LG N2A2 NAS Review

The LG NAS N2A2 was a delightful product to review, it offered many additional services outside of being simply a network attached storage device. The 2TB drive as stated in my unboxing video (Here) comes with two CDs, one Multi-Installer and one Multimedia user guide. Both CDs cover all the bases about the product, what it offers and LG even goes as far as illustrating different configuration setups based upon your network and how the NAS will be utilized. In my particular setup I had the NAS set up in RAID 1 (1 TB drive is in use while the second one mirrors the first for redundancy) attached directly to my router via CAT 6 along side my PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and MacBook Pro. All equipment were connected in a full 100BASE-TX Ethernet environment and the content could be mapped to drives or shortcuts on the PC/MAC.

The advantages of the services the NAS provided worked fluently over both LAN and WLAN and accessed just the same via AFP or FTP. I’ll breakdown each service and features that are available and while I feel as though this review isn’t truly complete without a test on network and I/O performance on the NAS. Expect a second post with that information when I can relay it. Unfortunately my router tanked on a firmware update so I had to pull out a spare which didn’t support Gigabit Ethernet, thus why the environment was running in 100BASE-TX as oppose 1000BASE. The LG NAS N2A2 supposedly sports Read/Write speeds of 60MB/s and 40MB/s respectively to the two 3.5″ 7200RPM Hitachi SATA drives inside but rest assured when my equipment arrives I shall put it to the test to see just how well it’s doing against it’s claims.

After installation is completed by following the steps in the wizard included on the Multi-Installer CD you get 4 icons placed on your desktop. Now while Mac users CAN access the content on the NAS, the software can only be installed on a Windows PC. The four icons are the same as their CD counterparts and operate exactly in the same manner, if your network has changed thus affecting the way your NAS and computer are connected to one another you can re-run the “LG NAS Installation Wizard”. If your NAS isn’t setup for a static IP address (which I suggest you do) and uses DHCP you can use the “NAS Detector” program. “NAS Detector” opens up a search request for all NAS devices on your network. The detector program is actually quite useful, again if your using DHCP this tool allows you manually make changes to the network information (IP Address, Subnet Mask, DNS, Default Gateway, etc.) associated with the NAS, as well as provide you with the option of accessing the NAS web menu and viewing the NAS in windows explorer. The two remaining icons of the four react just like the last two options described in the “NAS Detector” program, one icon is a shortcut to the Web Menu and the other again opens the NAS up in a windows explorer window. By far after the initial setup you’ll be spending most of your time in the Web Menu so let’s take a closer look at it.

The web menu can be accessed in a trio of ways, by either the shortcut on your desktop where the software was installed, by IP address when typed into any internet browser or by using LG’s DDNS feature. The DDNS feature we’ll talk about later but both it and typing the IP address in a browser means that you can be virtually on any computer in the network and access the NAS and in the case of DDNS anywhere, even outside of your network and still manage to make changes to your NAS (services, network info, content, etc.). Here’s a quick list as to what the web menu offers and a brief explanation as to what can be performed.

Network: Allows you to configure the System name, network information, assign it to a workgroup and setup DDNS. If you have an environment setup with workgroups where the NAS is deployed you can include it to the workgroup. Workgroups are only of interest to PC users and the benefits of joining a workgroup or utilizing one is that it you can share files and documents with other users on your computer and with other users on the network using the built in Windows Simple File Sharing (SFS). SFS allow you to administer more control over content at the folder level, easier, by giving you access to both share and NTFS file system permissions. Content can be easier seen by those less adverse in technology with the use of a workgroup and SFS (which is turned on by default in windows). DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name System) on the other hand translates your IP address into an easy to remember domain name which in turn allows it to be accessed remotely, even off the network entirely. It works similarly to services such as DynDNS, where you create a domain name (yourdomainname.lgnas.com) and a password and you apply the service. Once your domain is registered with LG if your NAS or router is rebooted and obtains a different IP address, your NAS will automatically update so that DDNS still works.

Time: Not much to explain here, you can manually update the date and time and if you prefer synchronizing with a NTP server, the option exists to do so.

Hard Drive: Allows you to see the status of your hard drives and enable RAID (0 or 1) or setup the drives as individual disks.

Selective Mirror: With this you can selectively have specific folders or content mirrored somewhere else on the NAS.

Power: Set your NAS to automatically go into standby mode (30/60/120 minutes), manually restart/shutdown the device and even configure how it would operate if you had a USB connection to a UPS.

Language: Set the default web display language.

Firmware: Install/revert firmware updates to your NAS.

Mail Notification: Setup for mail notifications of status reports and hard drive status updates.

Status: Shows the status of who’s connected to the NAS, Volume capacity and free space, Networking information and USB connected devices.

Log: Reports are stored and viewed here.

User: Create users and grant specific access to folders and even setup groups to bunch permissions to multiple people if desired.

Folder: Create new folders in which to place content in, enable how the content is made available (FTP, AFP, etc.) or hidden and what groups and users can access it.

USB Backup: Plugged in USB external devices/drives can be setup and then backed up in two ways automatically (Incremental/Full) or on demand with the back up button on the front plate of the NAS enclosure.

Time Machine: Set volumes or folders you created on the NAS for scheduled backups.

File Server: Turn on FTP services and AFP for Mac file sharing.

Torrent: Allows you to download or upload torrents directly to and from the NAS

Network Printer: A printer which has been connected to the NAS via USB can be printed to just like a networked printer.

DLNA: Turns on the DLNA service so that DLNA compatible devices such as some TV’s can access the content you wish to be made available.

iTunes: Activate the iTunes server, set whether the shared library is manually updated or automatically updated at timed intervals specified and select which content is available to share.

LG certainly packed a lot into the device and I appreciate all that it has to offer, while many people may raise some eyebrows at the fact it offers the ability to Torrent to/from the NAS directly, I take it as a major credit to consumer choice. Of course there are those that will use the Torrent service for ill-advised usage but like with everything there’s a good and a bad, but let’s focus on the good. I for instance have a fair amount of pictures with various friends and family members. With the Torrent service I can now share this large database easily with another and vice versa, all without downloading extra software and installing it. Torrenting with the NAS application, which when selected just opens up a new window where you can open, pause, resume Torrent files, limit the total download/upload rates (KB/s) used as well as setup scheduled times and days in which it could operate, is simple and easy to use.

By far though I would say that my favorite services are the iTunes server and DLNA service. The iTunes service is great, even though I’m not a huge iTunes supporter I have the software and there are Apple devices within my household which use the program, so simply having the ability to offload music to the NAS and have it available in the shared section in iTunes was wonderful. Playback of songs even with multiple clients listening at once to the same or different songs went flawless, no apparent skipping or reduction in quality was noticed. On the NAS itself there’s a folder labeled “services” and inside of it there’s an iTunes folder, by default any music you’d want to share would have to be placed here. Of course you can alter that and change the location to any you want, which is what I did while testing it. I uploaded my entire music library onto the NAS and rather then share every album and song I simply kept my library the way it was, created a folder inside my library called “Shared” and moved any songs/albums I specifically wanted to stream/share inside.

DLNA works just the same and the control over what get’s shared as well, but the problem I encountered was that you can only select one location in which DLNA content can be accessed from and this can range from music, pictures to even movies. I didn’t appreciate having all my content split up over the NAS and in different folders. It would have been more efficient to have the ability to list or associate specific folders that you would like to be available to DLNA devices, rather then the one folder option they allow. Content showed up on the PS3/360 as typical media servers do for both systems and even when viewing content simultaneously (Music, Videos) both performed excellent.

Backing up with either the Web client or the backup button on the device itself doesn’t show you a progress bar so I was left in the dark with how long the backup process would take, while if you used the Nero Back It Up software contrary to the previous two methods you actually see approximately how long the task will take. FTP and the network printer features work as they should, I actually disabled FTP as I found no real use for it. With the multitude of ways to access the NAS and upload/download content to it FTP just wasn’t needed. But I appreciate the addition of the service and it’s always better to have then to not. Network printing has it’s advantages and worked quite well in concert with my Canon printer. Simply plugging the printer into the router and enabling the service was all that needed to be done and if you own a printer in which you have to be physically connected to in order to print, this solution is most definitely one you would appreciate.

The File Viewer which is accessible from it’s icon located on Web menu page, opens up a web based file manager client called AjaXplorer. The FTP like interface in which you can again upload/download content, move/create/edit directories/folders and otherwise modify your NAS folder structure and content works just fine I just seen one annoying issue, one that many web based file managers are plagued with, you cannot upload folders, only individual files. So let’s say I wanted to upload my recently purchased Lupe Fiasco album, Lazers. Instead of selecting the folder or alternately holding shift and selecting all the songs within the folder in which they reside, I would have to upload them one, by one, by one, etc. Is the inconvenience not glaring? But when it’s all said and done that minor inconvenience wouldn’t stop me from recommending this product for use. The practical use of sharing content to your PS3/360 or other DLNA compliant device(s) (TVs, phones), the network printing ability, iTunes server and the loads of other options including DDNS with free domain registration end up making this NAS less of commodity and more of a necessity.