certified, if you have PS3 this machine could be the multimedia storage for PS3. Highly recommended!

• Reviewed by: buzzly

  Strengths: More than just Network Storage ApplianceBuilt-in download/bittorrent servicesBuilt-in RSS, FTP, Webcasting servicesPrinter services

  Weaknesses: Still waiting for third-party enhancements to the firmware.

  Overall: This is a faster and better NAS than the widely popular D-Link DNS-323. It has everything you need in a NAS- built-in Bittorrent, RSS, FTP, Webcasting, and printer server functions. It even supports Jumbo Frame. Its run very cool and quiet.Two related weaknesses:1) The Bittorrent service has almost no configuation, making it difficult to speed up the downloading speed.2) The firmware is open sourced, but, may be it is relatively new, there is no third-party enhancements can be found anywhere. I brought this with the hope that the hacking/open source community will make some enhancements to this already well-equiped NAS. Still waiting.

• Reviewed by: krtz

  Strengths: Solid built, nice look, great web interface, quiet and cool, stable

  Weaknesses: Front USB only, jumbo frame support is not good

  Overall: I bought this NAS over D-link DNS323 due to its larger memory and more built-in functions. Put two Seagate 500GB SATA drives in. Installation is pretty easy. Upgraded the firmware to 2.20 which was just released March 08. This NAS runs quietly and stays cool. It fits my daily file storage purpose. Only compain is its lacking full support for jumbo frame. I can only get 11MB/s write speed on my Gigabit network.