The QNAP TS-231p 2-Bay Cost Effective NAS Unboxing, Walkthrough and Talkthrough

Thinking of buying your first NAS on a budget? Say hello to the TS-231P QNAP NAS

 Often over looked in the NAS community, the low end and budget friendly NAS devices are always held with a certain degree of contempt by many hard-care IT and network professionals. More geared with things like Plex Media Servers, Virtual Machines and NAS surveillance, they will look at the likes of the Synology DS216J and the QNAP TS-212p with derision in their eyes and a mocking tone in their voice. However like any tool for any job, sometimes you don’t need to bring a lorry to do a job that can be done by bike! The cost effective network attached storage (or cheap NAS to some) users out there are not looking for a NAS server to blow their socks off… not just because of the price, but because for all their fancy functions and hardware, they will never use more than 5% of it.

 Which brings us to the latest and (arguably) best cost effective NAS release from the professional and top tier NAS brand, QNAP. The units are a single bay NAS, in the form of the QNAP TS131P for those less concerned with RAID and Redundancy. The QNAP TS213P 2Bay for those looking for the security of a RAID level like RAID 1, but want a basic file and DLNA server. Finally, a 4Bay NAS for those looking for more storage enabling RAID levels like RAID 5, as well as better storage and drive options, found in the QNAP TS431P. Once again, a large portion of the NAS community will not be blown away by the hardware on these devices, but they are not the target audience. These new NAS are for those who was features like the following:

• Simple File Level Access on a userfriendly UI
• Apple Time Machine Backup support
• DLNA support to distribute your media to where you need it
• Setting up an iTunes server to house your music in one place
• Low end Network Surveillance over multiple IP cameras
• A one stop Download server to keep all your HTTP, FTP, BT and more downloads
• Low power consumption for a 24/7 server
• One touch Portable USB drive back up
• Migration and backup between popular cloud services (Dropbox, iCloud, GoogleDrive)
• All the other low key features of the QNAP QTS software

 If what you want to do with NAS is listed above, then maybe you don;t need to spend a small fortune on your NAS to get the job done. Better still, if you have money to spend, put it into the Hard Drives! With Seagate releasing their Ironwolf 10TB and WD Red drives for NAS becoming a popular choice, it may be a solid decision in the long term for those looking for a NAS solution with long term, future proofing in mind.