The world of the home server and the home based NAS really hasn't changed drastically over the last couple of years. Most of the changes we have seen are related to speeds and basic firmware enhancements. Recently, Thecus has announced its N5550 NAS and plans to shake things up by bringing the NAS out of the home office and into the living room. The N5550, by day, is your mild-mannered NAS. However, by night, the N5550 is more... much more!

When we look at a NAS we do more than just benchmark it. We look at every feature of the product in a real world environment. The NAS becomes our main file server, media server, or whatever other functions it can perform. Each aspect of the product is examined, from software to hardware to performance. The NAS is connected to our network just as it would be to yours, the network comprises of wired and wireless devices.

Thecus packs all you would expect into this NAS. It sports 2GB of DDR3 RAM, an Intel D2550 Atom Processor @ 1.86GHz, dual 10/100/1000 ports (supports teaming), USB 2.0 & 3.0, a 200W Power supply, Cooling fans, and 5 bays for SATA HDD storage goodness. Among some of the finer details are support for RAID 0,1,5,6, 10, and JBOD, RAID Level Migration, 256 bit volume encryption, EXT3/EXT4/XFS filesystems (ZFS is available on other Thecus Models, but not this one), and a slew of other features including one that I am saving for later... engage salivation.