QNAP TS-228 A decent SSD that lacks drive

Network storage

As if there weren’t already enough acronyms in the computer business, this Taiwanese company named itself after the initials of its mission statement, ‘Quality Network Appliance Provider’. At least it’s distinctive, as is the TS-228, one of QNAP’S most affordable NAS (network-attached storage) devices. There’s another acronym for your collection.

A NAS connects one or more hard drives to your network to provide storage that’s accessible to all your PCS – although it can justify-stify its existence even if you only have one computer. The TS-228 has room for two standard 3.5in SATA drives, which you’ll need to provide yourself. You could buy a couple of 2TB hard drives for under £150.

The drives slide in and are held in place by clips (no screwdriver required), so the only fiddly part of the job is getting the case back on, which we found very fiddly indeed. Still, once that’s done, it’s done. Connect the drive to your router and it’s reasonably simple to set up. The software is the same as you’d get with one of QNAP’S pricier boxes, and has lots of options plus a range of extra programs for even more features.

First, you can configure your two drives as RAID 0, where data is split across the drives, or RAID 1, where the drives mirror each other, giving you half the space but no worries about losing data (short of the whole unit falling into a threshing machine). Then you can decide what to do with your NAS. To back up your computer, for example, QNAP provides its own Windows solution. Music, photo and video streaming from the box are all supported as standard, although you can also use third-party tools like Plex.

You can run a Qsync program on your PC to create a Dropbox-like folder that syncs automatically to the NAS, and from there to any other PC. QNAP also provides IOS and Android apps, so you can access files and photos. If you want to get fancy, you can use IFTTT ( https://ifttt. com) to automate jobs such as copying any new photo on a device to the NAS, or emailing you whenever a new file appears.

Our only complaint was that the TS-228’S basic processor limited the speed of data transfer to and from the box, so even if your hard drives are fast, they won’t feel so with large files.

Simple to set up and easy-to-use software make it a doddle to manage, but slow file transfer let it down