QNAP's 4-bay TS-409 NAS box gets peeked early

What do you get when you mix a TS-209 in with two extra drive bays and a new design? Why, the TS-409, of course! This not-yet-released NAS drive reportedly supports RAID 0/1/5 and JBOD, doubles as a UPnP media server and doesn't require the user to bust out a screwdriver each time he / she wants to access or swap out a HDD. Beyond that, not much is known about QNAP's forthcoming device, but feel free to hit the read link for an early look at (and within) what should be landing in the not-too-distant future.

[Shadowise @ Dec 13th 2007 8:12AM]

I'm going to have to invest in something like this one day... I'm running out of room to keep stacking MyBooks.

[timtim @ Dec 13th 2007 8:40AM]

This is not a ts-209 in a different box with more SATA ports, in fact it uses a different Marvell SOC with VFP support.

[jared Rada @ Dec 13th 2007 9:07AM]

can somebody say drobo ?

[KC @ Dec 13th 2007 3:12PM]

I thought about it, but the Drobo does not do standalone upnp.

[pathfinda @ Dec 13th 2007 9:15AM]

If their price is right, then I'm on it. I bought an Infrant NAS, without drives, and need to get a new one. But Infrant no longer sells the driveless units at a decent price.

At 4 TB, and climbing, I might need to look at an enterprise solution to my DVD and multimedia storage needs.

[Jared @ Dec 13th 2007 9:19AM]

The ts-209 looks a little sexier. I'm planning on building a NAS fairly soon. I want something simple and expandable. It doesn't need to scream. I was thinking just a cheepo box with software raid 5 and maybe LVM. The Drobo looked really interesting. But in the end I'm not sure if I can justify the cost when Linux seems to work perfectly fine for the most part and it has the added benefit of being able to run apps on it.

[tpp @ Dec 13th 2007 11:52AM]

I wonder how long until Drobo releases a NAS version of their box?

I have an Infrant NV+ and while the price was right, I'm not really happy with it. I had to hook it up with a wireless adapter and anytime the connection to the router drops, it's almost guaranteed to cause the NAS to go into some sort of semi-frozen state with no other way to get it working than a hard reboot.

[roger_huston @ Dec 13th 2007 2:51PM]

How does something like this compare to Windows Home Server? I am thinking about getting the Windows device as I can install software like Hamachi. Can that be done here easily, or do you have to replace the OS completely with Linux before you can do something useful?

- Roger

[Todd @ Dec 15th 2007 7:59PM]

one of the nice things about the TS-209 (i'm assuming the 409 will be similar) is that it uses low-wattage. I hate having a Windows Server on all the time drawwing 200 watts. The 209 uses something like 20 watts or so. So that's a big advantage. And this thing comes with a Linux on it already with Apache, MySql, Twonkeyvision, etc...