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QNAP TS-509 Pro Turbo NAS Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Sunday, October 12, 2008
Product Design and Features
The QNAP TS-509 Pro is a small tower that is not much larger than an external RAID enclosure and given that the majority of the space is occupied by HDDs you can understand why. The enclosure holds up to 5x 3.5” HDDs each in their own hotswap bay.
The back of the device features a single 120mm system controlled cooling fan, 2 Ethernet ports, Serial port, USB, eSATA, and a single D-SUB video port (that is not currently enabled)
Next to the HDD tower you'll find the status LEDs, power button and a single USB port. The various USB ports are designed as part of a one touch backup, simply plug in your USB device (flash drive, camera, external hdd etc..) and press the copy button. The TS-509 Pro will then copy everything from the device into a directory on the NAS.
Next to the HDD tower you'll find the status LEDs, power button and a single USB port. The various USB ports are designed as part of a one touch backup, simply plug in your USB device (flash drive, camera, external hdd etc..) and press the copy button. The TS-509 Pro will then copy everything from the device into a directory on the NAS.
A nice feature of the TS-509 Pro is the tool less and lockable SATA hotswap trays. Each tray is numbered in descending order so that you can quickly determine what drive is faulty. The TS-509 Pro supports a full array of RAID levels typical of 5 drive configurations. (JBOD, 0, 1, 5, 6, 5+ spare) For our functional tests we choose RAID 5. This level gives you the most storage with a single drive of hardware redundancy and a fair amount of performance. RAID 6 and 5 + 1 are only available in a 4+ drive configuration while RAID 5 can be used with a minimum of 3.
The hotswap trays are traditional in the sense that you can easily remove them with your finger and then lock into place when the drive is properly installed.
The hotswap trays are traditional in the sense that you can easily remove them with your finger and then lock into place when the drive is properly installed.
