INTRODUCTION

   With just a few months away from the introduction of the first 5TB hard disk drives and with 4TB models already flooding the market it makes sense that lately most of the people i know turn towards single and dual bay NAS servers/devices for home and office use. However it is understandable that not everyone can afford one of the new 4TB models and so for people who have some old HDD models lying around the obvious choice would be a cost-effective 4 bay NAS server with which they can use those drives either in JBOD or RAID modes. Thecus may not be the most famous brand name in the market (at least from what people tell me) but they've been manufacturing high quality products for almost a decade now with competitive prices which is what makes them quite appealing to end users. Today we have one such product with us and more specifically the N4100EVO 4 bay NAS server.

   In 2004, Thecus Technology was founded to design, manufacture, and market digital storage products. Now, 10 products and over 100 awards later, Thecus is recognized as a global leader of digital storage solutions. With decades of R&D experience, the Thecus team has developed an entire range of state-of-the-art storage products for consumers and enterprises alike. With its global sales channel development, quality Thecus products are now distributed in over 30 countries and territories across the globe. Thecus products are designed not only to be powerful and flexible, but easy-to-use. Users have increasingly growing digital libraries, and they need to access their digital media as quickly as possible Thecus storage solutions consistently deliver top-notch performance, able to deliver digital media at an impressive clip. To keep data completely safe, Thecus products are designed with data security in mind, each coming with numerous security options for the user to select. Thecus storage products also have the unique ability to support third-party software modules, making Thecus products infinitely customizable. And to make sure our products are accessible to both novices and experts alike, Thecus makes sure that each of its products can be easily installed and used. Secure and flexible storage products that simply work. That is the Thecus guarantee.

   This is the 2nd Thecus NAS server I’ve had the chance to use to date but it's the very first time I’m actually putting one of those to the test to see just how good it is compared to other similar products. Well right from the bat one can easily tell that the N4100EVO is not aimed towards people who are looking for a high-end NAS server mainly due to the dual-core Cavium CNS3420 600MHz CPU used (which is actually one of the lowest-end CPUs I’ve ever encounter in similar units) and the rather small amount of memory (256MB DDR2). Strangely enough i never did expect to see a 4 bay NAS server with such specifications but Thecus is not new at what they do and since they have quite a few high-end models available in their current line i guess they just wanted to also have a low-end one for people who care more about having many drive bays rather than performance. The real question however is whether or not it can keep up with the competition and once again that's what we are here to help answer that question.