Thecus’ W2000 distinguishes itself from much of the usual dual-bay competition by using Windows Server 2012 – essentially a massively cut-down copy of Windows 8, instead of an in-house OS. In fact, the OS is so cut down that you have to install many services to even be able to create shared network folders.
As you’re using a Windows OS, though, many programs your average PC enthusiast needs from a NAS are easy to install, plus you can install your own backup or cloud services such as Dropbox too. It makes the W2000 hugely flexible, but there’s no getting away from the fact that, for the most part, delving any deeper, or carrying out relatively mundane tasks such as creating shared folders, can be a challenge that’s not for networking novices.
In order to access the W2000, you need to download and install Windows Server Essentials Connector, which adds your PC to the list of connected computers, enabling it to talk to the NAS. Incidentally, this process didn’t seem to work on Windows 10, even if it was run as Administrator and in Windows 7 compatibility mode. It’s all a little clunky compared with a Synology NAS, to which you can connect a computer in a matter of seconds, and from a variety of operating systems. Comparatively, it took us nearly an hour to set up the W2000 ready for testing.
Hardware-wise, it sports a dual core, Hyper-Threaded Intel Atom D2701, 2GB of DDR3 memory and includes a 2.5in SSD to act as the OS drive, rather than using integrated flash storage.
Meanwhile, its two drive bays support either 2.5in or 3.5in drives and have lockable doors. The front sports a USB 3 port and SD card reader, while at the rear, there’s a further two USB 2 ports, an eSATA port, two Ethernet ports that support link aggregation, as well as HDMI and VGA outputs. To control the W2000, you can also hook up a keyboard, mouse and monitor, or connect to it remotely via a browser.
Being Windows-based, there’s plenty of scope for creating a very flexible media centre too, and the Windows version of Plex installed without a hitch.
Even more impressive was the fact that the Atom CPU managed to transcode 1080p video on the fly to an iPhone using Plex, although the CPU was above 90 per cent load the whole time.
Transfer rates peaked at a little over 100MB/sec when reading large video files, with our usual large file test seeing average read and write speeds of 85MB/sec and 71MB/sec respectively. Meanwhile, our torturous small file test saw these rates drop to 22MB/sec and 19MB/sec, which are still good results for this test. Sadly, though, while the W2000 only consumed 23W when idle, it’s quite noisy compared with the latest Synology and QNAP NAS boxes.
The W2000’s use of Windows gives it huge potential, but it’s comparatively pricey, the complex setup procedure is a problem, especially when compared with Synology’s offerings, and it has a noisy cooling fan. Its diminutive size and power draw mean it’s still an attractive media server compared with a cheap PC, but if you must have a small Windows-based NAS, you could also consider an Intel NUC with Windows 10 or FreeNAS installed, which would be much easier to set up. ANTONY LEATHER
VERDICT
The use of Windows makes the W2000 very flexible, but setting it up is challenging and it isn’t as easy to use as many Linux-based competitors.