First of all, you have to remember that this is a low budget NAS. You can't buy it and expect it to do everything a multi-hundred dollar unit would do.
Out of the box I could not connect to the NAS. Since I bought it refurbished, the previous owner must have set a static IP address in the unit. This prevented it from getting an IP address from my router. After about a half hour of frustration I hit the reset button and it immediately hopped on my network and grabbed an IP. If you buy a new one out of the box you should be able to plug it into your network at home and have it pull an IP address from your DHCP server. If you bought it used, you may need to do a reset on it.
I bought this strictly to use as an offsite backup solution over FTP. Being a budget unit it is very limited on what control you have over the FTP settings. You can change the port number to 21 OR 1025 through 65500. When plopping it behind a TrendNet TEW-631BRP all I needed to do was setup a virtual server that forwarded a port that I chose to port 21 of the NAS. The TrendNet is smart enough to recognize the FTP packets and lets the unit run in PASV mode (it translates the IP address of the server but I won't get into the details here). When I was trying to run it behind a Linksys WRT-54G running Tomato firmware I had to put it in the DMZ of the router. The firmware just refused to translate the FTP packets properly.
The web interface is very basic and uses simple HTTP GET requests. If you are the developer type you should be able to easily use this to your advantage to remotely enable/disable features and change settings. This is nice as some companies like to use complex AJAX which makes life more difficult for the homebrew types.
As far as user accounts go you can only give a user write access or read-only access to individual directories. Also, passwords and usernames can only be 12 characters long which is kind of perplexing and disappointing. At least usernames and passwords are case-sensitive. It seems the unit runs a stripped down version of Linux.
Reading the reviews from some other people it seems as though the unit will freeze up after a period of time. I have not had mine in service very long so I don't know if this will happen or not. Power cycling it seems to resolve the issue. If this starts happening I will update my review, and then possibly reboot it on a weekly basis and see what happens.
During setup the quick format did not take long. I would be gentle when installing the hard drive as the circuit board that it plugs in to does not have much structural support.
I can't comment on the SMB, BitTorrent or media server features since I will never use them.
As far as noise goes it is non-existent. There are no fans. Everything is cooled by natural air flow and the metal case. I think I'd prefer a tighter fit between the hard drive chassis and the case to improve the cooling. The only noise comes from the hard drive you install.
Power consumption is always a factor when it comes to hardware that will be running 24/7. Especially, if it is running at someone elses house. The wall wart is rated for 3amps at 12VDC but that is not a good gauge of power use. I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure power consumption of the unit under a few different conditions.
While copying a 750MB file over 100 mbps Ethernet using the SMB server feature the power consumption was only 8 watts and occasionally bounced up to 9 watts. This INCLUDES the power draw from the hard drive I installed which is a 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Green Caviar. With the hard drive turned off (this can be set to occur after 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes of inactivity, or never) the power draw was ONLY 3 watts. This unit is way more power efficient than I would have expected. If you run a Torrent or media server 24/7 this could pay for itself in a short period of time. As someone else mentioned I unhooked the two wires that plug into the circuit board for the indicator LED's. This made very little difference in power draw (maybe a half watt?) but it makes it less annoying at night as the lights are kind of bright.
For the money, this unit can't be beat.
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