The TS-409 Pro doesn’t
include any additional
connections over the
TS-109 Pro. In fact, you
lose an eSATA port.78 | MAXIMUMPC | AUG 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
Qnap TS-409 Pro
Our favorite NAS box expands to four drives
IN THE LAB^
REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWAREVERDICT600, http://www.gnap.com8
Fastest of the lar]er
NAS Xoxes1 increZiXly
ZetaileZ aZministra-
tile options.A sipe up]raZe oler
the TS-109 Pro, anZ
thatÊs it1 slower than
its preZecessor.CATNAPQNAP TS-409 PROCATNIPI
s bigger always better? Not necessar-
ily. Qnap’s TS-409 Pro is packed with
the same features as the company’s
TS-109 Pro (http://tinyurl.com/yomys5)
but includes twice as much memory and
supports four hard drives rather than just
one. And it rocks, but only if we compare it
to similarly sized foes, such Buff alo’s four-
drive TeraStation Live.
The TS-409 Pro is the fastest multiple-
drive NAS box we’ve tested, producing
excellent scores in our read and writebenchmarks. But the same can’t be said
when we expand the fi eld to include single-
drive NAS devices.
Qnap’s own TS-109 Pro overtakes the
TS-409 Pro in half of our transfer bench-
marks. We didn’t expect this since the hard-
ware in the two products is almost identical.
If anything, the TS-409 Pro should trounce
its predecessor, thanks to an additional
128MB of onboard DDR2 memory.
It’s no surprise that the devices’ admin-
istration soft ware is also nearly identical.
However, since it supports multiple drives, the
TS-409 allows you to confi gure RAID levels;
other additions include support for hard-drive
SMART statistics and a new way to schedule
backups to connected USB devices. We would
have liked even more improvements,
such as a more streamlinedinterface for easier use, a better downloading
application, and a one-button approach for
backing up one internal drive to another.
Qnap downgrades the NAS experience
by stripping functionality out of the TS-109
Pro and packaging these features into exter-
nal soft ware applications for the TS-409 Pro.
You now manage FTP, HTTP, and BitTorrent
downloads using the QGet program. We’d
much prefer a client with the functionality of
Azureus or uTorrent—QGet lacks scheduling
and tweaking options.
The included Netback Replicator is a great
one-click backup application but a poor syn-
chronization app since it goes only one way:
You can’t sync a folder on the TS-409 Pro to
your computer. The program only copies fi les
you dump into a folder on your machine to a
folder of your choice on the TS-409 Pro.
The TS-409 Pro is the best multi-drive
NAS box we’ve tested, but that doesn’t mean
it’s perfect. Since Qnap is upgrading all of
its other NAS devices, it might be worth
waiting to see if the company spruces up
this one as well. –D A V I D M U R P H YBest scores are bolded. We used the CD contents of Maximum PC’s November 2007 CD for the small-file testing, and a single 3GB file for the large-file testing.
All scores are averages of three transfer trials.BENCHMARKSSize N/A N/A 2TB
PC to NAS, small 0:45 0:37 1:05
(min:sec)
PC to NAS, large 3:04 2:25 3:50
(min:sec)
NAS to PC, small 0:33 0:43 1:20
(min:sec)
NAS to PC, large 1:45 2:44 5:16
(min:sec)Qnap TS-409Pro Gnap TS-109 Pro BuffaloTeraStation Lile