Not fast enough


The Linksys NAS200 is a small entry-level NAS box, offering decent features at an attractive price, but with a few flaws that are hard to overlook.

The NAS200 looks like double-decker router box and has perforated black plastic all around for ventilation. The hard drive mounting isn’t the sturdiest we have seen. Two USB ports are available for external storage to take backups at the press of a button.

Setting up the NAS200 is quite simple and the provided CD makes it even simpler for home users with no networking experience.  The hard drives can be configured in RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD via a Web interface or the client application. The Web interface is cryptic and unintuitive.

The NAS200 comes with a media server and devices supporting UPnP can connect and stream multimedia content directly. The device also has a download manager that can download files directly without the need to keep a PC switched on. It supports HTTP and FTP, but we would like to see support for BitTorrent (mid-range NAS boxes have it). The drives can power down if inactive to save electricity.

In these Gigabit Ethernet times, the NAS200 only has an Ethernet port (10/ 100)—unacceptable.  In our test, it took around 5 minutes to transfer 1 GB of data when configured as single disk. Such speeds are good enough for normal file transfers, but when using it as a media server, the impact will be significant.

For the features, the tag of Rs 9990 seems reasonable for normal home use. Demanding users wanting media streaming might find the performance poor. 

Specifications
Capacity: 512 MB Flash memory, SD expandable slot; Music formats: AAC, MP3, WAV; Dual 3.5 mm audio jacks; Lanyard with aluminium ring

Contact : Linksys India 
Phone : NA
E-mail : Linksys_india_sales@cisco.com
Web site : www.linksys.com
Price : Rs 9,990