PC Review Reviews Storage QNAP TS-209 Pro II


After two weeks of continuous usage, the QNAP TS-209 Pro II has become an indispensible part of the office. Several PCs (and the NAS) are connected to a 100mbps ADSL router, which is able to provide consistent read/write speeds of just under 11MB/s. Playback of videos, music and ISO files was reliable and speedy on all occasions, although copying a directories of hundreds of smaller files does reduce the transfer rate:

The features of the TS-209 Pro II are not found on many NAS units in this price range, and prove to be very welcome tools for advanced users. Web developers will find the web/MySQL hosting feature of the NAS an indispensible, as it allows workers to interface with a locally run website without needing a host PC.

Reliability of the NAS hasn’t been brought into question during testing, and it has been actively used as a file/print server, with plenty of scheduled downloads and intranet testing. The old Landisk NAS used previously has been blown away well and truly. It is evident that a considerable amount of time has gone into developing the software and user interface, as this works flawlessly and is significantly more impressive than most other NAS offerings.

There are a couple of minor points that QNAP could do to improve this offering, such as offering a method of securing the internal drive trays (as the NAS is K-locked, but not the drives) and providing a feature to sync from a remote FTP website to the QNAS (i.e. to schedule remote website backups). A quieter fan would also be a welcome addition, however it is not as loud as most computer PSUs during operation.

Overall, this is an excellent piece of equipment for a home office – combining many useful tools into a single NAS unit. It is difficult to find faults with this unit, other than nit-picking, so the TS-209 Pro II gets a thorough recommendation.