Specification
Before we take a physical look at the device, let's go over the specs and how, on paper, it should work.
The N2050 could be described most simply as a external SATA device which also has a SATA to USB bridge. It's a little more complex than that, however, as it's also a RAID device. So, inside there are two SATA 3Gbps channels, connected to a storage processor, charged with creating a RAID-0 or RAID-1 array from two attached drives. It is this RAID entity that is then presented via the eSATA or USB interface. Clever, eh?
One thing to note is that such a hardware implementation is simpler than a NAS solution. Granted, the storage processor must manage a RAID array, however there's no need to pack enough hardware in to run a whole OS, unlike previous Thecus products we've reviewed. The N2050 is, at the end of the day, a swanky mass storage device. That means it's pretty much plug and play for any OS, certainly over USB, and if you want to cheat and make it a NAS style device, then if you attach it to a machine that's on all the time, you can set it up as a shared drive, or add it to your FTP server's paths, whatever tickles your fancy.
As you probably already know, RAID level 0 is striping - breaking data into chunks that are written alternately to each disk to improve transfer rates, and RAID level 1 is mirroring - one disk being an exact copy of the other, should one of them decide to die. The N2050 gives you the option: do you want speed or safety? Which is worth it? We'll see.
