Exterior

This NAS screams quality, and the use of plastic is, thankfully, limited to the front, where it is unavoidable. The brushed metallic chassis looks very slick with its rounded edges—an advantage over the direct competition in the NAS's price range since others use plastic cases. A quality-made plastic case is, in our opinion, inferior to even a metallic chassis of lower quality, and paying such a premium entitles you to the highest possible quality, internally and externally.


Since this is a business-oriented product, the HDD caddies feature locks to physically secure the data. This may be unnecessary for home use, but SMB environments make these locks an essential feature, especially if the NAS is not installed inside a protected/lockable rack. The two-line LCD screen is located above the five caddies. It displays useful information to the avid user. For energy saving purposes, it de-activates automatically once the startup- or reboot phase finishes. It does of course light up again once you press one of the two small buttons on its right side. The on/off button and copy buttons, along with the front USB 2.0 port, are, as you can see, located in the bottom-left corner. You can set the function of the copy button, which literally surrounds the USB port, through the administrative interface (e.g. copy the contents of the USB external disk to NAS storage).


Below the LCD screen are four LED indicators. Five more are located right above each drive tray; they provide information about the drives' operation. The buttons shown on the second photo allow you to perform several basic administrative tasks, or get information about the IP address of the NAS on the network, the system temperature etc.


A small decal provides information about the sequence of HDDs. The rails the caddies attach to are also numbered. HDD numbering is a very important feature since it allows you to determine which HDD tray goes where in case you have to remove some or all of them. As you will see later, the caddies are also numbered.


The TS-569 Pro, as we already mentioned under specifications, is powered by an Intel dual-core Atom CPU.


Only one of the two sides features a small vent. QNAP apparently decided that there is no need for a second vent, because of the Atom CPU's low thermal footprint.


The grill of the 120 mm fan on the rear side takes up most of the real estate. We find the much smaller fan that cools down the PSU above it. The AC receptacle is in the top-left corner. The K-Lock security slot resides in the bottom-left corner, while all I/O ports are installed on the right side. The latter include two USB 3.0-, four USB 2.0-, and two eSATA ports; two gigabit Ethernet ports and VGA- and HDMI outputs. The latter is utilized by the HD Station package we will examine thoroughly.


The bottom of the NAS has four plastic stands that can be removed easily if needed.


Removing all caddies gave us a better view of the PCIe SATA expansion card that holds all SATA ports.


The lockable metallic caddies are numbered and can house both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs. All required screws are included in the bundle.