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The rear panel of the TS-409 is quite simple. There’s a gigabit Ethernet port, security slot, power connector that connects to the 12VDC 8 Amp "brick" and the remaining 2 USB 2.0 ports. The USB ports can be used for external storage, for print servers or for connection to a compatible UPS. The TS-409 supports up to three printers.

UPS support includes APC USB auto detect, APC with SMNP management, or MGE Ellipse premium UPS support. The Smart Fan is temperature controlled and runs at low speed below 40C and at high speed above 48C. You can also manually configure the low and high-speed temperatures in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

On The Inside

The TS-409 is powered by a 500 MHz Marvell 5281 processor and has 256 MB of DDR2 RAM and 8 MB of Flash. This is the same processor used in the Synology CS407, but the QNAP has double the memory and double the flash of the Synology device. The TS-409 also has a Marvell 88e1118 Gigabit Ethernet controller, a Marvell 88SX7042 PCIe to Serial ATA Controller, and a Genesys Logic GL852 USB2.0 Hub controller.

Figure 3: TS-409 Pro board

The TS-409 runs a Linux 2.6.21 kernel with a bash 3.2.0 shell.

See the slideshow for more inside details

Setup

Setting up the TS-409 is quite simple. After securing the drives to the drive tray and inserting them into the drive bay, all you have to do is plug in the Ethernet and power cables and turn it on. After about a minute and 45 seconds, I heard a beep, and the LED status indicator showed that the unit was up. 

The CD contains a detailed 196-page user manual and several applications. The (Windows-based) QNAP find program identifies the TS-409 on your network and takes you to the configuration page. By default, the TS-409 operates on port 8080. A simple 5-step wizard guides you through basic network settings, naming the NAS, changing the default administrator’s password, and setting time zone/NTP server settings.

Figure 4: Home page of the TS-409

The home page of the TS-409 provides access to the administration home page for the server and access to the Multimedia Station, the Web Server, and the Web File manager. I’ll comment briefly on each one:

Web File Manager—this provides you with access to all of the files that your login credentials would normally provide, but using this interface, you can access them through a web browser. 

Figure 5: Web File Manager Interface

As you hover above each of the icons at the top of the screen, the corresponding functions pop up. You can navigate through directories, copy, move, delete, and create folders. If you click on a file, say, one of the .jpgs as shown above, the picture will open in your browser. You can upload files to the server using the browse/upload feature, but to download, you need to right-click on a file and "save as."