The Thecus N4100PRO

The Thecus N4100PRO is very pleasing on the eyes. The system does have a door on the front, but it is nonlocking. This shouldn't be an issue since each drive sled has a lock. The silver reflective finish covers up the blue display on the bottom and a bank of LEDs along the left side.

With the door open we can see the locking drive sleds. Also you will notice the power button on the front as well as controls for the LCD display. You can do quite a bit with four buttons, as I found out. After logging in I was able to change my N4100PRO's IP address and other basic settings.

The top and sides are brushed aluminum. The cover comes off effortlessly so you can clean the system if needed.

On the back we see the three screws that when removed will allow you to take the cover off. Also, there's the large fan that cools the system and a WAN and LAN port for connecting the N4100PRO to your network or PC. The appliance has three USB 2.0 ports; two on the back that you see here and one of the front. It is possible to plug in a wireless dongle or printer that uses USB, turning the N4100PRO into a print server.

With the cover and front removed, the internal electronics are exposed on the front.

On the side we see what is a purpose built motherboard with the AMD processor under a passive heatsink. The memory module is upgradable if you see fit. Increasing the memory size should give higher performance in RAID 5 and 6 modes. The operating system is kept on the 128MB flash card that is connected to the system via an ATA connector.

Here we see a close up of the drive sled.

Drives screw into the bottom of the sled. After you have everything ready just slide the drives into the appliance and fire her up.