ZyXEL NSA320 Diskless System 2-Bay Power Media Server

Pros: Overall, a good value, setup was easy with one gotcha (see below), speed is fine, worth the money.

Cons: Cheap looking and cheap feeling, documentation could be better.

Other Thoughts: I originally bought a Synology DS112j that I was VERY happy with. I returned it because it's very expensive and only had one drive bay. I bought this one instead for $75 less, and this one has two bays so I can RAID my disks. The Synology has a much cleaner, more intuitive admin console and just looks and feels like better quality. However, the ZyXEL, though it looks cheaper and has a more cluttered, less user friendly admin console, works perfectly well and I just don't think the Synology is worth more than twice as much. It's not THAT much better.

Here's one gotcha I ran into setting up the ZyXEL NSA320. I took the disk that I had in my Synology and put it into slot 1, and a second clean disk (same exact model) into slot 2. The ZyXEL started up, but never finished initializing, so the setup program was never able to recognize the NAS. Since I have spare disks, I took out the used disk from slot 1 and replaced it with a clean disk. I rebooted the NAS and it then worked as expected. The documentation doesn't mention this at all, but I could see this tripping many people up. I suspected it would be a problem so I knew what to try right away. But I am an IT professional - I do this stuff for a living - many others don't and this will cause them problems.

However, once you get past that, this box works as advertised. I only have it for a few hours but my first impression is very good.

Pros: Great features for the price. I needed the RSS downloader and a DLNA server to move from an older Mac Mini over to something headless, and this fit the bill. It's tough to find these features in lower end NAS offerings. The web interface is clean and fast. Handles any size drive I've needed to throw at it and never freezes or gets hung, at least not yet.

Cons: It would be nice if the DLNA server did demuxing (not transcoding) of content, which should be reasonable even with the ARM cpu, but you can't have everything. No eggs off for that.

Other Thoughts: I didn't try the included software, use the web interface.

Pros: Was great while it worked, fast, seemed reliable

Cons: Died with the system light blinking. Will not discover over network. Tried rebooting, hard rebooting, and attempted auto firmware update, it didn't even try to do that. No it is just a brick. Sad!

Other Thoughts: I have purchased a lot of other ZyXel products that work great and well. This was very disappointing.

Pros: Sometimes it actually works

Cons: What a pile of junk, freezes daily, reboot doesn't always bring it back up. RUN don't walk away. Seriously don't even think about.

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: DOA, Bogus Factory Firmware...

Other Thoughts: I actually did not buy mine from Newegg :-) (Found a cheaper one a couple of weeks ago!), but it was DOA... Hey! ...that's what happen when you buy elsewhere :D

Anyway... The symptoms were: normal boot, as judged by the Led's, but unreachable through the Zyxel setup software. It also appeared to get a static IP address (192.168.1.5 in my case).

Before returning the NAS, you may want to try the following...

There is way to force flashing to the latest firmware with a USB key, see:
http://zyxel.nas-central.org/wiki/Flashing_firmware

You have to download 2 zip files, plus the latest firmware (get it from Zyxel Support Download section) and extract them to the USB key. Shutdown the NAS... install the USB key... reboot... wait (you should see an orange led)... wait... wait... NAS stops by itself... remove the USB key... reboot... wait... wait... and voila!

Note 1: the NSA320 latest firmware 4.50(AFO.1)C1 is a .rar file, so you need a zip utility which supports .rar files.
The firmware (the large .bin file) should be renamed to ras.bin on the USB key.

Note 2, from the README file on the first utility: NSA-320, NSA-325 and TDC-HOMEDISK, rename "nsa310_check_file_C0.libzy.so" to "nsa310_check_file_C0", overwriting the original file (I just added a .bak extension to the original file before renaming the file).

Pros: specs seemed good.

Cons: First was DOA, as was the second. Past 30 days for newegg's return policy for the second one, so I'm seeking replacement from ZyXEL.

Pros: Pretty good transfer rate, given the price.

Cons: Poor industrial design. You have to screw on two pieces of plastics around your hard disk before pushing it into the unit. This type of installation mechanism is so last century. It comes with a very awkward disk ejector as well.

Also there is quite a bit of fan noise. It claims that the hard disk will be kept at a hibernated state when not being accessed. However, the fan never stops running, which is very odd.

Pros: Nice, compact, and simple design

Cons: DOA.

Other Thoughts: Installed two WD 2TB Red drives and booted up the box with much excitement. But, to my disappointment I could not get the software to locate the device. System status light kept flashing when it was supposed to be steady. Called ZyXEL and they said to try and reset it by holding the power button for two beeps and if this did not work then there was something wrong with the device. Sending back to Newegg. I will give it one more shot. Fingers crossed.

Pros: a very good idea.....

Cons: Does not work. I have tried everything (and then some). I made sure the 1.5TB drives I put in it had no partitions (abother brand said to be sure this was the case or the OS would not load). When that didn't work I bought 2 brand new 2TBs- same thing. I even built a Windows 2003 Server and configured DHCP incase that was the issue. Nothing made the array recognized by the NAS Discovery software that came with the drive.

I would like to think that if I could find a default IP address I could proceed, but there is no place in any documentation I could find. I have worked with $100K SANs, Drobos, Promise iSCSI arrays... I got some skills. This unit does not function. Too bad- Zyxel is a company with a fimne reputation for network gear...

Pros: Holds 2 2GB drives so lots of storage, USB might allow even more, haven't used it.

Cons: Freezes about once a week, reboot fixes it about 50% of the time, otherwise it sits there with all the lights on and doesn't work at all, can't reach it on the network.

Other Thoughts: I've trusted this piece of junk with all my photos, music and movies. Lost everything on it twice. Run don't walk from this thing. My next NAS will be a QNAP TS-212-US .