LG N2A2 NAS review

NAS Box setup

Setting up the LG N2A2 NAS is a very straightforward task.

First I connected the network cable to a Netgear WNR3500 Gigabit router, which is a 4 port low latency switch with 1000Mbps bandwidth per port, plus WAN and a wireless N access point.

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I then connected the other end of our network cable to the LAN 1 port on the LG N2A2 NAS, connected the power supply and switched on the LG N2A2 NAS box. Later I also connected a WD-TV Live HD media player via the LAN3 port of the router.

After the NAS box had finished booting, which takes around 40 seconds, I then inserted the supplied software CD-ROM into our review PC.

When the software CD is inserted, another window appears where we can choose between several options, in our case the NAS Detector is of interest. I clicked on the button and followed the instructions to install the tool. After finishing the installation process I had to start the NAS Detector tool.

It took about 10-20 seconds until the NAS Detector found the NAS device in the network.  As you can see in the picture above, I could now choose between some more options. All these options are self-explanatory. For the real setup, I preferred the web menu.

The web menu can be opened in several ways, the easiest is to open the menu via the shortcut on the desktop, alternatively you can open Internet Explorer (or Firefox) and type in the NAS box’s IP address into the address bar.

When the setup page is opened in your web browser, we can then navigate through the rest of the setup options. Logging in is a simple matter of entering the admin user name and password.

After login completes we are greeted with the following configuration overview of the LG N2A2 NAS.

The user interface itself is clearly designed and offers all the important information of the LG N2A2 NAS system. But since LG has totally changed the user interface with a firmware update, we performed an update before we continued with our review.

Performing a firmware update is a pretty easy task. I just had to download the firmware file from the LG N2A2 support page, go to the firmware menu and to choose the file which I’ve downloaded before.

The LG NAS firmware upgrade window

 

Screen while updating

After the upgrade the system restarted automatically. Once booting has finished I opened the web menu again and after logging in again, I now see the following screen.

LG has tried to make the user interface more user (family) friendly.  In the main menu I could find some basic options for configuring the LG N2A2 NAS system. They are mainly user permissions related but I can also do some basic network settings, and I can also get some storage related information. The tabs above should enable the user quick access to music, photos, videos and other content. Via the menu on the left I could quickly access other features, the detailed configuration settings and I can view the NAS summary.

Storage settings:

The first thing before someone starts to use a NAS system is to do the configuration of the HDDs. This can be done really easy via the web-menu.

Volume summary

The volume summary is straightforward and easy for everyone to understand. Besides the information for both HDDs, we see configuration of the HDDs. The menu also offers some options to inspect the HDDs, this means nothing more than checking the HDDs for bad blocks. We can also format or delete the partitions.

Deleting dialog

Formatting or deleting goes always hand in hand with entering the administrator password. This should protect the normal user from accidentally deleting the HDDs.

Volume information after erasing the discs

Create new volume “individual”

Creating new volume gives us several options, by selecting just one HDD we can configure each disk on its own.

Create new volume

By selecting both disks we can configure the system in JBOD, RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode. A nice graphical explanation gives the user an idea in what the different configurations result.   

As we can see, configuring the LG N2A2 NAS HDDs is a pretty easy task. The dialogs are easy to understand, so also a non-experienced user can do this without any problems. 

 

Let’s head to the next page where we take a look at the NAS security settings and features.

 

• Main features
• Security settings and features