Thecus N4310: A 4-Disk Linux NAS
The Thecus N4310 is a small business oriented Linux NAS (Network Attached Storage) device that makes it easy to setup an EXT4-based RAID storage environment with encryption support. The Thecus web-based software makes it easy to take full advantage of the NAS with features such as BitTorrent support, media streaming for iOS/Android, and more.
Thecus recently sent over the N4310 NAS as a review sample considering our Linux interest. The N4310 is powered by a 1GHz APM86491RDK SoC, has 1GB of DDR3 memory, has two built-in USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet with Wake-On-LAN support, support for four Serial ATA drives, and all around is designed and built well for small business and home scenarios. The Thecus N4310 retails for $238~299 USD depending upon the retailer.
The Thecus Linux-based software on the N4310 makes it easy to setup RAID 0/1/5/6 and JBOD arrays with the four Serial ATA (2.5 or 3.5-inch) drives. There's also FTP support, AES data encryption, a hybrid storage mode, and other extra software features. When setting up the drives, the N4310 only has support for EXT4. It's unfortunate to see there's no XFS file-system option. Some Thecus drives do even support the Btrfs file-system, but this unit does not; in the future we're told they may send over a Btrfs-based NAS unit for testing at Phoronix.
The N4310 consumes 29.5 Watts in operation or around 10 Watts when in its sleep mode.
The unit is built physically well and seems rather sturdy. There is support for a Kensington lock to secure the NAS, aside from the software protection of optional data encryption.