The rear of the unit has four Gigabit Ethernet connections in a row and a fifth Gigabit Ethernet connection to connect computers to the server. Two USB 2.0 ports, an external SATA port, the Power switch for the PSU, a RS232 interface for terminal access, and the fan for the unit round out the rear of the unit.

The front of the unit has five locked bays for five hard drives. Each bay has a separate lock to secure the hard drives from being taken out of the N5200. Also on the front of the unit is status LEDs for the unit. The first one is a DOM LED which is lit when the system is posting. The second one is a WAN LED which is lit when the network is being used. Third is the LAN LED which also is lit when the network is being used.

LED #4 is lit when files are copied from a USB drive. The last LED on the left hand side is a Busy LED. This is lit when the RAID array is damaged or degraded. The front of the unit has a LCD which gives the user real-time statistics including date/time, RAID Status, IP addressing and Fan status. The Reset switch has an additional feature of being able to reset the system IP and admin password after 5 seconds of pressing it.

Here’s the hardware list on the Thecus N5200: Intel Celeron M 600MHz CPU, 256MB DDR memory, Seasonic 1U 200W APFC PSU, Seventeam Model ST200-UAB-05E 200W, 64MB Flash microdisk with 2.5” 44-pin IDE connector, external SATA connector, 3x USB 2.0 ports, USB target port, WAN 1000 Mbps Ethernet connector, LAN 1000 Mbps Ethernet router 4 connectors and a Serial port. The motherboard has an Intel ICH4 chip on it. All in all the perfect choice of components for backing up storage, after all the unit is supposed to run 24/7 and low-power processors like the Celeron-M are a good fit together.

Some of the other important features of this NAS server include Online RAID Level Migration and Online Capacity Expansion which allows you to add more HDDs into a RAID array and change the RAID level without losing data which is an important thing. With the SATA drives and chassis providing the ability to hot swap the N5200BR also allows the unit to use a spare HDD to replace a defective disk when one fails in the RAID array.