If HP’s Mediasmart Windows Home Server (WHS) is too expensive for your liking, you might want to consider a network-attached storage (Nas) drive.

A Nas can’t match the functionality of WHS, but is much cheaper and will satisfy most home users’ storage and sharing needs.

The latest Nas to enter the PCW Labs is the Thecus N299. It houses two 500GB hard drives (other sizes are available) along with a fan to keep them cool. It’s similar in noise levels to Acer’s Easystore and, unless there is very little background noise, you won’t hear it whirring away.

Two USB ports sit at the rear, along with a further port at the front, and a small button lets you transfer data from a USB key to the Nas device quickly. A power button is also located at the front and a series of LEDs let you know what the N299 is up to.

As with most Nas drives, all settings are configured using a web-based interface. It’s relatively simple to navigate around, but those with little or no networking knowledge might find some of the options confusing. There’s also no printed manual, so you’re left to search through the PDF version for help.

However, things didn’t get off to a good start when the N299 demanded we update the firmware before allowing us to alter the settings. Sure enough, there was some new firmware available on the Thecus website, but after some rummaging around we also found the firmware file sitting on the software CD.

We’ve occasionally come across products that require the latest firmware to be downloaded, but if Thecus had time to put it on a disc, why on earth didn’t it flash the new firmware itself? Instead, it’s left up to the customer and, with firmware updates always a slightly risky process, this stance could leave Thecus with more than a few support calls.

Once updated with the new firmware we started creating shared folders and scheduling Bit Torrent downloads, which all worked well. Individual and group user accounts can also be set up, with different levels of access rights.

The N299 is advertised as having Gigabit Lan and, sure enough, when we hooked it up to our Gigabit switch it registered at 1,000Mbits/sec. However, it was a different story under testing. We tried reading and writing a number of files and the N299 could only muster around 50Mbits/sec - well short of Gigabit Lan speeds.

Considering the huge amount of storage space available on the N299, it’s quite likely anyone who buys it will be transferring equally huge files; at the speeds we were achieving, 10GB of data would take just short of half an hour. This may not bother you, but the fact is there are faster devices out there - the Qnap TS-109 Pro in our Nas group test (PCW September, 2007) achieved 147.2Mbits/sec.

As expected, the N299 will supply photos, music and video stored on it to any UPnP media streamers you might have on your network (Pinnacle’s Showcenter included).

The Thecus N299 certainly isn’t without its charms and, at just under £300, it’s reasonably priced. However, it has its drawbacks, not least the transfer speeds; when a product is advertised as having Gigabit Lan you expect it to at least perform faster than a standard 100Mbits/sec device. But if you’re not going to be regularly transferring large files it’s a tempting alternative to WHS.