What’s inside the N5550

Normally when you see a NAS you don’t think of it as a small PC. After checking out the exterior of the N5550 we are going to dig in a little and see what makes it all tick.

The exterior of the N5550 is fairly basic. The front of the device features four control buttons, an LCD screen, and a small window that gives a peak at status lights up the front of the device. The front also opens up to give you access to all five hard drive trays.

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With the door open you can see that the door has mesh on it to allow for a little airflow through it to keep everything cool. You now have full view of the five drive trays; the door has mesh on it to allow for a little airflow through it to keep everything cool. You can also see that they actually have locks, this is great if you are only running a few drives and you plan on adding more in the future, this way you can lock down the loaded bays to prevent you from pulling one out accidentally. Behind the door we also have the power and reset buttons, this keeps them from being bumped day to day. There is also a USB 3.0 port right on the front of the N5550. This was especially impressive to me, all of the other NAS that we have in the office only have USB 2.0 ports. If you need to pull files off or put files on, or even temporarily expand capacity, you will have the high transfer speeds of USB 3.0.

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With two of the hard drive trays pulled out, here is a peek inside, you can see the hot swap PCB.

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Both sides of the N5550 have a corner perforated for additional airflow into the device. Beyond that there isn’t anything going on the top or side panels.  

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On the back you have more ventilation holes as well as two fans. One is a large 120mm fan that is located behind the hard drives. This fan will help keep your drives cool during their 24 hour operation. The second smaller fan is part of the power supply and located next to the power plug and on off switch. The back of the N5550 has a surprising amount of connections for a NAS. You have everything from microphone and headphone ports as well as an audio input. You have four USB 2.0 ports and an e-SATA port for additional storage connections, the USB 3.0 on the front would still be the fastest. You also have both HDMI and VGA ports for hooking up to a projector or television, something you wouldn’t normally see on a NAS as well. Last but certainly most important you have two Ethernet connections down at the bottom. The back of the N5550 looks more like a full PC than a NAS, but its feature set is more than a normal NAS as well.

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After taking the outside shell of the N5550 off, I was greeted by a motherboard that takes up the entire height of the device. This is obviously designed specifically for the N5550, this isn’t a Mini ITX  board or anything off the shelf. The LED indicator lights on the front of the N5550 are directly on the motherboard for example, this wouldn’t work in just any case. Beyond that you do get a peak as the Atom processor that powers everything as well as the small ssd that the OS runs on. It’s also nice to see that the RAM is actually replaceable if you decide to upgrade in the future as well.

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One thing I noticed when taking the cover off was the on one of the sides they have actually covered up the ventilation holes in the case with a clear film. I’m assuming that they did this for a reason, but it’s still not something you see every day.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28490 23 Nov 2012 18:04
For those of you who aren't stuck in lines shopping, this is something that should keep you busy for a while. Enjoy!
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28491 23 Nov 2012 20:57
o
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28492 23 Nov 2012 21:09
It does support 4tb drives and there are people running minecraft servers on them as mentioned in the review :)

It also supports backing up to the cloud via Amazone S3 (and other options when using after market modules)

The price is actually less than other 5 bay devices.
www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?...sNodeId=1&name=5-Bay

I also found it available for $360

www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home...&Q=&is=REG&A=details
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28493 23 Nov 2012 22:37
Didn't see the Minecraft item. I wasn't saying let the server back it up to the cloud just that you should have a 3 backup system. One local, offsite and in the cloud.
L0rdG1gabyt3's Avatar
L0rdG1gabyt3 replied the topic: #28494 23 Nov 2012 22:38
On the Pros/Cons, you list the Atom processor and 2GB of ram as Pro's.

How is an Atom processor a pro in any evaluation?
Wingless92's Avatar
Wingless92 replied the topic: #28495 23 Nov 2012 22:47
Not sure, I know when I had my laptop the Atom CPU was a pile of garbage. Then again it was cheap as hell, lol. Kinda get what you pay from. It was a couple of years ago and CPU's have improved but still. I wouldn't say its a pro.

Cool that you can upgrade the memory. It just seems that it's trying to be a full windows server box and a NAS at the same time. I would much rather have it be just a NAS and be done with it.

As for other NAS boxes, people love Drobo's cause they are built like a tank and they have been proven over the years to be great at data redundancy. I would like to know what would happen with this NAS if, lets say, you had all of the drives populated, started copying stuff over to one drive and then yanked it out and stuck another drive in. I know my machine would crash and burn, lol. Would this do the same? I'm guessing so, just wondering.

I have looked at the WD Red's before I built my current WHS box but the read writes are much slower than what I wanted, but that's me.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28496 23 Nov 2012 23:30

L0rdG1gabyt3 wrote: On the Pros/Cons, you list the Atom processor and 2GB of ram as Pro's.

How is an Atom processor a pro in any evaluation?


Low power usage yet still more than enough power to handle everything I did with the box. The D2550 Atom processor used in this NAS was only recently introduced. It is dual core and also includes hyperthreading with a clock speed of 1.86 GHz. This isn't the same Atom processor that you have used in the past, but this also isn't an extremely demanding application. You want your NAS to use very little power as well. Thats where the 10 watt TDP for the CPU comes in handy.

Wingless92 wrote: Not sure, I know when I had my laptop the Atom CPU was a pile of garbage. Then again it was cheap as hell, lol. Kinda get what you pay from. It was a couple of years ago and CPU's have improved but still. I wouldn't say its a pro.

Cool that you can upgrade the memory. It just seems that it's trying to be a full windows server box and a NAS at the same time. I would much rather have it be just a NAS and be done with it.

As for other NAS boxes, people love Drobo's cause they are built like a tank and they have been proven over the years to be great at data redundancy. I would like to know what would happen with this NAS if, lets say, you had all of the drives populated, started copying stuff over to one drive and then yanked it out and stuck another drive in. I know my machine would crash and burn, lol. Would this do the same? I'm guessing so, just wondering.

I have looked at the WD Red's before I built my current WHS box but the read writes are much slower than what I wanted, but that's me.


Also Wingless, have you had a NAS box? These are features that almost all of the companys offer in their NAS's anymore (modules and whatnot). The main thing that stands out between this and what I have seen in the past is the variety of modules that are available. You don't have to run any of the modules if you don't want to and it will still perform fine as a NAS as it sits. I'm not sure why you would be upset that a NAS has more features

This NAS and the Drobo would handle that situation the same as any other device. Pulling a drive out mid data transfer is any situation is going to end badly.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #28497 23 Nov 2012 23:35
I also should have mentioned that the Atom CPU used in the N5550 is faster than what is used in most other NAS, that is why it was a pro. On top of the low power usage.
Arxon's Avatar
Arxon replied the topic: #28498 24 Nov 2012 00:14
Been debating on getting a NAS. Are they worth getting?

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