QNAP unveils stately 6-bay TS-639 Pro Turbo NAS device

It's been a hot minute since we saw anything fly from QNAP, but today the outfit is unveiling a NAS so intimidating, so beastly that it practically has to be locked away in a data closet. The TS-639 Pro Turbo checks in with six bays, a 1.6GHz Intel CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, gigabit Ethernet and support for RAID 0/1/5/6/5+spare configurations along with built-in iSCSI target service with Thin Provisioning. There's no mention of a price, but that's likely because you just aren't ready to handle the truth.

[ranmasaotome510 @ Jan 10th 2009 10:37PM]

$359.99 Would be my guess.

[Knee to the Groin @ Jan 10th 2009 11:14PM]

Yeah, per bay

[scullysboytoy @ Jan 10th 2009 10:52PM]

are you kidding? 360 would be a steal.

more like $1200?

[truck @ Jan 10th 2009 10:52PM]

More like $1099.99 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107019

[007craft @ Jan 10th 2009 11:17PM]

I dont get NAS devices. I mean I want one with 6 bays, but really, why would I buy this? $1100? I can buy a cpu/board with raid support/ram/ps/ and a 6+bay case for like $300 or less. NAS servers are just way overpriced. If this thing was $399 I would consider making the purchase.

[John @ Jan 11th 2009 12:19AM]

A 6 port RAID card is about $300. All on its own. Then the 6 port case, and the drives are all hot swappable. So go ahead and try to build your own and see how well they stack up in reliability and price, hotshot.

[XGM @ Jan 11th 2009 12:25AM]

I built my own 8 HDD NAS, 6 Data on a RAID 53 and 2 for the OS on RAID 0. 400$ for the Rig without the hdd's, some configuring to do but nothing too hard to get it up and running. Biggest thing is that this NAS probably has a Hardware RAID controller, where as mine is a Software one.

[Tripper @ Jan 11th 2009 1:18AM]

More than likely it has a stripped down BSD kernel, so it can run on a slower and less expensive chip. Your rig would be running a version that is designed for use as a server with all the associated overhead. You don't need Apache, Tomcat, CUPS, DNS, etc to serve up files.

[sr @ Jan 11th 2009 2:30AM]

MediaSmart Server can be found for $399 sometimes and backups all your home computers for you every night, automatically duplicates your data in case of a drive failure and a whole bunch of other things.

[zargon @ Jan 11th 2009 8:57AM]

I have been doing a lot of research on NAS devices recently as the one I built has an hardware issue and rather than trying to figure it out, I am just going to upgrade it so I can have more space. As it turns out, all these "affordable" NAS systems are the same thing I built, just in a small and neat little box. They do not run full RAID hardware cards, which from what I have found do not perform much better than software RAID. A full RAID card will take the building of the array off of the processor, and since it is optimized, will make it dramatically faster.

I personally believe you are better off just getting a SATA controller card or cards with the number of ports you need. Then run OpenFiler or FreeNAS to take care of all the low level work for you. They both have user friendly interfaces to setup and configure the system. Even with paying for the system and cases, you will have a NAS system just as good, if not better than any NAS system out there now. It will be hotswapable, support all the network portocols you need, iSCSI and much more and will cost you less than one of the prebuilt systems.

[Greg @ Jan 10th 2009 11:23PM]

Hey, as long as it's not netgear, it's worth it.

I spent a premium for the ReadyNAS NV , and it failed often and spectacularly. 18 months in, and it's completely dead. 1200 _might_ be worth it, depending on the warranty. It's not really the cost of the RAID, but rather the value of your data.

[petecomments @ Jan 10th 2009 11:57PM]

Ditto... the Netgear ReadyNAS line is way overpriced and buggy.

[pathfinda @ Jan 12th 2009 11:39AM]

The device were a lot better before Netgear got their hands on them. I bought mine for less than 400, no drives. Support was the best ever. I had a power support die in mine, I called Suport on a Sunday, and they have a NEW NAS box to me the next day. I swapped my drives, and was up and running within 24 hours.

It impossible to find a ReadyNas box for under 500 with no drives. Would pick up more, for the right price.

[poematik14 @ Jan 10th 2009 11:32PM]

So whats the point of this device again?

Media streaming?

[Joshua Walters @ Jan 10th 2009 11:58PM]

This would be totally rad if I had $1500 to blow.

[Aarun @ Jan 11th 2009 12:05AM]

Why is Engadget have to be so satirical and sarcastic about product's they don't like? If the product is dumb, or you don't like it, then don't report on it. Easy. No need to make yourselves look like jerks.
But seriously, still my favourite website. Home page. I check it like 4 times a day.

[seanchk @ Jan 11th 2009 12:45AM]

My take on the review was that Engadget really like this product. They referred to it as "beastly" and "intimidating" plus it has likely has a price that makes it slightly out of reach of most people.... all things that add up to it being drool worthy for most gadget heads.

[pikkoz @ Jan 11th 2009 12:16AM]

This is nothing near a consumer device that you compare with 200$ish soho HD included NAS and it's plain dumb to compare this to a pc.
This is something aimed to a small-medium businness company not to home users to download porn and stream divx films.

[Jon Collins @ Jan 11th 2009 1:02AM]

Oh good God, I want one so bad.

[Jeff LaPlante @ Jan 11th 2009 1:23AM]

Check out what they haven't released yet:

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=109

It's the 8 bay version of this 6 bay Pro NAS - the TS-809 Pro

Here's an image:

http://www.qnap.com/images/products/NAS/TS809Pro/feature02.jpg

[thechaz @ Jan 11th 2009 2:07AM]

I've got the qnap TS-409. It's got 4 drive bays, less ram, a slower CPU and doesn't support iSCSI. It totally kicks ass. I went the homebuilt-media-server route for several years (because it was cheaper) and I must say, it's great to have a dedicated box for this stuff. You can nickel and dime your way to a device that performs the same functions, but there are plenty of reasons to get a real solution. With the homebuilt server, if anything breaks you have like 12 different warranties to deal with. Also, as another poster mentioned, these boxes do hardware RAID, not software, and they consume far less power than a homebuilt server does.

It backs up my data, has an auto-downloader (http, ftp, bittorrent), and streams media to my 360. Perfect.

The only complaint I have about the qnap is the low-rent UI. It gets the job done, but don't expect Apple-like levels of refinement.

[Murc @ Jan 11th 2009 4:02AM]

I have the same one (TS-409), and you hit the nail on the head, you described it exactly as I would....and I to wish they would make the UI more user friendly.

this 6 bay one looks pretty sweet as well.

[FILA @ Jan 11th 2009 2:52AM]

I need one, but not for like 1500 the price its gonna go around. like anybody else ill probably end up making one or buying that HP, but i have to have atleast 4 bays. then im just running my bill up, so maybe it would be cheaper to build, then im talking like 400 in HDD's plus money for case and cheap ram and cpu, back up to like 550, so it all adds up, probably would be cheaper for that HP, atleast its all built in and looks better then would i would do.

[Wolfticket @ Jan 11th 2009 8:05AM]

Here come the atom based NASs

[GDUB @ Jan 11th 2009 8:31AM]

Its a "PRO" and a TURBO" well that seals it. If it was just a Pro or just a Turbo then i would have had my doubts but "PRO TURBO"
now thats just Ridoculous.

Sold

[chris @ Jan 11th 2009 9:32AM]

Newegg is showing a price of $1,099.99 - not in stock yet. Fairly expensive device.

[Nick @ Jan 11th 2009 11:07AM]

These NAS guys don't get the market. I built my own NAS with Intel Matrix motherboard RAID 1,0,10,5, Quad Core, 4Gb Ram, 4x 1TB Drives with the possibility to expand to eight drives, running Vista x64. It's an entire workstation which I use as part of a network farm when I render out video projects. All this cost the same as a Stand alone NAS would have without the drives, plus Intel Matrix software RAID is great, in the event that the motherboard goes, no problem, Intel Matrix boards support older and new versions, replace board and RAID Array is back. My DIY NAS is also super fast, why on earth would I pay so much money for a box that can't do what my DIY can, and it renders intensive HD projects.

[Ed T @ Jan 11th 2009 11:47AM]

The NAS boxes all share a common fault. The OS and firmware are supported by some dude in Taiwan who lives in a cardboard box. Try using one in a mixed environment and it becomes a nightmare of failed transfers, corrupted disks, and compile-it-yourself software fixes.

[Ryan @ Jan 11th 2009 12:07PM]

Dude ISCSI targeting and thin provisioning is worth it on its own, having the ability to go raid 5 with hot spare even more worth it, the fact that its not made by D-link / Linksys / or netgear. Priceless

In regards to building your own box for less, this is true it is easily done, however most users in today's computing environment do not have the where withal to purchase all the hardware, build it out, and configure the services they need / want with ease. In fact most users would probably end up going with some form of a windows license because they don't understand how to configure a Linux based platform.

[beq @ Jan 11th 2009 3:29PM]

See QNAP's comments (and datasheets):

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10144&start=0&hilit=809

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10219&p=47088&hilit=809#p47088

I think the 8-bay QNAP TS-809 is the high-performance unit to look out for (competing with the 6-bay Netgear ReadyNAS Pro in price and performance). Whereas my GUESS is that the 6-bay QNAP TS-639 (and 4-bay TS-439, and future TS-x39 models with different number of bays) use an Intel *Atom* CPU for lower-power consumption.

The low-power models could be an answer to customer complaints like the following from one of the above threads:

"The TS-509 uses 70W all the time. Synology DS508 uses 27W (standby) and 54W full access."


P.S. QNAP comments on TS-x39:

- "TS-x39 (... low-power CPU, starting from 1GB DRAM, performance slightly below the TS-509)"

- "Neither the TS-439 (even if one DD slot less) nor the TS-639 (even if one HDD slot more) will be a direct replacement for the TS-509."


QNAP comments on TS-809:

- "TS-809 (8 bay, dual CORE CPU, stating from 2GB DRAM)"

- "The TS-809 models ... are designed to a much higher performance level - and to a different price tag."

- "Depending on the number of servers to migrate to ESX and iSCSI and the performance expectations, the [TS-809] is what you might take into consideration aside the TS-509."

[Craig @ Jan 11th 2009 5:44PM]

What are your thoughts on the Thecus N7700 as an alternative to the ReadyNAS and QNAP products?

http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=11&pid=82&set_language=english

[pfromg @ Jan 12th 2009 6:05AM]

thecus sucks.

[JeremyDallas @ Jan 12th 2009 12:50AM]

First of all, $1500 isn't that much money...go get a freaking job if you don't have $1500.

Second, this is not just a small business product. My wife and I both shoot SLR's, we have an HD Video Camera, have thousands of MP3's, and a ton of DVD's ripped to disk. I have 3TB of storage right now and I could easily see myself needing 10TB's in the next 2 - 3 years. The fact that his thing supports iSCSI and Thin Provisioning is sick. If you don't know what thin provisioning is, it basically lets you allocate a smaller portion of storage for a volume but present it as larger to the disk. This way, if you don't need it up front then you don't have to blow it, but if you do need it you can actually scale the true space allocation up as needed without having to jack with the partition.

If Dell will make a SOHO version of their EqualLogic array for $2000 - $3000 I would buy it in a heart beat! But, I guess this product will have to do for now....

[Raymond Peck @ Jan 12th 2009 1:13PM]

@pfromg, why do you say that Thecus sucks? I have two N5200Pros full of 1T drives and I've been pretty happy with them so far, especially for the pretty reasonable price. They replaced two home-built Linux hardware-RAID servers, btw (one with a horrendous Promise SX-6000 and one with a nice 3ware 7500-8).