Installation

Before the unit can go into service it requires a hard drive, the drive I used is a 320 GB Samsung Spinpoint. Installing it is as easy as sliding open the case, pushing it towards the connectors and putting in a few screws. Without a hard drive installed you cannot set up the device unfortunately, not even as print or DHCP server.


Once a hard drive is installed the first use is about 5 minutes away. The cabling is as easy as connecting the power adapter and the network cable. I connected the device directly to my secondary Gigabit port on the PC so it won't be bottlenecked by any network devices. The NIC used is an Intel Gilgal. Even though the Turbo Station comes with a CAT5 cable which technically doesn't meet the Gigabit standard requirement, the cable works fine at these speeds.


The unit has no default IP, to find it there is a "QNAP finder" on the CD. This small utility detects the device and allows you to set it up for the first time. It is an easy to use application which simply asks some questions after which you click next. Initially you can change the password, IP, name, hard drive configuration (and initialize it).


When you're done the unit is ready to be filled with files via Windows file sharing. I named my unit TechPowerUp (how original), entering \\TechPowerUp in my address bar shows me several shares named after the services that use them. The public folder can be used as network share for the whole network.


Later on you can always change the setings via the same tool or via the web interface.


Additional settings can be changed via the webmanagement program, since the unit is also a webserver the webmanagement goes via port 8080. In my case TechPowerUp:8080, at this point I figured the chosen name wasn't that smart.