QNAP TS-119 Turbo NAS Review
Initial Setup
While traditional external hard drives that connect to a single machine via USB 2.0 are typically plug-and-play, the same can't be said of a NAS. As with other drives in its category, QNAP encourages you to run its QFinder application from the get-go in order to find and map the drive, initialize the HDD within, name the NAS and configure it for use on your network. The good news is that QNAP provides this setup software for both Macs and PCs, and we tested both applications to ensure that they both worked well. Indeed, we were satisfied with the simplistic setup on both the Mac and PC, and it should be noted that the drive isn't affected in any way depending on what platform you originally configure it on; in other words, the setup and configuration process is the same on both Macs and PCs.
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We should note that the only issue we had during setup was the following: in order to ensure a solid setup, we connected the TS-119 Turbo NAS directly to our MacBook Pro via Ethernet and disabled Wi-Fi. Thus, the machine was not connected to the Internet and was only connected to the NAS directly (and not through a router, for example). This configuration allowed our setup to progress without a hitch. When trying this again with Wi-Fi enabled, the machine refused to recognize the NAS drive which was connected via Ethernet. Moral of the story? Kill all of your other connections when setting this drive up initially, and try to get a direct Ethernet connection if you can.
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The QFinder software walks you through every step of the setup, and the included documentation booklets from QNAP are also extremely helpful. Even first-time NAS users should have no issue setting their device up. We had the unit up and running and visible on a network within 20 minutes of removing it from its packaging, though we should note that this is with pretty much every configurable option set to default. To QNAP's credit, tweaking the configuration post-setup was dead simple via the QFinder application or Web interface, so users should rest assured that making future changes will not be difficult.
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Have a look at the screengrabs above and below (posted in order) to get a better idea of what you'll face in the not-at-all-daunting Initial Setup phase. Any screengrab can be enlarged by simply clicking on it.
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