Buy ZyXEL NSA221 2-bay Network Attached Storage and Media ServerZyXEL NSA221 2-bay Network Attached Storage and Media Server Product Description:
- 2-Bay media server with capacity of up to 4TB
- DLNA 1.5-certified media server compatible with a wide range of media devices
- zPilot for media auto-classification with easy drag-and-drop
- Runs eMule/BitTorrent/FTP/HTTP downloads independent of PC
- All-in-one backup solution to protect valuable user data
- DLNA 15-certified media server compatible with a wide range of media devices
Product Description
The ZyXEL NSA221, DLNA 1.5-certified 2-Bay Media Server, supports multiple server technologies for multimedia sharing. Acting as an iTunes server, SqueezeCenter, personal blog and photo album server for PCs, laptops and SqueezeBoxes, the NSA221 can make it easy to stream and share music and photos.Through an enhanced online "Package" management, advanced users can easily choose their preferred applications online. The selected application software will be automatically downloaded from the ZyXEL website and install. It can save your storage capacity for applications you require and offer you the real-time application software support per your needs. With the user-friendly installation wizard, it's easy and simple to manage and backup media files. Through an intuitive user interface integrated with the media player, you can play music and photo slide shows directly from NSA221. The NSA221 also allows you to create a music playlist and play it on the background for photo slide shows. A newly designed alphabetical search bar provides you a more convenient way to search files within thousands of songs, photos and videos stored in the NSA221. The zPilot file auto-classification function of NSA221 enables you to easily store and manage media files through simple drag-and-drop operations. With the zPilot software installed through the NAS Starter Utility, you can drag one or more files/folders to the zPilot icon on the desktop, and the files/folders will be identified and delivered automatically to music, photo, video or other designated folders on NSA221; users can also easily check the upload status of data transmission.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
63 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
Best in class!
By Howard
Bottom line is you are not going to find a better product in this category and none at this price point.This is my third NAS product and all are currently running on my home network. Ultimately the price is what led me to purchase it because I figured it was a small investment even if it were just for experimenting. My other two units are a Netgear Stora (first purchased), a Netgear ReadyNAS (for higher end server) and now this one (intended to replace the Stora because it is an immature piece of garbage).The NSA221 is in the same class as the Netgear Stora and I would say that's the product you should compare with. Right off the bat, the NSA221 clearly has a lower price point and coming diskless allows you to purchase the drives of your choice. In the US, Netgear does not sell the Stora diskless, so minimally you need to take one of their drives.Now, as far as functionality, the NSA221 blows the Stora away in every category.I love the administration GUI this thing has. It is not only powerful and fully functional, it is intuitive and looks wonderful. Nothing is cryptic, and everything is right there for you.UPnP works beautifully and the NSA221 shows up on our Samsung bluray player connected wirelessly on the other end of the house. We stream videos from the NSA221 without any problem and performance is excellent.The auto power on/off on the NSA221 is exceptional, allowing you to create extremely flexible rules for power up/down multiple times a day and on a complex daily/weekly schedule if you like. Contrast with the Stora's powertimer giving you only a fixed set of on/off actions per week. Additionally, should there be a blackout/power loss, there are settings to indicate what to do when the power comes back (stay powered off, or go back to being on if it was before powerloss occurred).As far as disk configuration, I use RAID mirroring. Though you could easily choose JBOD or having it as two separate accessible drives (which Stora cannot do). As far as the RAID - I haven't really tried to test it out - it says my mirror is healthy, so for now, that's all I need to know.I will mark down what's delivered for the Memeo backup software - complete garbage. I have no idea why they include it. Keep it out and shave another $5 off the price. The Memeo did a blue screen on my standard build XP machine, and so it immediately came off. But, besides that, it's a braindead backup program - indicating it's not intended for full system backups, just data files. And, it is slow - very slow. Similar to providing a diskless unit where you can pick your drives, ZyXEL should do the same on the backup software - leave it out and let people roll their own if they want. So, I'd take a star off for the crappy backup software, but, the product itself is so fabulous, I'd give it six stars - so we're still at 5 stars overall.I've purchased many ZyXEL products over the past 13 years and only once was not completely satisfied. This product has more than compensated for that last minor disappointment.Update:As of sometime recently, Netgear does now offer the Stora diskless in the US - Amazon carries it and you can look it up using the model number MS2000-100NAS or through this link:http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-MS2000-100NAS-Stora-Media-Storage/dp/B004FMI25OI still believe the NSA221 is far better. Mine is rock solid, has never had any issues. Netgear/Axentra continue releasing monthly firmware patches fixing problems and adding "services" which you don't get unless you subscribe to the $20 a year premium service. One of those features, utilizing the NAS as a bit torrent server is included with the NSA221, with the Stora you don't get bit torrent unless you continue paying.Update #2, Jan 1, 2012:My NSA still performs wonderfully, and has never had any issues whatsoever. During the year, for all of our fixed/streaming needs in our home, I've replaced the wireless bridges with Powerline network adapters. Connections are more reliable, throughput is significantly better. Recently, ZyXEL has distributed a firmware update (first I've had) and there was nothing particularly noticeable to me. However, I've read that this update now allows the unit to utilize 3TB drives.As for the Netgear Stora, Axentra has made great strides with it this past year. They've finally gotten the firmware to be robust, no longer have frequent updates and that unit is stable/functional now and delivers on their original feature list. I now feel confident in its ability to secure my data and provide the media services it promised. They have also eliminated the $20 annual subscription fee for premium functionality in favor of a one-time $10 fee which provides the premium features for life. The Stora still does not support 3TB drives at this time. Users have come along with hacks of their own to make it work, but out of the box, it still doesn't support 3TB.My personal preference is still for the NSA221.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.Works fine for me. Faster than what others are saying.
By Alan
I have owned the NSA221 for about one month now. I hesitated at first in purchasing because of the reviews that said the unit was slow. The first thing I did upon unpacking and setting up was to upgrade the firmware to the latest version 4.20. Initial setup was with a single WD20EARS 2TB drive. The user must remember that all components in the network must be gigabit compatible to get the speed over the network. That includes network cards, cabling and router. I am running an SMC Barricade SMCWGBR14-N draft 11N wireless router which incorporates a 4 port gigabit switch. The NSA221 is plugged into one of the four available ports along with the other home PC's. The home PC's all have add-on TRENDnet Gigabit PCI Adapter Cards (TEG-PCITXR) bought at Amazon for $12.50 apiece. They work fine. Remember to run your PC's ROM setup and turn off the internal Network device so there are no conflicts. The home network is fully wired with CAT5E cable.Two weeks after purchasing, I added a second 2TB WD20EARS drive to run in simultaneous RAID format. I went into the web based management program and clicked on the "migrate" button and setup was automatic. After a few hours, the device declared both drives "healthy" and working in RAID. I can't comment on the usefulness of the included media applications and the like because I don't use them.Speeds are compatible with what I've read on most of the reviews for most of the NAS devices - and I've read a lot of them. I've seen 20MB/s peaks when running Macrium's Reflect backup program. Mostly, it settles down to an average speed of 16 to 18 MB/sec. Furthermore, copying files from PC to NAS or NAS to PC gets me the same speeds with an average of about 16 to 18 MB/sec. As a comparison, file transfer from PC to PC is faster. I've seen peaks of 40 to 50 MB/sec with an overall average of about 30 MB/sec. That indicates some "overhead" with the use of the NSA221 and it should do better. Regardless, my speeds seem to be better than what previous reviewers have experienced.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Works as advertised, almost
By J. H. Smith
My only problem with this unit is that the media server does not recognize certain large video files (ie movies in HD). I bought this thing to back up my computers and to stream media to my PS3. It took almost no effort at all to get my pictures and mp3s to appear on my PS3 and my big screen. I have a few large movies (>4 GB) that I saved onto the NAS but would not show up on the PS3 menu or when I connected to the media server through my PC. These files appeared and played fine on the PS3 when connecting directly from PC to PS3, so it must be something internal to the ZyXEL media server.If you are looking for a network storage or a media server here are a few things you should know about this product: - I could never figure out a way for the server to recognize video clips bigger than a one-hour show in 720p. I could save the files to the network drive but would never appear on the media server. If this is what you want to do, you might need to look elsewhere. The server has no problems streaming your music, photos, and smaller movies to your DLNA compatible device or internet browser. - The case is a little on the flimsy side, but otherwise is good quality. - The inlcuded setup software is easy to use, and will do everything for you including mapping the drives in windows. - For the initial setup, you must disable your firewall. Windows Firewall automatically activated when I turned off Webroot, but once I disabled both firewalls, I was able to proceed with the setup. Subsequently, my firewall and the drives worked fine together. - I saw file transfer speeds of around 6MB/sec over my powerline network, but I am sure this thing is capable of being much faster.
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