Review on 💾 Zyxel 4-Bay Personal Cloud Storage Server: Remote Access, Media Streaming, Disks not Included [NAS540] by Aaron Charlton

Update August 11, 2017: I've had this NAS for a little over a month now. I loaded it with 4 WD RED NAS 4TB hard drives and put them all in RAID5. Installing drives and configuring them on the NAS is very simple and straightforward, including RAID configurations. Note. If you want to use similar drives, please note that the specified hard drive size differs from the actual hard drive detected. Disk space (in short, this is due to the difference in how hard drive manufacturers report/measure bytes (1000) and how computer systems do it (1024)). Back to the NAS, after setting up the hard drives, I began configuring the various functions and features of the NAS. I added shares and users and specified which users/groups have permissions for each. I have specified what folders and what type of content will be published on the media server. They have largely predefined and preconfigured the media server configuration, which leaves a computer savvy user like me a bit disappointed with the control available. I set up network settings, hostnames, DNS, FTP, WebDAV configurations, etc. and set everything up to my liking. I've explored features like the sync button, which lets you copy USB > NAS content or vice versa. Everything I tested worked very well. Basically I bought a NAS to provide a lot of available storage with RAID5 protection so I can avoid using 6 different external hard drives and have only one repository. It works great for that purpose, but another feature that I really use a lot is the media server. The device becomes available on the network as a media server. Basically, any other Twonky server, Windows Media Player, AllShare and similar services will be able to see and display it. With my Samsung Smart TV, I just change the source to the NAS and browse its content, allowing me to find and play everything quickly. Alternatively I can go to a media server page on a computer or full browser, find the content and then play it directly in the browser or connect a player like VLC. I can also find the content in the browser and then cast/broadcast it to the device of my choice (it shows which devices can receive the stream). This works very well. And if you're using a computer, you can add media to the queue for the device you're streaming to. I had absolutely no trouble streaming three separate HD movies simultaneously to three separate devices; I bet I could do more. One thing I don't particularly care about is thumbnail or image support. So far only MP4 seemed to display the video thumbnail. Thumbnails are not created for content types such as AVI or MKV. Thumbnails are useful when trying to find something to look at. This isn't a deal breaker and I intend to explore Twonky a little more to see if there's a way around this, but it's worth noting that some of you are more casual users than me. There are a number of features that I don't currently use and probably won't use, at least in the near future, but it does what I need (offers plenty of RAID protected storage) and then some (media server, download service , share) and it makes everything good. The last thing I want to point out is different from the experiences of some others. Twonky Media Server is very fast for me, easily displays all results on the page, quickly switches between videos, photos and music, and also reflects changes in media files by simply updating them. In addition to what I've described previously, I haven't had any performance issues when viewing, searching, and playing content on three different devices at the same time. I haven't tested the cloud feature yet, but I plan to do so soon.============================== == == ================================ I bought a 2-bay Zyxel NAS for testing purposes and was really impressed . . . This inspired me to buy one (bigger) for the house, so I went with 4 bays. The initial setup was quite difficult on a corporate network, but everything was fine at home. I haven't set up or tested all of the features at home yet, but based on my experience, my expectations are high. I intend to update this review at some point to shed more light on it.