LG Super-Multi N2A2 2TB NAS Review

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,090   +2,042
Staff member
Over the past few years we've reviewed a handful of NAS (Network Attached Storage) products and while most of them have been very impressive, they all shared one common pitfall: they were extremely pricey. So expensive in fact, that they're little more than a pipe dream for the average user.

Read the full article at:
https://www.techspot.com/review/369-lg-n2a2-nas/

Please leave your feedback here.
 
Wow! You jailbroke it? :p

Really cheap indeed, was looking for something like this, but the upgrade problem... lets hope they'll fix it.
Nice review, thanks.
 
The $250 price tag is what attracted me to this review. Then I read concerns about rebuilding the system. At this price, if the LG target audience really wants to upgrade, they'll wait a year or two for LG to introduce an upgrade model. Then I see all the tests done in RAID0 mode. Again, surely the target consumer is looking for cheap, reliable backup, and will run in RAID1. How does it compare there?
 
The D-link 323 is only 150 plus drives. I have one and I love it! I can access everything I have on there from my computer to ps3 to laptop.
 
It is fair to say many manufacturers can offer products now in this price range. Not more thank a year has past that I purchased a Netgear Stora with 1TB and with room for another under 200 USD so I would expect the pricing and robustness to only have improved.
 
You don't mention whether this can be run in jbod mode : ie the two drives as separate volumes. I would like this but only if the upgrade stuff could be sorted out. Surprisingly the hardware inside is almost exactly the same as Synologys, except a smaller amount of ram 128mb. My own investigations would indicate a differential between this and a DS211j with a single 2tb disk to be in the region of tens of pounds (UK prices). Your pictures do it a lot more justice, as other reviews have made it seem quite lacklustre. Also comparison to USb2.0 speeds is welcome.


ANy RAID is not backup .. its for business's wanting high availability.
 
I've just wasted a day trying to get a N2A2 device onto a network. No matter what I did, the NASDetector would not 'see' the device. Unfortunately the LG support in the UK is ambivalent at best about supporting their product and to date I've not been able to get in touch with them by phone. I'm sorry LG, but email support just doesn't cut it.
And LG's support website really isn't up to much either. If the device cannot be found on the network then you are pretty dead in the water because there is no way to change any parameters except through the NASDetector interface.
The device has lots of potential, which was my reason for buying it in the first place, but unfortunately the important support when it fails is sadly lacking.
In my opinion, I would not recommend this device purely because the LG support is so poor for it.
 
At newegg for $220 us. Alot of storage and performance for the price, but I dont like that the HDDs are not user-serviceable. when the fail it will be an expensive brick.
 
My n2a2 often hangs stops replying to ping and I have to restart it hard (press and hold the power button until it goes out).

I have upgraded it to Firmware version 3603.195. But it still keeps hanging, somtimes several times in an hour.

When it is running it is really nice but in my opinion it is a waste of money.
 
This is one of the units I was considering this past month for my first NAS server. However, after reading numerous reviews instead opted for the Synology DS211j for $200 (diskless). Definitely more expensive after adding a pair of Seagate ST33000651AS 3TB drives but it streams all media types to my Oppo BDP-93, PS3 and XBox 360 without a hitch. File sharing with Windows 7 has been essentially seamless, pretty happy with it so far.
 
I have just purchased and configured one of these, partly on the basis of this review (I wasn't too worried about not being able to replace the discs). I want to note a few additional worries that might be useful for others:

1. The current web interface does not enable passwords with special characters, or passwords over a certain length (not sure exactly how much: 20 characters is too much, but 10 works). This dramatically reduces the security of the device out of the box. I've emailed LG to ask them to change this, and all they've said is that they will consider this for a future firmware release. I want to use TimeMachine over the internet, but won't be doing so until I can up the password security...

2. While this device is advertised as having an iTunes media server, it is subject to the massive problems that iTunes 10 has had with NAS media servers. See this thread for the problem: http://bit.ly/o96vKU —no idea whether this will be fixed anytime soon, as Apple have been totally unresponsive. So if you're planning to use iTunes with this as a media server, think again, or prepare to be very patient (of course, you can put media files on the NAS and then simply mount a drive).

3. The device allows FTP, but not SFTP. This is madness.

4. At present it is impossible to disable an SMB share from being broadcast on the network, even if you switch all drives to AFP only. The device seems to be sharing a directory "cdrom" that cannot be seen from anywhere else in the configuration software. This seems to be an artifact of the same basic setup being duplicated across this device and another that has an optical drive.
 
PS. I was mistaken about iTunes. You need to refresh the directory after changing it, then all works.
 
Bought this thing and a bit disappointed for these reasons: 1) set up for laymen not easy, I spent 10 + hrs 2) pc seems to need to be running to use iTunes server (can't stream directly from nas to iPad when pc is off which completely defeats the purpose of buying this to save power) 3) using web domain to access nas is hit and miss and I'm frequently having to go in and reset the DNLS 4) iTunes server doesn't show up in iTunes
 
server freezes when uploading + 3GB(?) data amounts

I also have to restart the server every now and then when transferring several gigas at once.. This is definitely a major flaw since data backups are usually done in big chunks...

The server hangs sometimes also when recovering from sleep mode.

br, Thomas Isomäki
 
I have a N2A2 that works good. But when I started the utorrent (built-in the NAS), it sometimes hangs randomly. I stopped utorrent service and now it doesn't hang anymore.

At same time I also started and stopped iTunes service but I never used it. Cannot be 100% sure which (or both) of these services that made the NAS hang.
 
Hi again,

I now called the tech support and according to them, there have been a few L2 N2A2 units with faulty mainboards. My machine is now under reparation or will be exchanged for another one ...

br, Thomas
 
I have this unit configured as Raid 1. I came by here hoping to find reviews to explain why the transfer rate is so slow, running about 18 MB/s which is around 1/3 the speed quoted in the review here. I'm wondering if mine is confgured incorrectly, or the overhead of RAID 1 is that high. Any insight is welcome.
 
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