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60 of 62 people found the following review helpful.
A nice media server that does many things right!
By Tom Servo
Reviewed: Zyxel NSA325. It supports 2 x 3.5" SATA drives, has 2 USB2 ports (back) and a single USB3 (front) & has Gigabit Ethernet. 1.6GHz Marvell processor is faster than older NAS devices (faster than the 800MHz CPU in the D-http://amzn.com/dp/B007JLDTRY/?tag={komponelektr-20} DNS-320 or the 1.2GHz CPU in the DNS-325) and 512MB memory allows multiple functions at same time.DRIVE INSTALLATION:Drive guide rails must be attached to each drive via screws. Note that the pointy end of the rails must face INWARD (i.e. on the same side as the SATA connector). The quick install sheet doesn't mention this and it's easy to overlook from the diagram. The reason for the specific orientation is that you use a tool (located behind the drive cover) to remove an installed drive from its bay and this tool clips onto the exposed end of the drive rails. Also when installing be sure to insert the drive so that the SATA connector will mate with the drive (it will not if you insert the drive the wrong way and you could cause damage). ZyXEL needs to have better instructions. The front door is a little flimsy though, be careful when removing/installing to avoid breaking the tabs that keep it in place.Note that drives are NOT hot-swappable, do not remove/insert with the power on. Drives up to 3TB are supported with newest firmware (note if you have old firmware you will need to temporarily install a smaller drive, create a volume, then use the firmware check function in the web interface to update firmware before installing 3TB drives).RAID:RAID 0/1 are supported. RAID 0 uses the combined storage space of both drives but has no redundancy. RAID 1 mirrors contents on both drives so if one fails your data is still safe.POWER MANAGEMENT/UPS:+ You can connect a (APC brand) UPS to the NAS via one of the USB ports and it will auto-shutdown when UPS battery is low (you can adjust when the shutdown occurs based on the UPS reported capacity remaining). A nice touch and one that will help prevent data loss. I tried it with a Tripp-Lite UPS and it wasn't recognized so it looks like only an APC will work.+ You can set the UPS to always power on after a power failure, useful if acting as networked storage.+ You can spin down drives if no data transmission occurs in a specified time (adjustable in minutes)+ Supports "wake-on-lan" so device can turn on and service incoming requests even if powered off.+ NAS uses external 12V 5amp power adapter. This is better than an internal power supply as it is easily replaceable if it fails.+ Interestingly the NAS has an internal clock (powered by a CR2032 battery) and can be set to power on/off via time schedule.THE BAD:- There is no "network activity" LED at the front panel (the LED is on the Ethernet jack). I would have liked to see a front panel LED. This is important as use of one of the back USB ports will block the network LED on the jack.- I do not think there is a way to migrate to larger capacity drives without backing up/replacing drives/recreate RAID/restoring the array.- Download Manager feature (more on this below) cannot download files that require authentication from websites (i.e. files that require login). This is a shame as this would been much more useful.- This NAS takes LONG to boot. This may cause a problem if used as network storage as PCs may boot quicker than the NAS!- For some strange reason the CPU temp is reported incorrectly (12 deg Celsius) on the NSA status page after some time in operation. It still seems to work correctly so this may be a minor bug.OTHER:+ Front panel USB connector is USB3 for fast copy from/to external USB3 devices. This is just for copying data from/to an external drive, I don't think connection to a PC is supported.+ NAS has CPU temp sensor.+ The fan is a 3-wire fan (has RPM sensor so the NAS can determine fan speed). The fan label mentions that has a hypro bearing, which supposed to be a long-lasting bearing. The fan is very quiet, practically silent.+ Web-based interface is nice and clean, with attractive icons. The admin setup webpage is logically organized. You can check the CPU temp/CPU load/free memory from the admin page.+ ZPilot feature allows you to drop files/folders to an "always-on-top" icon to copy to the NAS. Optionally you can have the NAS sort files into specific folders based on the file type.+ Add-on packages really expand functionality of the NAS. For example installing the SMART package allows you to see the status (temperature, SMART status, model & serial #) of the installed drives.+ Firmware update is totally painless, one click will check for new firmware, another click downloads & installs it. You don't need to download it from a PC then upload it to the NAS. However note that you must have drive(s) installed and a volume created to use the auto-update feature as it needs to download firmware to the volume. If no drive(s) are installed it will not work.+ Has "Download Manager" built-in file download function & bittorrent client. By logging into the NAS and either entering the URL of a file to download OR uploading a .torrent file from your PC you can have the NAS download files unattended without having your PC on and running. A nice feature, especially for downloading large files such as Linux ISO images.OVERALL it's a good media server for the price and I recommend it. But also check out the ZyXEL NSA320 2-bay Network Attached Storage and Media Server as it is similar but about half the price. The NSA320 uses a slightly slower 1.2GHz CPU (but has the same 512MB memory), but doesn't have dropbox features or USB3 port. You probably DON'T want the older NSA2xx series because these use a much slower CPU/less memory and transfer performance is not as good.I hope this is helpful!
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
Not perfect, but still pretty good in this price class
By Patrick Deno
After a few days of tinkering with it, finding, researching and resolving a few minor issues (mostly of my own making), I can say it's not a bad little piece of kit. There just needs to be better documentation on some of the more common problems that can show up. Remember, G**gle is your friend.Unboxing: When the package with this little unit and my two drives came in the mail I was very excited. The Amazon package was relatively large and bulky, but when I opened it up and began pulling everything out - first the packing pillows, then the two hard drives, and finally the appliance, itself - and began unwrapping it, I was amazed at how small this little unit is. For what all it can do, I was actually expecting something twice its actual size. This thing's tiny! It's positively adorable! But, although it's clad in plastic, it doesn't feel insubstantial or fragile like a toy. It has some weight to it, especially once you install the drives. You could actually club someone with it and do a fair amount of damage, though you'd probably break the housing in the attempt. With the little rubber feet it sits sturdily on just about any surface.Setup: I ordered two Seagate Barracuda 7200 3 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drives (ST3000DM001) to go with the unit and they work great. Jump on these while they're still relatively cheap and you'll be a happy camper. I mounted the rails on with no problems, slid the drives into place in the housing and turned on the unit. I gave it time to boot - yes, the one reviewer is correct, it does take a bit of time for it to do so, about 2 minutes or so - and then installed the included NSU software. Once installed it promptly found the unit on my network and took me through the steps of formatting and arranging the drives into RAID1. This tells me that the newer models don't have the issue with not being able to use 3TB drives before updating the firmware of the unit, first. Once everything was formatted and mounted, the NSU software gave me the IP address of the unit and I promptly pointed my browser to it. After updating to the newest firmware from the administration page, I began wandering my way around the menus and tweaking settings to my liking, installing packages and generally getting ready for the big data migration.I then hooked up my two 1TB MyBook USB external hard drives to the back of the unit and began copying over all of my data. This is where I started to run into problems. After maybe an hour or two of copying my files over, for no apparent reason the NAS would simply lock up and disappear from the network, making it unreachable until the unit was powered off and back on again and starting the copy procedure from scratch, again. This happened several times over the course of about 24 hours. Another reviewer panned this unit for the same behavior. As you will see, it's not really a hardware issue, so much as a user-error problem: trying to do too much all at once at the beginning.I turned to the net for some sorely needed research and found, after hours of searching on different forums and knowledge bases, that the ZyXEL devs have replaced the old Media Server package with a new(er), stripped down version of Twonky Media Server in the newest firmware update (4.50). Sadly, this version of Twonky has a bad habit of maxing out the CPU while trying to parse all the media files on the share. This fact, coupled with my trying to copy over files while this was going on, and that the RAIDed drives were trying to resync between themselves at the same time, meant that the CPU was not only maxed to its limits, but also that it was running very hot. Once I disabled the media server package, the CPU load went down to oscillating lazily between 14 and 30%, the temps went down to normal and I had no more problems with the NAS disappearing off the network again.A note to the whiny reviewers on here: Sometimes, ya just gotta do your own homework, folks. RTFM and do some research, for once. For the price that this little unit is being sold at, here on the 'Zon, it's amazing what all it can do. But, you do get what you pay for. As any network admin will tell you, nothing ever works exactly how you want it to straight out of the box. Some folks need to learn to quit being so quick to complain and just get their hands dirty. You can't expect technology to do all of your thinking for you. Sometimes, you have to have a little patience, research a problem, learn the ins-and-outs, tweak some settings and find a work-around. This unit is meant for home use. It's not bullet-proof or industrial-grade. If that's what you're looking for, be prepared to pay four times or more what this cute little box costs for the privilege.A note to first time buyers. No, this unit isn't perfect, but it's one of the better ones in this price class. Don't let the self-entitled ignorant dissuade you from purchasing this unit. However, it is not, nor will it ever be, a fire-and-forget unit straight out of the box. If you're like me, you have several TB's of data that you'll want to put on this little baby. Know ahead of time that it -may- take days to copy all those files over, resynch the RAID array, index the files with the Media Server and have the unit settle down to a normal running state. These things take time. Have some patience and I think you'll be happy with your purchase.My only caveats to this glowing review are as follows: I agree with the one reviewer who said that it would have been nice to have a network activity blinky on the front of the unit. The lack of one is not a deal-breaker, of course. it's just a matter of convenience and preference. I think the browser landing page is far too simplistic and gets in the way for my purposes, yet the web administration UI could have been laid out a little more intuitively, also. Trying to figure out the intricacies of the FTP and Web Publishing implementation, for instance, will be a bit of a stretch for most users and the documentation is inadequate. There's also not enough customization options for my taste. At the time of writing, there was only 13 total plugin/add-on "packages" available for download from inside the UI, and many of those that are available are useless to the average joe. It would be nice to see more community-driven, open-source offerings for this unit in the future.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Fantastic! *See Update* (From 5, to 2, back to 4 stars)
By cellorules
*Update*(Problem described under "update" below) I finally got an answer from their customer service and they are incorporating a patch to fix the incompatibility of the video codecs in the next update. For now, I'll keep on trying to convert my video library until I get a notice from Zyxel that the software patch is done. It's been working very well in the meantime as a file server.Set up in 5 minutes tops.This is going from a Netgear Stora. This product doesn't require you to use Axentra's silly web interface like my old NAS.It worked seamlessly with 2x 3 TB Seagate hard drives!The only thing I would possibly complain about is the door to the hard drives has a tendancy to fall off when you're moving it around since it's only attached by some plastic inserts and a magnet (which makes for easy hard drive access).*Update*The Zyxel works well as a file server, but the reason I purchased this was due to it Digital Media Server. Unfortunately, the seller neglects to say that the mediaserver is a third-party application called Twonky.I was having problems with streaming MPEG-4 with the H.263 codec (which I eventually found out was not supported) so I contacted Twonky with my concern and was given the response that my product was ineligible for support - I put a post on their community pages and never received a reply.So I contacted Zyxel Technical support. The first technician answered rather quickly, and I was impressed; but he said that he would look into whether the codec was supported, it was escalated to another support technician who then sent it to an alleged department in Taiwan and I haven't received a response or even an update on what is going on in three days.Meanwhile, I've been looking around online and have found that this has been a problem for people using Twonky, but nothing has been done by Twonky nor Zyxel in supporting the codec (or in making changes at all). They merely "send it off to their engineers" and you don't hear anything more.I've spent far too much time on this little project of mine and unfortunately I will probably ask for a return.
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Only hope for streaming 1080p BluRay non-ethernet
Levaliers are useless! O/w OK.
