Hardware Bistro

Product: TS-119
Manufacturer: QNAP
Supplied by: Build
Price: 428USD/RM1499
Launch Date: NA

 

NAS is one of the latest trendy computer peripherals as its existence has become more important lately and it is extremely useful for large group of data sharing. At this moment, there are only small number of NAS providers as NAS is a complicated device and QNAP is one of the young NAS providers but they are playing an important role in NAS sector.

 

Company Profile

QNAP Systems Inc. is the "Quality Network Appliance Provider" and we pledged to become the world's leading Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Network Video Recorder (NVR) solution provider.

Established 2004 in Taiwan, QNAP has successfully developed and launched powerful and reliable NAS and NVR product lines into worldwide channels. We provide our customers with high performance, reliable backup and secure solutions with our continuous innovations in design, features and technology. Today, QNAP has gained worldwide recognition from our customers and from media. For example, TS-509 Pro has won 'Editor's Choice' from BRnR (US), CNET France, and MPC Club (Europe). TS-409 Pro was honored 'Golden Bear Award' from Bjorn3d (US), 'Gold Award' from HWM (Singapore, Malaysia), 'Dam Good' from Hardware Canucks (Canada), and 'Golden Tachometer Award' from Benchmark Reviews (US) etc. TS-409Uwas awarded 'Editor's Choice' from Bios Level (US) etc.

 

Features

- Superior performance with abundant business features
- Maximize the enjoyment of your home multimedia center
- Ultra-high Speed Performance
- No fan design
- Exclusive Q-RAID 1 Data Backup
- Flexible Built-in iSCSI Target Service
- S.M.A.R.T & Advanced HDD Health Scanning (HHS)
- UPS Support
- QNAP Backup Software - NetBak Replicator
- 3rd Party Backup Software Ready
- Encrypted Remote Replication
- One Touch USB Auto Copy
- Sharing Files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX
- Support Windows AD
- Web File Manager
- Ease of User and Share Folder Management
- Hard Disk Standby
- Schedule Power on/ off
- Secure data storage, access, and sharing
- Policy-based Automatic IP Blocking
- Instant SMS/ Email Alert
- SSL Secure Certificate
- Syslog Settings
- Network Recycle Bin
- Comprehensive Event Log System
- Detailed System Information
- DDNS Support
- QPKG Software Package Platform

Specifications

Package & Contents

 

QNAP TS-119 is packed with a solid packaging box with dimension; 10" x 5.5" x 9" (W x D x H). The whole packaging is full of informative features, specifications and interesting diagrams which are absolutely attractive and useful. QNAP TS-119 is protected by two high quality foams and a plastic bag for better protection against scratches and it is waterproof too.

Here are the complete package contents of QNAP TS-119. Besides the QNAP TS-119 NAS station, there are adapter, power cord, 2 x CDs (NAS Companion CD v3.2 & Turbo NAS firmware v3.0), quick installation guide, screws, Ethernet cable and 2 x stands.

 

The power adapter of QNAP TS-119 consists of a piece of standard power cord and an adapter (1.2" x 2.1" x 3.8"). This adapter is quite small compare with other NAS power adapters which is an advantage but we still hope to see continuous improvement in the future until the adapter is either integrated inside the NAS station or within the socket adapter for reducing the space constraint. Besides that a 6-feet black Ethernet cable is included which looks cool; frankly to say this is our first time seeing such black Ethernet cable.

 

Most of the NAS stations that we have seen so far are come with vertical placement and this is same for QNAP TS-119 as well where two high quality aluminum stands are provided; rubber feet are included for holding the NAS station as well as the located surface. Since NAS is a complicated device, complete user's manual is not printed but the soft copy version is available at QNAP website and the CD.

 

A Closer Look: TS-119

There are two major line of business for QNAP products; storage (NAS) and surveillance (NAS + Video Recorder). Among these two product groups, it can be further broken down into three smaller sections for easier understanding when comes to select a right model especially for newbie; SMB/Coporate, Home/SOHO and Personal. QNAP TS-119 is a single bay Home/SOHO NAS system which provides decent performance for small business and home usage without spending a lot on it. There are plenty of features for QNAP TS-119 and let us go through them quickly without any further delay.

The major functions of QNAP TS-119 are file server, FTP server, Backup server, Remote application, Web server, MySQL server, Printer server, UPnP Media server, Multimedia station, Download station, iTunes server and Surveillance station. Besides that QNAP TS-119 also supports software expansion such as eMule, Wordpress, Joomla, phpMyAdmin and so on.

 

As we mentioned previously, QNAP TS-119 is a single bay NAS system where only a single 3.5" SATA HDD can be supported. 3.5" SATA HDD is common for NAS system but we do hope in future 2.5" SATA HDD can be supported as well or maybe SSD for greater supportability. Anyway here are the front and rear views of QNAP TS-119 and so far only black color is available; overall QNAP TS-119 looks very solid and attractive. The overall dimension and weight of QNAP TS-119 are 182 x 60 x 210 mm (H x W x D) and 1.2 kg; heavier than most of the 1-bay NAS as QNAP TS-119 is made by solid aluminum material rather than those fragile plastic enclosures.

 

The front panel of QNAP TS-119 consists of two buttons (quick copy & power button), six LED indicators and a USB2.0 port; everything looks perfect and you will like it further once it is powered on as the six LED indicators are very colorful; orange, yellow, blue and red. The copy button is a USB One-Touch-Backup button for data copying from the external USB device to the NAS system or the other way round.

 

Here are the rear panels of QNAP TS-119 and there are eSATA, LAN, Reset, DC IN and 2 x USB2.0 connectors. As you can see besides three USB 2.0 connectivity (1 front, 2 rear), eSATA is supported as well which is another famous connectivity due to its greater supports. Since NAS system is an important device hence Kensington lock is provided for protecting the valuable data inside and such lock is standardized and cheap.

 

It is quite simple to remove out the enclosure cover of QNAP TS-119; just slide the right side panel frontward. The whole enclosure of QNAP TS-119 is secured by two screws and QNAP TS-119 is a passive cooling NAS system where no cooling fan is included so choosing a lower temperature HDD is important too. Anyway let us find out the cooling performance of QNAP TS-119 and see whether the aluminum enclosure is able to fulfill its task perfectly or not.

 

As you can see QNAP TS-119 is well constructed by 2mm thickness aluminum although it is just a 1-bay NAS. Whole enclosure of QNAP TS-119 is made by aluminum material except the rear panel which is made by plastic material hence please take note and don't over press on this rear panel. For the inner portion of the front panel, there is a piece of foam for avoiding the light overlapping each others.

 

Here are the interior looks of QNAP TS-119 and we are really impressed with it as it is really well made product; everything is well designed, constructed and a piece of big mylar is included to avoid short circuit which may induced by the HDD bracket. Among the front panel I/O panel of QNAP TS-119, there are a 4-pin connector for add on power and a speaker for alarming alert.

 

The silver bracket is the 3.5" SATA HDD bracket which is only for 3.5" SATA HDD and we do hope QNAP will create a 2.5" SATA HDD bracket for greater supportability. The HDD bracket can be removed out from the QNAP TS-119 easily by removing four screws while four more screws are required to fasten the PCB/mylar on the aluminum enclosure; eight screws in total.

 

Here is the PCB of QNAP TS-119 which is well designed as every components are located neatly. Marvell 6281 is the core chip of QNAP TS-119; a CPU which operates at 1.2GHz and comes with 256KB L2 cache. No passive (heatsink) or active cooling (heatsink + fan) is required for this controller since it is just a very simple low power consumption device.

 

Right beside the Marvel controller, there are four memory chips; Hynix DDR2 memory and total 512MB capacity for QNAP TS-119. 3V Panasonic coin cell battery is provided for supporting the CMOS of QNAP TS-119 for keep the basic BIOS/CMOS data.

 

Marvell 88E1118R is a Gbit PHY while ALCO AU6254 is a USB2.0 controller. Other major chipsets are ON NCP3101 (6A integrated switcher) and ST 25P228V6P.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

QNAP TS-119 installation is quite simple; just remove the side panel and slot in the 3.5" SATA HDD on the HDD bracket then fasten the HDD with screws for better protection. Lastly secure the side panel with the enclosure of QNAP TS-119 with two black screws.

 

Once everything is completed then it is time to power on the QNAP TS-119. We have tested this QNAP TS-119 with our test bed as stated below. The first impression that we have after powered on QNAP TS-119 is the colorful LED indicators which looks very charming which consists of yellow, orange, blue and red. Each of these colors is having their own meaning and it is quite important to know that especially during troubleshooting; the detail information can be found at user's manual.

 

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink: Noctua NH-U9B
Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 6400/8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce 9800GT Low Power
PSU: In Win Commander 750W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Benchmark Software: HDTech, CrystalDiskMark
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

 

Now let us spend some time on software setup portion of QNAP TS-119 which it is important as NAS is not a play & plug device. as it needs some fine tune adjustment for the software portion. Basically QNAP TS-119 comes with three software; QNAP Finder (locate and configure the QNAP NAS), NetBack Replicator (NAS Backup utility) and QGet (utility for Download Station). For the first time setup, QNAP Finder will alert the user that the detected NAS is not yet configured and will have a quick setup wizard for guiding the whole configuration process.

 

The involved configurations are HDD setup, serve naming, administration password, time settings, system code page setting, network setting and firmware update. If firmware update is required then the whole setup process will take longer time; around 5-10 minutes. Besides that drive mapping is allowed as well which is very user friendly for fast accessing and those drives that can be mapped are Qdownload, Public, Qrecordings, Qmultimedia, Qweb and Qusb. Besides the QNAP Finder, QNAP TS-119 can be accessed through IE7 or Mozilla Firefox by entering http:// [NAS IP]:8080 and the default username/password are "admin".

Here are the QNAP TS-119 UI with firmware 2.1.3; TS-119 Turbo NAS and standard web UI. Basically the TS-119 Turbo NAS is a simplify version of the TS-119 web UI for fast accessing to specific application such as Web File Manager, Web Server, Download Station, Multimedia Station and Surveillance Station. For the Turbo NAS UI, SSL login is supported for configure and manage the server with encrypted transfer.

 

Here is the home page of QNAP TS-119 web UI; there are eight sections; quick configuration, system settings, network settings, device configuration, user management, network share management, system tools and system logs. For the quick configuration, it is exactly same with the first time configuration by the setup wizard but in web based the firmware update is not an compulsory item.

 

For System settings, those involved configurations are server name, date & time, filename encoding setting, configure SMTP & SMSC server and view system settings. While network settings will be TCP/IP, Microsoft/Apple networking, NFS service, web file manager, FTP/iTunes/DDNS service, multimedia/download/surveillance stations, web/MySQL server, system port management and view networking setting.

 

Next one will be device configuration where this is the place to setup the connected devices like internal HDD, USB printer and external storage device like USB flash drive. It provides the basic information regarding the connected drive as well as bad block scanning. User management allows create users groups, add user, create multiple users, quota setting, and private network share setup.

 

Network share Management is a tool for controlling all the network properties, access and other related setting for network recycle bin, public, Qdownload, Qmultimedia, Qrecordings, Qusb and Qweb. System tools is a complicated configuration section where it covers the hardware, notification, power management, one-touhc backup, remote application, QPKG and so on.

 

Here are the multimedia station and download station of QNAP TS-119. The multimedia station is for sharing photo, music, video on NAS over the network while download station allows PC-less BT, HTTP and FTP download which even able to reduce the power consumption since NAS consumes much less power than a PC.

 

The other two bundled software are QGet and NetBak Replicator. QGet is a powerful management tool for maintaining BT, HTTP and FTP download for QNAP NAS station. QGet is much flexible compare with download station as no login is required and it is easily for monitoring; the user interface is quite similar with most of the BT software. NetBak Replicator is another useful software for data back up either from internal drive to external storage or vice versa.

 

The web UI that we have discussed above is quite boring but it will be upgraded soon and QNAP has included the beta version of the next upcoming UI which is; Turbo NAS 3.0.0. Turbo NAS is a major upgrade from its previous UI and there are two views of this Turbo NAS; Flow and standard views. Although we have tested QNAP TS-119 with firmware 2.1.3 but we still flashed it again with latest firmware 3.0.0. With this latest firmware, we found that the latest firmware Turbo NAS has improved a lot compare with its previous firmware; Thanks to QNAP software/R&D team for developing such great UI. Most of the features and structure of both of these firmware are quite similar but there are still some upgrade and additional features which are only supported by this latest firmware 3.0.0.

Here are some practical benchmarking results of QNAP TS-119. The start up time of QNAP TS-119 is around 43s which is quite fast but we do hope the start up time can be improved further. However it is much faster to shut down QNAP TS-119 which only takes around 15s and twice beeps will be alarmed before it is completely shut down. Besides that for firmware flashing, QNAP TS-119 takes around 10 minutes for completely flashing including reboot during our 2.1.3 to 3.0.0 firmware flashing.

The core function of a NAS station is file storing inside a HDD with networking environment hence we have tested its transfer speed as well which is the major criteria when comes to select a ideal NAS system. Speed is very important for a storage device besides capacity else it is no point to have a NAS station if the speed is extremely slow. Based on the data above, we are really impressed by QNAP TS-119 performance as it is as fast as writing to a local drive; 516MB photo only took around 18s for copying it from local drive to QNAP TS-119.

Last but not least, we would like to talk about the noise and temperature of QNAP TS-119. Since QNAP TS-119 is a passive cooling NAS station, it is noiseless and if you hear any noise then it will be the HDD spinning noise. Since no fan is included, the whole aluminum casing of QNAP TS-119 is quite hot and it is not comfortable for holding it for long period hence we would like to see some improvement here in the future or next version by either adding a small fan or at least some air vents for better ventilation.

 

Conclusion

QNAP TS-119 is definitely a well-built high quality 1-bay NAS system that we have seen so far and it also comes with eye-catching design. For a 1-bay NAS system, QNAP TS-119 has provided most of the features that a 1-bay NAS system should have and there are even some additional great features that are not available on other same category NAS systems. QNAP TS-119 is definitely a good choice for a home or SOHO usage although its price is a bit higher than other similar 1-bay NAS. Anyway it is still within the reasonable budget for a 1-bay NAS system and furthermore it is made by high quality material and it provides very complete feature offerings.

 

12 June 2009 Update: The full version of firmware v3.0.0 Build 0430 was released and can be downloaded from QNAP website.

Pros:

+ Well-built 1-bay NAS
+ Cool & charming design
+ Full aluminum casing
+ One-touch backup
+ QPKG supported; Joomla, WordPress, eMule
+ SSL Secure Certificated
+ Instant SMS/Email alert
+ MySQL Server supported
+ Turbo NAS firmware 3.0
+ Great tools; QGet & NetBack Replicator

Cons:

- Expensive
- Wireless connectivity is not supported
- Native cooling which may not good for 24/7 operation

 

Thanks to Qnap for providing this sample for us to review.

Only registered users may post a comment.

Sylver Bruneau	5.0 / 5	Thu 22 Jul 10
Thanks for this great review ! For your information, there is an iPhone/iPod touch application to control the download station ! It's called QGet Remote ! Check here for more details : http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=178&t=30924 Sylver (I'm the author of this application)