I have had the NSA-220 which has a more powerful processor for about 2 years now and it has worked very well. Had good luck with ZyXel stuff in general. You won't have the fastest up or down loads but will have a reliable piece of equipment that is a lot less trouble than some of the others.
beespark
New Member
posted: Jan. 25, 2012 @ 12:11a
I've had the NSA210 for about 1.5 years.
Pros:
- it's cheep & cheerful. - it's quiet enough (to my ears). - draws about 6W idle, 14W in use (measured with a Kill-a-Watt). - has some decent features (DLNA, FTP/print/iTunes servers) and some interesting features ("broadcatching", which I've never used). You can easily download packages for SMART info, syslog, DyDNS, and some other stuff through the web interface. - ZyXel has been great about continuing to update the firmware and software.
Cons:
- there's a list of compatible drives on Zyxel's website; I found this out when the Samsung drive I originally used stopped working. I was able to pull the drive and mount it with XFS on Linux to recover my files, but it was a pain. I replaced it with a Seagate on this list, and it's been working fine since. - the Media Server function used to thrash the drive constantly (you can turn the Media Server off). This appears to have been fixed in the latest firmware release. - don't know how much longer they'll update the firmware, this has been on the market for a few years now. - my experience has been that DLNA doesn't work all the time with a PS3, but this seems to be characteristic of DLNA moreso than this particular device. - even though it has a Gigabit Ethernet port, it generally runs between 5-15MB/sec, which is more like 100mbps Fast Ethernet. Reviews indicate that this is common with pretty much any NAS under $150 made before last year. It's fine for streaming media, but will take hours to copy large amounts of data. - the blue LED in front is very bright, and can't be disabled through software (I stuck a Post-it note over it).
$45 seems like a rock-bottom price, though. Happy FatWalleting!
beespark said: I've had the NSA210 for about 1.5 years.
Pros:
- it's cheep & cheerful. - it's quiet enough (to my ears). - draws about 6W idle, 14W in use (measured with a Kill-a-Watt). - has some decent features (DLNA, FTP/print/iTunes servers) and some interesting features ("broadcatching", which I've never used). You can easily download packages for SMART info, syslog, DyDNS, and some other stuff through the web interface. - ZyXel has been great about continuing to update the firmware and software.
Cons:
- there's a list of compatible drives on Zyxel's website; I found this out when the Samsung drive I originally used stopped working. I was able to pull the drive and mount it with XFS on Linux to recover my files, but it was a pain. I replaced it with a Seagate on this list, and it's been working fine since. - the Media Server function used to thrash the drive constantly (you can turn the Media Server off). This appears to have been fixed in the latest firmware release. - don't know how much longer they'll update the firmware, this has been on the market for a few years now. - my experience has been that DLNA doesn't work all the time with a PS3, but this seems to be characteristic of DLNA moreso than this particular device. - even though it has a Gigabit Ethernet port, it generally runs between 5-15MB/sec, which is more like 100mbps Fast Ethernet. Reviews indicate that this is common with pretty much any NAS under $150 made before last year. It's fine for streaming media, but will take hours to copy large amounts of data. - the blue LED in front is very bright, and can't be disabled through software (I stuck a Post-it note over it).
$45 seems like a rock-bottom price, though. Happy FatWalleting!
Some reviews indicate it is incompatible with Win7 64-bit. What I want to know is, is that the CIFS implementation, or just the vendor software that installs off of the CD, to update firmware, etc.?
VirtuaL said: Some reviews indicate it is incompatible with Win7 64-bit. What I want to know is, is that the CIFS implementation, or just the vendor software that installs off of the CD, to update firmware, etc.?
That sounds like a reviewer who doesn't know enough to know that he doesn't know what he is talking about. I believe they are called Anosognosics. Medical diagnosis is Dunning-Kruger syndrome. The net is littered with them and some even claim to be experts. One computer I have is XP64/SUSE 11.4 and the other is W7 64. No problems. Funny read: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics...
beespark
New Member
posted: Jan. 29, 2012 @ 9:14p
VirtuaL said: Some reviews indicate it is incompatible with Win7 64-bit. What I want to know is, is that the CIFS implementation, or just the vendor software that installs off of the CD, to update firmware, etc.?
I've been using it with Win7 64-bit and OS X. The firmware update is done through the web interface, so that's OS-independent. As for the vendor software, there's a basic connection utility which discovers the NAS on your network, which is useful to find the IP if it's set to DHCP and you forget the address (and which I can confirm works under Win7 64-bit); and there's a backup utility, but I've never used it. If you're just connecting via CIFS, then yes, it works normally.
I use mine in windows 7 64 bit and os x as well and haven't had any problems. I don't do much with it though - I run allway sync daily to backup/sync photos and sometimes stream mp3s to my mac. This price really seems like a great deal.
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