Editorial Team

Synology has its DS412+ and Thecus has its N4800. Both are four-bay NAS servers equipped with Intel’s Atom D2700 processor. But does Intel's latest low-power platform help these appliances outperform their predecessors, which were armed with Atom D525?

We got our hands on one of Thecus' eight-bay N8800PRO storage appliances for the purpose of taking Open-E's Data Storage Software V6 out for a test drive. Read on as we set up, manage, and benchmark this marriage of storage-oriented hardware and software.

It’s a good idea to use two CPU cores to speed up multiple drives in RAID 5 or 6 arrays and it’s even better to increase clock speeds. We put Qnap's TS-559 Pro+ with an Atom D525 dual-core CPU to the test: is it any faster than devices with Atom D510?

Three vendors of network-attached storage, Qnap, Synology, and Thecus, sent over Intel Atom-based NAS servers to test the effects of protecting your data via encryption. But performance and configuration options are not identical, as our testing shows.

We know that adding drives to a RAID array can help improve performance. But does adding storage to a NAS device really help push throughput higher? We put four-bay and five-bay units from Qnap up against each other and benchmark their transfer rates.

Liquid cooling still has the image of being expensive and complicated. Corsair, in cooperation with the cooling specialists at Asetek, now offers the H70 that aims to simplify the step up from air cooling. Can it beat less expensive premium heatsinks?

Intel's most modern dual-core Pineview-based Atom processor isn't just aimed at energy-efficient netbooks. It can also be found in NAS servers from a variety of manufacturers. We tested two mid-range appliances in order to measure the CPU's capabilities.

Synology really impressed us with the performance of its Disk Station DS408. Can the same company do it again with its Disk Station DS207+?

Intel's Celeron-based SS4200-E is the company's latest effort to clinch market share in the SOHO storage space. Is it enough to usurp more established incumbents?

Does a NAS device with high data transfer rate and a Web interface that is easy to configure actually exist? Synology shows how it should be done. But the enclosure is not without its faults, either.

What do you do with all the data you collect at home? Network attached storage is the solution. We test Maxtor's Shared Storage II and find that it is also suitable for use in small businesses.