Using Thecus N5200 is very simple. Just open its IP address from any computer located on your network and you will see all available folders. There are several ways to accomplish that. You can simply go to Start, Run (on Vista the path is Start, All Programs, Accessories, Run) and enter 192.168.1.100. You can map a folder to a drive letter, for example, make your “videos” folder located on your NAS box to be accessible on your PC as “Z:” drive (My Computer, Tools, Map Network Drive). You can browse your network using the My Network Places icon. These are the most common ways to reach your NAS box. The only detail is that by Thecus set N5200 to use by default a workgroup called “MyGroup,” which is different from Windows’ default workgroup, which is “Workgroup.” So pay attention on this while looking for your N5200 box.

After you reach the folders from your NAS box you can use them to store files just like if they were located on your PC.

N5200 provides several other options. It can be configured to be accessed as an FTP server, so you can download and upload files using an FTP client. As mentioned, you can install a printer to it and use it as a print server. And you can also access Thecus N5200 using AFP (Mac) and NFS (Linux) protocols. NFS, for example, allows the operating system to see the folders located inside the NAS box as if they were located on the local hard disk drive. And you can also use Nsync protocol for managing backups.

Thecus N5200 also provides the essential OCE (Online Capacity Expansion) and ORLM (Online RAID Level Migration) features, which allow you to change the RAID level or expand your RAID setup capacity without data loss.

Besides hot swap, Thecus N5200 also supports hot spare, which is a feature that allows a standby disk to automatically replace a defective disk in case of failure.

There are several other features present on Thecus N5200 and we mentioned the most important ones. As explained, we don’t want to transform this review into a tutorial on how to use this particular product.