Exterior

The NAS is quite large, and its looks and design are geared toward business environments instead of use at home. It is also really heavy, even without any HDDs installed—we actually thought Thecus shipped us the NAS with HDDs pre-installed the first time we moved it around (but they, to our disappointment, did not). The left of the front has a series of LED indicators, while a small LCD screen with four buttons to control functions is located at the bottom. The LCD screen will be in Display Mode while the NAS is operating normally, with messages regarding NAS functions rotating every one or two seconds. Management Mode during the setup and configuration phase will allow you to perform various administrative tasks. You can also enter Management Mode at any time by simply pressing the Enter button and dialing in your password. The default password is "0000". Enter Management Mode to change network settings of the NAS, select a Link Aggregation protocol, change your administrator password, and reset the system to factory defaults.


You have to open the front bay port to access the HDD trays, the on/off and copy buttons, and the front USB 3.0 port. Simply push on its middle-right side to do so. As you can see, all trays feature locks, a must-have for business environments.


A useful scheme of the NAS front buttons and LED indicators can be found in the user's manual.


We removed all caddies to offer you a view of the internals. We will also dismantle the NAS completely on the next page to give you a much better and detailed view of the insides.


The sides of the casing feature ventilation holes.


At the bottom are four rubber stands and the warranty sticker, and a label with the model number.


The fan grill at the rear allows for a look at the 92 mm Adda fan. Next to it are most of the I/O ports. These include audio ports, HDMI and VGA outputs, an eSATA and four USB 2.0 ports, and, near the bottom-right corner, both Gigabit Ethernet ports. Finally, the server's PSU is cooled by a small 40 mm fan, and there is thankfully an on/off switch for the PSU, an essential feature to even a NAS that will most likely run 24/7.


The caddies are of good quality and can host 3.5" or 2.5" disks; that is, if you are rich enough to invest into high capacity SSDs. These caddies also have rubber pads for vibration absorption.


The key feature of the caddie is the lock, which play a major role in physical data protection.