The QNAP TS-209 is a Network Attached Storage Box that gives you a two-drive, hot-Swappable, SATA RAID array in a stylish, and quiet enclosure. It features a 500Mhz CPU, 128MB of DDRII System Memory, 8MB of Flash for the operating system, a single Gigabit Ethernet port, and three USB 2.0 connectors (two in the back and one in the front.) The 209 in based on a Linux OS and supports Windows and Mac clients.

Using the QNAP 209 is quite easy. Simple plug in the power and ethernet cables, and push the power button. The first time the array powers up it will check the drives and prepare the array for use. A string of LED lights on the front of the unit gives you an at-a-glance status of power, network link, drive status and activity.

The unit only has three buttons, a reset button in the back, and power and one-touch copy buttons up front. This gives the unit an uncluttered look and creates a simple user experience.

The USB ports on the 209 can be used to connect an external USB hard drive, USB printer, flash drive, digital camera, memory card reader, and just about any other USB storage device.

The 209 automatically detected the two Seagate 250GB drives we used for the test and it asked us how we wanted to setup the unit. You can choose to stripe the array in RAID 0, giving you faster performance and the full amount of storage but much less data security — if either of the drives fail, you lose everything.

You can also choose to mirror your drives in RAID 1, essentially giving you two identical sets of data – This is slower and cuts your usable space in half, but it is far more secure as you can suffer a drive failure and still not lose any of your data. If any of the drives does fail, simply power down the unit, replace the failed drive, and power it back up. The 209 will automatically resync your data.

You can also have the 209 setup a Linear Disk Volume – a JBOD, or Just a Bunch of Disks, which will give you two different drives in the same array. This isn’t as fast as striping, and it doesn’t give you the redundancy of mirroring, but you get to keep the maximum storage without risking the loss of ALL your data with a single drive failure.

Backup is one of the strong points of the 209. It includes the NetBak Replicator: a software suite that allows users to setup auto-sync and scheduled backups.

The One Touch Backup button is actually quite useful. You can configure it to copy everything from a USB device to a directory on the QNAP, or everything in a directory on the QNAP to a USB device. This is especially useful if you want to the QNAP as a backup device for your usb-enabled camera, music player or flash drive.

QNAP has also included the option to do scheduled or immediate backups of your data to a remote network drive, or a USB storage device. Backup options are topped off by a remote replication feature which allows the 209 to automatically backup its data to a remote QNAP device. This is the ultimate in backup because it guarantees the integrity of your data at a location that is limited only by the reach of the Internet.

While the hardware of the 209 is impressive in both its simplicity and its performance, it’s the built-in services that set the QNAP products apart.

The 209 supports all the features that you might expect from a high-performance NAS. This includes FTP, Secure FTP, and standard file-sharing protocols. It also has support for UPnP and DLNA multimedia streaming, iTunes server support, and auto photo album generation.

Where the 209 leaves the realm of the standard and enters the world of the uberGeek is in its integrated support for dynamic web serving, PHP code execution, and MySQL databases. — That’s right, this hobbit sized box can host your dynamic web site, log, PHP/MySQL photo album or web forum entirely on its own.

The TS-209 comes loaded with Joomla, a popular open-source Content manager, but I was able to easily load the customized WordPress directory that runs the TechStop. After a quick database restore, I had a completely functional copy of TheTechStop running on a local device.

Even better is the native support for Bit Torrent. You can now download the latest, greatest and LEAGAL content without a PC — simply drop in the torrent file and wait for your media to finish downloading.