QNap TurboNAS TS-219P II review

QNap's TurboNAS TS-219P II is a two-bay NAS device that looks innocuous and business-like thanks to its black plastic exterior. Hard disks are installed in two removable caddies at the front, and although the trays feel a little cheap, everything slots into place comfortably. Also located at the front of the NAS is a USB2 port. At the rear are two USB2 and two eSATA ports. Unlike many current NAS devices in the same price range, the TS-219P II lacks USB3 support.

The installation disc includes the QNap Finder utility, which searches your network for a QNap NAS and then guides you through the process of configuring it. The configuration screens actually exist on the NAS's web interface. We were first prompted to initialise our blank hard disks. With this complete, we were prompted to install a firmware from the installation disc. Updated versions are also available online.

During firmware installation, you're prompted to name the NAS server, set an admin password, configure the NAS's time and enable the services you wish it to run, such as its FTP server, UPnP and iTunes media servers, shared folders, web and SQL server and more. Finally, you must set up its disk configuration, choosing between RAID 1, RAID 0 and JBOD as well as choosing between Ext3 and Ext4 file systems. The entire process is clear, simple and very easy to follow.

The web interface is clearly designed, with the main options and settings sorted into a tree structure located in a pane to the left of the browser window. Parent folders include categories such as desk management, in which you can format and set up your disks' RAID configuration, Access Rights Management, in which you can create users, give them quotas and set access privileges, and Network Services, in which you'll find options for enabling the NAS device's web and FTP servers, as well as SSH or Telnet access and file sharing options.

The web interface is simple to navigate and includes everything you should need - click to enlarge

The NAS can also run a number of applications that let it act as an iTunes or UPnP media server, web-facing storage, BitTorrent client and a monitoring centre for IP cameras. You can also add further functionality with downloadable QPKG packages, which include applications as varied as Wordpress blog hosting and an NZB download client for downloading content from Usenet.