Thecus IP storage Yes box offers massive breathing space

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Manufacturer: Thecus
Price: Varies, depending on drives
Requirements: IP network, Ethernet
Web site: WWW.THECUS.COM

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THECUS SENT us a N2100 to have a look at. The barebones Yes Box N2100 is an IP based storage appliance which can act as an FTP storage device on your network and also as a central point to store any kind of digital files including photographs, music and data on an office or home network, as well as providing file management and application sharing on Windows SMB/CIFS, Unix/Linux, and Apple OSX operating systems.

As supplied, the packaging includes the appliance itself, a power cord, two RJ45 Ethernet cables, hard drive screws, and an installation guide. We installed a 150GB S-ATA drive to try it out.

The box we looked at it a lightweight plastic unit. You install the drives by first removing two screws at the back of the unit. When you flip up the top you'll see a metal cage for the drive(s). You remove this case by carefully unscrewing four screws on the board, inserting the S-ATA drives, securing them, and then putting the cage back into the unit. The Yes box isn't as lightweight as it was after that. Hey look, there's Intel Xscale technology inside.

Inside without the drive cage

At the back of the box there are two Ethernet sockets, two USB sockets, a small reset button, and a socket for applying the juice. At the front there's an additional USB socket, a power button on the left, eight LEDs, and an additional button for transferring the contents of a flash drive.

Front

Rear

The slim "quick installation guide" tells you that after securing all the screws, you should plug in one or more Ethernet cables, press the power button and start the Setup wizard on the installation CD. And off you will jolly well go, with a fair wind. When you press the power button you will hear a little whirring and the LEDs will flash a bit until the box is happy it knows what it is.

What the heck? We couldn't figure out what was going on here because the setup wizard wouldn't discover our Yes box, however hard we tried. This wasn't helped by the "quick installation guide" and we had to turn to the much more comprehensive full manual on the CD to figure out what was going on. Course, this network attached storage must be on the same subnet as your own network. The default IP address for the shipped box is 192.168.1.100. So if you're using a different subnet, well you'd better change it.

Bingo! We could have saved ourselves quite a bit of time if this little subnet fact was in the quick installation guide. Perhaps you IP wizards out there would have realised this quicker, but don't forget this network attached box is being positioned at allcomers, including home network users.

When you chug through the startup wizard, you're asked to choose whether to use a fixed IP for the box, or DHCP. Don't you be doing this if your router doesn't support DHCP or you'll be looking for a pin to reset the Yes box. If you're using Fixed IP you have to enter the IP address, the Gateway IP, and the DNS server. Again, you need the users manual to figure out the best thing to do. You are then asked whether you want to enable FTP or iTunes and whether to configure Raid 0, Raid 1 or JBOD. JBOD here, because there's only one hard drive. Finally you're forced to change the admin password. If you've succeeded so far a little window tells you Setup Network: Success!, Setup Service: Success! Setup RAID: Pass! Setup Password: Success!

You're then invited to start the browser and get this screen:

These icons from left to right mean webdisk, music, gallery and login. You're not finished setting up yet, so have to login and carry on configuring. A tip. Ignore the setup wizard and go straight to the browser. Another tip. Remember your firewall might be blocking access to the Yes box.

This browser screen shows the WD S-ATA drive and a USB drive we plugged into the front of the unit.

How do you get to the storage? On the LAN configuration screen, you can configure the host name of this box away from its default Thecus_N2100 to something a little more user friendly. If you do that, Mr Yesbox needs to be rebooted which takes about 100 seconds. You can then type the friendly name straight into a browser to get to the features it offers.

You're not finished yet. You have to configure the features on your local intranet you want to enable, such as ftp and secure http, and set up users and groups that you want to give access to as well. Then off you jolly well go. Transfer speeds, naturally, depend on the speed of your network. USB transfers using the button.

The Good
Massive and reliable storage you can share on your intranet for files, music, graphics and the like.

The Bad
Once you've setup the system, it's not too bad at all. In fact it's very good, but...

The Ugly
...fact is that the documentation is woefully incomplete and needs re-writing. A wiz of an IP guy could probably figure out what needs doing in five minutes flat. But this box is also positioned at people who want to store their iTunes music, graphics file and the rest without knowing the first thing about IP addresses, subnets and the like. Sparing a halfpenny on a little bit of good documentation isn't a wise thing to do, particularly for dumb end users, as many of us are when faced with complex networking tasks. We can recommend this box, but with that qualification. µ