Features

The 200's feature set covers the basics and will be fine if your needs are simple. I've included captures of all screens in the slideshow and will just touch on the highlights here. Figure 4 shows the login landing page you get when you hit the 200's URL, which gives you options of entering the Admin pages or read-only access to your files. Note that secure HTTPS access isn't available.

Figure 4: Login page

Figure 5 shows the Status page and general layout of the admin interface. The interface has a fixed-height scrolled frame design that isn't the most convenient to use, but that gets the job done.

Figure 5: Status page

The 200 provides User accounts, but no groups, with folder-level access control. USB disks are mounted with all folders read/write and a share name that is assigned for you. As is typical for consumer NASes, external drives must be formatted FAT or FAT32 for read/write access. Using an NTFS formatted drive gets you read-only access.

The only network file system supported is SMB/CIFS; sorry, no AFP or NFS. The 200 won't join an AD or NT domain to get user account information, either.

As far as services, you get HTTP for file browsing, which can't be disabled, but you can change the port number. FTP access to User accounts is enabled by default, and you can enable anonymous FTP. There's a UPnP AV Media server, with controls for specifying which folders to scan and how often. But there's no iTunes server, as is starting to appear more often on other NASes and no USB print server. However, in a nod to easier remote access, Linksys has included a client for TZO's Dynamic DNS service, which comes with a one-year trial account and discounts for Linksys users who sign up after the trial expires.

The 200 lets you configure the drives as two separate disks (which earns a "Recommended" notation for some reason) or as a JBOD, RAID 0 or RAID 1 array. Disk Utilities include formatting, scandisk, and S.M.A.R.T. tests. Note that if you choose to go with RAID 1, it takes about 8 hours to fully sync / rebuild an array. The shares are available during syncing, but at reduced performance.

For those who like to minimize power usage on your NAS, buried down deep in the System Options frame, you'll find the Scheduled Shutdown (but not startup) control. And if you go scroll to the bottom of the Disk Utility frame, you'll find the Standby controls that provide a choice of putting the drives in standby after 10 or 30 minutes of inactivity. You can also shut the fan off 10, 20 or 40 minutes after the drives go into standby, or just let the little bugger keep running.

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Tags: BYOD, Linksys, NAS, RAID,

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