8.3.2015

I bought this in Thailand, where I live, for a little cheaper than the Amazon price which surprised me as most electronic items are more expensive here.Anyway, the purpose of the NAS was to hold the existing media contained in 2 * 2TB drives, connected to an Minix TV box (fantastic BTW) so I could share the media with any other electronic things on my local network.So, I jumped straight in and installed both drives together and started up the initialisation process, at which point the NAS deleted all of my data as it thought I wanted a RAID configuration.So, now every single bit of content was gone. All of it. About 2.5GB's worth. Oops!As it turned out,I should have installed one drive at a time and the NAS would have realised that I wanted a JBOD configuration and would have left my data intact. So, let this be a warning for people as stupid as me.In my defense, the manual is a little bit coy about different configurations, so I blame the NAS as much as myself!So, after getting over the shock of what I had just done I tried to recover as much stuff as I could from backups. I quickly gave this up when I realised how long this would take me over WIFI, especially with smaller files. In my unscientific estimation, it would take about a million years to get it all back again and as I'm in my fifties, I couldn't afford the time and decided to view it as a strangely cathartic experience. After all, did I really want to watch "On The Buses" all over again? - apologies to Reg Varney if he's reading this!Anyway, so my NAS is now in a JBOD state, with 1 logical volume covering both disks and we're both happy with this.It sits on a shelf in my lounge, makes very little noise and occasionally winks at me. As it turns out, it's letting me know that the disk drives have gone to sleep, hardly surprising as they don't have much to do any more.I set up my network sharing folders with little difficulty, using the browser interface. I upgraded the firmware to the latest level and activated the secondary P2P utility. Other than that, there was very little to do, except admire its shiny blackness.I have found the NAS to work flawlessly. It can stream to multiple devices efficiently and it does it's network sharing business in an all round admirable manner.I am very pleased that I bought it, it fits in beautifully with what I like to think as my almost OAP, high tech persona. I would say that navigating your way around the system is not particularly intuitive, but there's a lot there and it's hardly the same as a dumb disk drive. Anyway, a few hours tinkering and you'll be an expert like me, but hopefully an expert who still has their data!The one thing I cannot manage to get working is email notifications of events sent to my gmail account, but I think I can live without them. Still, it would have been nice to get an email letting me know that the latest version of East Enders had finished downloading when I'm whooping it up with a bunch of overly friendly Thai bar girls, but you can't have everything can you?So, in conclusion I would say, get one you (probably) won't regret it.Edit:- 1 week laterOn reflection, I decided a JBOD configuration was pointless and reverted back to RAID1. I was surprised that the sync operation took so long - about 14 hours for 2 * 2TB drives. I am also considering whether to buy a 300MbPS router/modem & CAT6 ethernet cable to support higher WIFI data transfer rates, especially simultaneous streaming to multiple devices.

19.7.2016

This is the first NAS I bought after lots of consideration. The spec is good and the unit got lots of good reviews from a lot of places, it is one of the cheapest 2-disk NAS units on the market. I intended to use it for a small home network to serve up mostly media to chromecasts and TV's via DLNA as well as provide network backup and storage. I am primarily using with a Macbook Pro.Setup:The interface and setup is quite easy to use, drives have hot swap trays accessible from the front. Funnily though it came with a Euro (Schuko) plug instead of the standard UK plug. It was quite simple to pair it up with zcloud for remote access although I still had to configure port forwarding on my router.I was able to create network shares, on AFP and SMB as I am using a Mac.Pros:It's cheap! One of the cheapest 2-bay NAS drives on the market with a half decent processor and RAM.The web interface is actually pretty good for a small company like Zyxel, I've previously used QNAP's OS which is a lot better and more sophisticated however you pay for it.Access speed is good, I was able to get about 600-700mbps read speed over gigabit ethernet, and it had no problem streaming 4K video to my TV. Apple Time Machine also worked fine. The provided apps like zDrive etc are actually pretty good and work pretty smoothly, using their app to cast a video to my TV via Chromecast is a bit hit and miss, however I think this is a fault of the Chromecast as almost all the other video apps I use are like this.The built in Twonky DLNA server works great and my TV is able to see shared media.Cons:One of the first things I noticed was the buzz from the hard drives. Although the trays have rubberised mounts I think the trays themselves are not isolated from the chassis, I had mine inside a cupboard and you can hear a faint hum from the hard drives all the time. I mounted it on several blocks of wood with layers of rubber sandwiched between but I still couldn't get rid of the hum.With the interface, most of the important options are there, however I found it slightly lacking in how fine grained the control is. For example setting up notification emails is a bit vague, it does not tell you nor does it let you configure when it will send you a notification, i.e. disk failure, updates etc. Also occasionally it wouldn't recognise my login randomly, it would after refreshing the page a few times though.For OS X users, the NAS does not work with Spotlight indexing, so searching and tags do not work. This was a bit of a dealbreaker for me.Conclusion:I ended up returning it and buying the more expensive Synology DS216j which does support Spotlight indexing. The difference between the Zyxel and this is like chalk and cheese. Not only is it a lot quieter with much less hum noise (the design of the box isolates the drives acoustically), the OS is much simpler, however it gives you more control. Still considering the price, the DS216j is 1.5X the price, so to be fair the Zyxel is actually very good value for money.If you are only after reasonably basic features and the hum noise doesn't bother you that much then the Zyxel is a good buy. The network speed is actually quite good and is perfectly fine for streaming media. The web interface and apps are actually quite good given they are not a big or well known company like Synology or Qnap. However if you are after more fine control and a more seamless interface I'd look elsewhere.

17.4.2014

This ZyXEL NSA325 v2 2 Bay Power Plus Media Server is a cheap entry level diskless NAS enclosure that uses a fairly decent 1.6ghz processor and 512MB memory. These hardware specifications are quite sufficient for a 2 bay home NAS and equally as powerful as some more expensive options. The NAS can accommodate both 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch hard drives which are secured to the plastic trays using screws. This is the first NAS I've used that uses screws, but it's not too much of an issue and keeps the cost of the NAS down. The enclosure is also almost entirely made of plastic (apart from the metal back), so it does feel quite cheap.Setting up the NAS is very straightforward and I was up and running within minutes,with two 2TB WD Red HDD's fitted. There are some very brief setup instructions which are clear and easy to follow. This NAS is slightly noisier than my other NAS enclosures from QNAP, Synology, WD and Netgear. There's an audible hum, which could be annoying for some.With the NAS powered on, You can either install the included NAS Starter Utility software to find, set up and manage the NAS or you can bypass the software and connect directly to the NAS via your web browser. This NAS doesn't have a screen, so it's not quite as easy to find it's assigned IP address. You can locate the NAS IP address via your router, but I personally use the "fing" android app, because it gives me a comprehensive list of everything connected on my network, with each device easily identified using device information, IP address and Mac address. Once you've located the IP, simply enter it into your browser address bar and login with the user: admin / password: 1234, when prompted.The dashboard user interface is very basic and dated. It's not as refined or as nicely designed as the interfaces found on WD, Netgear, Synology or QNAP, but for a budget NAS, it's functional and easy enough to use.Under the Storage/volume settings, you can easily configure the disks to use either JBOD, RAID 0 or RAID 1. I personally use RAID 1 (with two disks installed), so the data is mirrored and protected against a single disk failure. Write and read speeds are fairly decent in this setup.There's various applications built in to this NAS, such as FTP, Twonky media server, iTunes media server and download services, Web publishing, Broadcatching, Print server, Flickr, Youtube and FTP uploader, Dropbox and Time Machine. I've only used Twonky so far to create music and movie shares for my Sonos and Smart TV's. Twonky works fine and everything plays smoothly across my network.Power Management features are quite decent on this NAS. Here, you'll find Wake-on-LAN, power scheduling and hard disk hibernation functions. Power scheduling is usually only found on more expensive NAS enclosures, so this is great to have.Zyxel offer an Android smartphone app called zCloud on Google Play. The app is just a very basic way to access your shares, but it functions fine and well designed.Overall, I'm pleased with this ZyXEL NSA325 v2. It's not the most refined and quietest NAS I've used, but for the price, it's a very good budget solution that I can easily recommend.

6.8.2019

We have been running with a family DLink DNS-320L NAS for a number of years. Alas, it has got slower and slower over the years to the point it became unusable - particularly UPnP access of media files. This was largely due to a lack of on-board memory and processing power. Also, the DLink remote access apps are totally useless to the point of being completely unusable.Our needs are quite simple - we just want home network (and remote) access to media files and a repository for all of our documents etc. This 2-drive Zyxel NAS326 seemed to fit the bill - and indeed it has proved to be an excellent choice for us. I cannot claim any knowledge of its more sophisticated capabilities but for us,it is working well.The longest part of the installation was taking a copy of the files on the DLink NAS disks (some 120+ GB). The old NAS was so slow this took 18 hours! I then put 2x Toshiba ‘Red’ 2TB disks into the Zyxel NAS, connected it with a LAN cable to our router and powered on. The Zyxel ‘quick start’ method of connecting to the NAS with a browser did not work (as other people have noted). Instead, I went to the DHCP Table in the router to get the NAS IP address (and set it to always be the same). Then I easily connected using Chrome. I set up the 2 disks as Raid-1 and it chuntered away for about 15 minutes and told me all was well. Using the useful USB copy option, I was then able to copy the data from the old NAS. This was amazingly quick - about an hour. I then enabled UPnP and iTunes services and created accounts for all the family. Finally, I mapped a network drive on my (and other family members PCs). All works fine and file copies and media access are 4-10x quicker than the DLink NAS! I also like that the SMART status of individual HDDs is readily available and any emerging error situations can be monitored. Emailing me the system logs works fine too.The Backup facility to a USB drive is both quick and remarkably simple - as is setting up a schedule. I set up a Zyxel zCloud account and the Zyxel 'Drive' and 'zCloud' apps on Android devices work remarkably well at and away from home. Brilliant!Obviously, this is not a £500 NAS and will have certain limitations. However, for our simple use it is ideal. I quite like the user interface though it did take a few days to master it completely. It is so much better than that on the old DLink NAS.I have however, only given a 4-star rating as it was supplied with a 2-pin European mains lead. Alas, this is illegal in the UK. I have advised Amazon who tell me they have removed these devices from this particular supplier from sale until this is rectified. For me, I was given a small partial refund (excellent!) and I used a UK legal adapter plug I had anyway - see the photos (Note. A 'shaver' type adapter is NOT legal for these devices).

29.3.2014

The NSA325 V2 is a type of network storage device that also acts as a media server for network connected devices. Put simply, any device that is connected to your home network is able to access compatible files stored on the NSA, and from it also receive streaming media. So, for instance, a network connected TV (such as a smart TV or one using a dongle), will be able to display photos and video stored on the device, so long as it has a capable media player.You should note that, as is usual, the NSA325 V2 comes without hard drives installed, it is up to the user to supply suitable drives with the amount of storage space the individual requires.

3.5.2016

Having run a WD My Book Live for over 2 years as my backup and as a Media server it failed, I was able to recover all data but with them being only 1 drive I decided it was time to buy a dedicated NAS server. Having read the reviews of other products and seeing the higher price tag I decided to by this NAS326 model as it did what I needed and was a lot less in price.Now although this NAS is cheaper I foudn the setup very easy, very simple interface not too many options and so was up and running within 5 minutes, you can hot swap the drives too so you don't need to power it off to remove or add a drive. Setting up the RAID was simple so now I have 2 4TB drives running (WD Purple 4TB)

22.2.2014

An attractive 2-bay NAS enclosure that is a recent upgrade on the older 320 model, the major changes being a 25% faster processor and new firmware that provides improved and extended functionality. The unit accepts most SATA drives, either 2.5 or 3.5-inch. RAID 0 and 1 are standard modes and you also have a JBOD option. Assembly takes a few minutes, is relatively simple and needs a Philips screwdriver for the provided screws to secure the drives in the caddies.Build quality is as good as you will find at the price level; it has minimal printed documentation and its manual is provided on disk only. As well as wide range of ZyXel-branded utilities that are installed from the disk offering several usability options,

27.4.2018

I bought the 4-bay version (which is actually a slightly higher spec NAS542 rather than the stated NAS540) to use with a Zappiti Mini media player. I installed four 10TB WD Red label hard drives, purchased from Amazon, and configured one 16TB RAID-5 volume and one 14TB RAID-5 volume. (These sizes are in Terabytes rather than Tebibytes, by the way.) The maximum volume size is limited to 16TB but that isn't an issue for me. Configuration using the web interface is possible from a mobile but much easier from a desktop. I also enabled SSH logins as I want to write my own scripts for monitoring purposes. Populating the volumes is quite slow - I'm getting a write speed of 2.8GB per minute or 1TB every 6 hours from a directly connected USB 3 hard drive.

2.4.2015

A great product, if a little difficult to use. Set up is fairly straight forward using the web-based setup wizard. I only have one drive (Seagate 1TB) installed at present in JBOD. Will add another in RAID1 incase anything goes wrong with the Seagate.It is a little noisy when running, due to the fan but not overwhelming and you easily forget about it.Following the manual is tedious but a call to Zyxel's HQ in the UK helped me out greatly.One thing to note, make sure you've got a MAC/PC to hand when loading files onto the drive as mapping the drive on your computer then copying across to the NSA is much easier and less stress than using the built-in zPilot app which quite frankly is yet to work with my Windows 8.1 laptop...Don't let other reviews put you off,

2.2.2015

I purchased this as it had good reviews and its transfer speeds punched well above its weight.For starters I partnered it with one WD 4TB HDD. These HDDs have a very good long term reliability record and are whisper quiet. The two combined provide a very fast and super quiet service. I plan to drop a second WD drive in at a later date.As for the software, the GUI is clear and concise, it is possible to install Google Drive as well as Squeezebox Server and Fonz Fun Plug but you will have to do a bit of reading and hunting to find the location they are hiding in as they don't appear in the default download location.

6.12.2014

Great budget NAS drive, I previously had the 310 model and never had a problem with it. I set the 325 up for raid 1 with 2 x 4TB drives which once formatted gave me around 3.75TB of storage. (Second drive mirrors the first drive). You would get around 7TB of storage if it was formatted as a single drive.The only problem I had was finding the default username and password to log into the drive as an admin user. Google sorted this out though for me.There are some great add on apps/packages that are easy to install like transmission torrent client, drop box, my cloud, print server etc.I would highly recommend this drive to anyone that wants a reliable media server drive,

8.2.2016

I was after a NAS/Home media station and this fit the bill. It does what I need it to though the setup of media is a bit complicated. The permissions are a lengthy process but eventually I got there. The low levels of documentation is the only reason I did not give it 5 stars.Once setup however, it delivers. I am using a 3TB disk in the unit and performance for the house is perfectly fine. It is nice and compact and the power saving features are very good. My favourite feature is the ability to power off the unit and turn it back on to a schedule. My unit has just done a firmware update after which the management/setup interface no longer works using Firefox. It does work using IE and Edge (both Microsoft Browsers).

10.6.2014

I cant comment on all the feature set this box offers as I only wanted a basic NAS box for streaming music to my Cambridge Audio Stream Magic, which it does flawlessly. Unit is discovered by all my network devices and has performed perfectly so far without any drop or stutters. Had a quick dabble with video and pictures which were also fine.There is a little noise and vibration which is hardly surprising considering the cost and the fact I have two 7200 rpm drives installed as Raid 1, rather than the popular NAS specific drives. Unit was up and running very quickly and easily, it self installed new firmware from the net, with music loaded via drag and drop through Windows Explorer.As a simple and cheap NAS box,

31.5.2016

Had this for nearly a month now & quite impressed with it - for the priceIt's installed with 2 x 2TB WD Red drives and transfer speeds are in excess of 70MB/sec which is pretty good for a device of this cost/spec and close to my Synology DS214Play that cost three times the Zyxel.The media server - Twonky - works well but don't expect any transcoding of incompatible media. Unlike some other similar devices you can create your own structure for your media & turn off the default ones. This is not possible with my Synology.FTP works OK and so far that & the media server is all I'm using.The only downside is that it's a little noisy but it is only a cheap device.I would definitely recommend this

1.7.2014

Massive featureset, and a simple interface. I love this device.4 stars purely because sustained data transfer rates are lower than advertised. This wont affect 95% of users but if you are streaming HD video to two TV's simultaneously and start a large file copy then you will start having issues with performance.I cant remember the quoted sustained data rates but id be suprised if anyone gets more than 10MB/s sustained write and 15MB/s Read.Anyway, this is a top device, just thought id post about the data rates as they may disappoint some real heavy data users who move about lots of data.

Zyxel NAS326 2-Bay - Reviews

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