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Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440

Nathan Edwards — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:00:01 -0500

A whole lotta NAS for a whole lotta dough

Last month we reviewed Western Digital’s MyBook World Edition, a small, white, single-drive, one-terabyte NAS box aimed solidly at Joe User. This month, we have the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440, the MyBook’s polar opposite in many ways. It’s big, it’s black, it’s user-serviceable, comes with four Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drives, and is marketed toward small businesses without a dedicated IT staff.

The BlackArmor 440 is a brick, the front of which has a two-line green LCD status screen, a front door that opens to reveal the four hot-swappable screwless drive bays, one of the box’s four USB 2.0 host ports, and a power button. The back holds the 12cm exhaust fan, the power jack (for the external power brick), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the other three USB 2.0 ports.

The LCD display offers system status information and a few buttons to navigate with, but the real power comes from the BlackArmor’s web interface, which is easily accessible from the BlackArmor Discovery software included with the NAS. The Discovery software also provides easy mapping of shared folders—the defaults are Public and Downloads.

The BlackArmor 440 is probably more NAS than a home network needs.

Via the web interface, admins can configure users’ quotas and permissions (including who can access the devices on each USB port); set up email alerts; set up, manage, and monitor the SMART status of drives and volumes; and turn on iTunes and media sharing and global access. Other options include FTP, HTTPS access (using your own SSL certificates or ones generated by the NAS), CIFS, NFS, Bonjour, and more.

One interesting feature is the ability to create multiple RAID arrays on the same drives. It’s a neat trick, but most users should stick with the single RAID 5 volume the 440 comes with.

One of the BlackArmor’s most useful inclusions is the BlackArmor Backup service, a custom app by Acronis. The 440 includes 10 full-version licenses, and more can be acquired from Seagate. For small-office users, that’s a lot of value.

In its default RAID 5 configuration, using one Gigabit Ethernet port, the 440 transfers files quickly. Copying a 2.79GB file from the NAS to a PC on the local network took two minutes and 38 seconds, while writing that file to the NAS took just over a minute. Connecting the other Ethernet port increases transfer speeds, but that port can also be used to make NAS-to-NAS backups or server backups.

After a week of testing, one of the 1.5TB drives in our review unit failed, so we got an opportunity to see the 440’s recovery process in action. The LCD screen and the web management panel both displayed alerts, and the RAID 5 was still functional, though degraded.

To rebuild the array, all we did was eject and replace the faulty drive. From there, it was a matter of three or four mouse clicks before the RAID 5 array was recovering itself in the background. Rebuilding a 4.5TB array takes a long time, so we were pleased that we could still use the volume normally during the process.

The Seagate BlackArmor 440 is a powerful NAS with a huge array of business-oriented features. In fact, it’s almost certainly overkill for home users, unless you have a large home network. After all, it’s eight times the price of the consumer-friendly MyBook World 1TB. But with its enormous capacity and wealth of features, it would make a very useful addition to a small office network.

How To: Build A NAS Box

Michael Brown — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Crush the performance of consumer network-attached storage devices by building your own! And you can use a number of legacy parts to do this on the cheap!

Time: 3 Hours

What You Need

FreeNAS
Free, www.freenas.com
ISO Recorder
Free, http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm
USB Thumb Drive
Motherboard
CPU
Case
Memory
Videocard
Optical Drive
Power Supply
One or More Hard Drives

A network-attached storage (NAS) device is the Robin to a LAN’s Batman. The two should be inseparable, and for good reason. A NAS box gives you a guaranteed way to store all of your files and stream your media. Running a NAS box also means that you don’t have to boot your power-leeching desktop rig every time you want to access your files from another device.

But you don’t have to go out and purchase a NAS device. You can build a superior alternative using spare parts left over after upgrading your PC.

We recently gathered a bunch of components that had been gathering dust in the Lab and built a FrankenNAS that absolutely pulverized its admittedly budget retail competitor, the $135 Linksys NAS200. Using an Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard and a dual-core 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 CPU, we were able to shorten our transfer speeds to one-sixth of the NAS200’s on small transfers and around one-seventh on larger file moves. Note that you don’t even need top-of-the-line hardware for your device. Our open-source operating system, FreeNAS, will run on almost anything.

But just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s simple. So we’re going to walk you through the finer points of setting up a FreeNAS-based network storage device of your very own. You’ll be streaming your favorite movies in no time!

1.Burn the FreeNAS ISO to CD

The first step in the process is building the physical NAS box, but since it’s no different from assembling a PC, we’re skipping ahead to the installation of the operating system. In order to do that, you’ll first want to set your NAS motherboard’s BIOS to boot from an optical drive.

FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD, a Unix-like open-source OS developed in the early 1990s. It’s not Linux and it’s definitely not Windows, so you should be aware that using the OS as the backbone of your file storage is going to first wipe out anything that might be on the hard drives you use. On the upside, FreeNAS itself requires no hard drive space for installation. It’s so compact, we’ll be using an embedded version that can run off a USB thumb drive or a CompactFlash card as small as 32MB.

Download the FreeNAS ISO and drop a CD in your burner. If you don’t already have software capable of burning an ISO image to a CD, download and install the free utility ISO Recorder. If you’re using ISO Recorder, right-click the file you just downloaded and choose the option “Copy image to CD.”

Once you’ve burned the image, put the CD in your NAS box’s optical drive, restart your computer, and boot FreeNAS from the CD. One caveat: Make sure your motherboard’s BIOS is configured to boot from a USB device, as we’ll be installing the operating system to a thumb drive.

2. Install FreeNAS on a USB Thumb Drive

We’re going to set up our NAS to boot from a USB thumb drive so we don’t limit our upgrade options. If you didn’t listen to us in the last step and are using an old mobo that just won’t boot from a removable device, you have two options. You can boot from the CD and store your configuration file on a USB thumb drive or CompactFlash card or you can partition your hard drive, copy the OS to that partition, and boot from there. Be aware, however, that you cannot use the resulting storage partition for RAID: FreeNAS allows only whole drives in an array.

Quick Tip: Double-check whether FreeNAS offers support for your hardware by checking the compatibility lists at http://www.freenas.org/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=30.

When the FreeNAS Console Setup menu appears (tap the Escape key if the FreeNAS splash screen doesn’t disappear on its own), plug a thumb drive into the NAS box’s USB port and choose the menu item “Install/Upgrade to a hard drive/flash device, etc.” At the next prompt, choose the first option: “Install ‘embedded’ OS on HDD/Flash/USB.” Choose the optical drive containing the FreeNAS ISO image and hit Enter. Next, select the USB thumb drive on which you want to install the OS. Note that the installation process’s default choice is the hard drive, so make sure you’ve changed it to your thumb drive before you hit the Enter key.

After you’ve installed the operating system on the thumb drive, remove the CD and reboot your NAS box.

3 Configure Your Network Settings

When your NAS box has rebooted, choose item 1 from the Console Setup menu: Assign Interface. Unplug the NAS box’s Ethernet cable and choose the OS’s Auto Detection option. When prompted, plug the Ethernet cable back in and hit the Enter key. You should get a message that reads “Detected link-up on interface XX,” where “XX” is the name of your Ethernet interface (in our example, the name was “nve0”). Hit the Enter key again.

The next screen will read “Configure OPT interface.” This enables you to configure a second Ethernet port, assuming your motherboard has one. For now, choose the option that reads “Finish and exit configuration” and hit the Enter key. Accept the naming scheme presented in the next screen and hit Enter.

Next, type the number 7 and hit Enter to reboot the computer. When the machine has finished rebooting, choose item 2 from the Console Setup menu: Set LAN IP Address. The OS will ask if you want to use DHCP. Choose Yes unless your network is set up with static IP addresses. At the next prompt, select “AutoConfiguration for IPv6.”

The OS will then give you the IP address that’s been assigned to the NAS box. You can now ping your NAS box to verify that it has joined your network and you can manage its settings using your web browser. Just type the NAS box’s IP address into your browser’s address bar. The default user name is “admin” and the password is “freenas.”

Next: Configure Your NAS, Format the Drive, and Get Started!

4. Configure Your Drive

Once you’ve logged into the web GUI, you’ll want to take a whack at a few important configuration steps: Change the name of the NAS; set the correct date, time, and time zone; and create a unique username and password. Start by clicking General (in the left-hand menu stack, under the System heading) and change the desired information in the large pane on the right.

Click the Password tab, type in the existing password (“freenas”), and enter your new password in the two boxes provided.
You’re now ready to prepare your hard drive. Go back to the left-hand menu and choose Management under the Disks heading. The plus sign inside the circle on the right-hand pane indicates that you can add an element to the NAS. In this case, we’re going to add a hard drive. Click the plus symbol and all the drives in your system (including the optical and USB thumb drive) will appear in the window next to the Disk heading. Be sure to choose your hard drive.

You might want to experiment with some of the options on this page (especially “hard disk standby time,” “advanced power management,” and “acoustic level”), but leave them at their default values for now. Do make sure that the value for “Preformatted file system” is set to “unformatted” before you click the Add button; then click Apply Changes.

5. Format and Mount the Hard Drive

Ready to wipe your drive? Return to the Disks heading in the left-hand column of the NAS box’s administrative options and click Format. Make sure you’re ready to proceed, as the option will erase any information previously stored on the drive. Choose your hard drive from the drop-down menu, enter a volume label, and accept the remaining default choices: “File System: UFS (GPT and Soft Updates),” “Minimum Free Space (8),” and “Don’t Erase MBR (unchecked).” Click the Format Disk button.

A drive must be mounted before it can be accessed, so go back to the left-hand Disks menu and click Mount Point. Click the circled plus sign, select Disk from the drop-down Type menu, and choose your hard drive from the drop-down Disk menu. Choose EFI GPT from the Partition menu and UFS for the File System value. Click the Add button when you’re finished. An OK message in the Status window indicates that the drive was successfully mounted.

6. Enable Services and Create Shares

We need to access our NAS box using computers running Windows, so it’s essential that we enable the SAMBA networking protocol on our NAS box. Look in the left-hand column for the heading labeled Services and click the CIFS/SMB menu item. Place a check mark next to Enable in the main window but leave all the values at their default settings. Click the Save and Restart button.

Now that SAMBA’s up and running, you’ll need to create one or more network shares that allow your remote computers to treat the NAS box’s hard drive(s) as though they’re a local resource. Click the Shares tab in the “Services: CIFS/SMB: Settings” window and click the circled plus button. In the screen that appears next, give the share a name, add a comment describing the purpose of the share, set the path, and click the Add button. Click the Apply Changes button on the next screen.

When you’ve finished configuring FreeNAS, click the Backup/Restore button to create a backup of your configuration. You should now be able to find your NAS and your newly created shared folders listed in Windows XP’s “My Network Places” (or Vista’s “Network”).

How to Stream from Your NAS Box

Now that your new NAS box is ready to go, getting all your movies and photos to stream to your media device of choice is extraordinarily easy. Here’s how you do it. Pull up your FreeNAS administrative options page and click UPnP under the Services menu. Click the Enable check box and assign a name to your device. Then select the NIC you’ll be using. Add the directories you want to share and pick a component profile that best matches your UPnP device—like your Xbox 360, for instance. Click Save and Restart, and you’ll be ready for some movie-watching!

Qnap TS-209 Pro II

David Murphy — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:08:40 -0500

Based on the name alone, one would expect Qnap’s TS-209 Pro II NAS box to offer more features than its predecessors—particularly our leader in this storage category, Qnap’s TS-109 Pro. And while the former does allow for increased capacity, it does not provide significant improvements in performance or offer more features than the TS-109 Pro, which has been out for more than a year.

The TS-209 Pro II differs from the TS-109 Pro in two fundamental ways: First, the TS-209 Pro II is a two-bay device that only requires you to remove a faceplate to access the hot-swap drive bays, a much simpler process than the disassembly required to stick a new drive in the single-bay TS-109 Pro. Second, the TS-209 Pro II sports 256MB of internal DDR II RAM, double the internal memory of the TS-109 Pro.

We assumed—perhaps incorrectly—that this additional memory would do something, anything, for the TS-209 Pro II’s benchmark performance. It does not. In fact, even after we added a speedy Velociraptor drive to the unit to eliminate any kind of hard drive bottleneck, the TS-209 Pro II was still unable to top the TS-109 Pro in any benchmark. The TS-209 Pro II took an extra 18 seconds to transfer 659MB (180 files) from our computer to our NAS in our small-file test. In our large-file test, the TS-209 Pro II took more than a minute longer than the TS-109 Pro to transfer a single 2.79-gigabyte file.

The TS-209 Pro II is fast when compared against the entire category of NAS devices. But it’s not faster than our speed champion, the TS-109 Pro. Nor do any compelling features push it above and beyond its predecessor. The latest firmware update to the TS-109 Pro gives that device the same features and options as the TS-209 Pro II, including a BitTorrent downloading application, a networked webcam surveillance application, and an iTunes streaming service. The TS-209 Pro II differs only in its RAID offerings, due to its support for two hard drives versus the TS-109 Pro’s one.

We dislike that the TS-209 Pro II drops the eSATA connection that was included with the TS-109 Pro. It’s not a mission-critical deletion, but we’d still much prefer to back up the contents of our NAS box over a speedy SATA connection rather than USB. It would also be nice to have a friendlier hot-swap setup in the front of the TS-209 Pro II. Removing the front bezel doesn’t pain us, but in a perfect world, we'd be able to insert drive without having to take anything off of the device first.

The TS-209 Pro II is a fast product with a bounty of features beyond what we typically see in NAS products, it’s just not among the speediest NAS devices we’ve tested. If you don’t need the increased storage that a second drive bay brings, you’re better off purchasing one of the company’s faster single-drive options—like the TS-109 Pro.

Qnap TS-409 Pro

David Murphy — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:50:09 -0500

Is bigger always better? Not necessarily. Qnap’s TS-409 Pro is packed with the same features as the company’s TS-109 Pro but includes twice as much memory and supports four hard drives rather than just one. And it rocks, but only if we compare it to similarly sized foes, such Buffalo’s four-drive TeraStation Live.

The TS-409 Pro doesn't include any additional connections over the TS-109 Pro. In fact, you lose an eSATA port.

The TS-409 Pro is the fastest multiple-drive NAS box we’ve tested, producing excellent scores in our read and write benchmarks. But the same can’t be said when we expand the field to include single-drive NAS devices.

Qnap’s own TS-109 Pro overtakes the TS-409 Pro in half of our transfer benchmarks. We didn’t expect this since the hardware in the two products is almost identical. If anything, the TS-409 Pro should trounce its predecessor, thanks to an additional 128MB of onboard DDR2 memory.

It’s no surprise that the devices’ administration software is also nearly identical. However, since it supports multiple drives, the TS-409 allows you to configure RAID levels; other additions include support for hard-drive SMART statistics and a new way to schedule backups to connected USB devices. We would have liked even more improvements, such as a more streamlined interface for easier use, a better downloading application, and a one-button approach for backing up one internal drive to another.

Qnap downgrades the NAS experience by stripping functionality out of the TS-109 Pro and packaging these features into external software applications for the TS-409 Pro. You now manage FTP, HTTP, and BitTorrent downloads using the QGet program. We’d much prefer a client with the functionality of Azureus or uTorrent—QGet lacks scheduling and tweaking options.

The included Netback Replicator is a great one-click backup application but a poor synchronization app since it goes only one way: You can’t sync a folder on the TS-409 Pro to your computer. The program only copies files you dump into a folder on your machine to a folder of your choice on the TS-409 Pro.

The TS-409 Pro is the best multi-drive NAS box we’ve tested, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Since Qnap is upgrading all of its other NAS devices, it might be worth waiting to see if the company spruces up this one as well.

Buffalo TeraStation Live

David Murphy — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:30:30 -0600

Our little hearts were ablaze with excitement when we busted open the chunky Buffalo TeraStation Live. And with good reason; on paper, the four-drive NAS device looked like it was going to be an easy winner–its two terabytes of total storage in a RAID-5 configuration made us smile.

As it turns out, we celebrated prematurely. The Buffalo TeraStation Live performs about as well in a file transfer test as it would in a foot race. Surprisingly, it was the only NAS device of the four tested here that had slower read times than write times. At 5:16 (min:sec) to transfer a 3GB file from the NAS to a PC, you’ll be in for a bit of a wait should you decide to use this device as a media hub–you might as well put in a vacation notice at work if you’re copying two terabytes’ worth of data.

Write speeds were marginally better but still not fast enough to catapult the TeraStation Live to the front of the file-transfer footrace. That said, the TeraStation Live offsets the pain by packing a few neat features into this otherwise plain-Jane device. We love the device’s user-management settings—a handy web interface makes it easy to add new users, assign users to groups, and control file-access operations.

Also handy is the TeraStation Live’s built-in media server feature. We were able to pull up a shared batch of MP3s on iTunes with no problems whatsoever. But this rounds out the feature list for this NAS device. Nothing distances Buffalo’s NAS box from its competitors in terms of features, which forces us to rely on its slow transfer speeds for an overall verdict. We’d recommend the TeraStation Live for its data redundancy and ease-of-use, but like this device, we simply run out of steam for further praise.

QNAP TS-109 Pro

David Murphy — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:54:32 -0600

We’ll get the bad news out of the way first. QNAP’s TS-109 Pro NAS device is more an enclosure than a NAS box–the storage part of the equation is BYO. Thankfully, NAS devices’ speeds are primarily determined by the connection and the interface of the device itself–purchase a decent hard drive, you’ll be sticking it into one of the fastest NAS boxes we’ve tested.

That said, we’re impressed with the features packed in this enclosure. And boy, what a list! A veritable cornucopia of network-attached storage, the TS-109 functions as a file server, a backup server, a web server, a media server, and a download server. Throughout our testing, we found that each element was as easy to use and helpful as the others. In fact, some were downright awesome: The file downloading application is a great alternative to keeping a loud, energy-sucking computer on overnight. But that’s just a single example. There’s no poison apple in the TS-109’s bucket of features.

We did have a bit of trouble getting the included installation CD to work. But once the “find my NAS device” application installs, accessing the TS-109 isn’t too taxing a process. Again, we had trouble browsing to the device in our network, but after typing in the TS-109’s name in the address bar (\\test, in this case), it appeared without fuss.

It’s a minor deficit in an otherwise useful device. No, not just useful–extraordinary. We have yet to find a NAS box that’s as speedy and feature-packed as this one, so much so that it makes the lack of an accompanying hard drive quite forgivable.

OWC NASPerform

David Murphy — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:27:44 -0600

Installing the OWC NASPerform to a computer via a network is a confusing mix of simple and complicated. The installer program itself is a welcome relief from the typically agonizing process of having to play with IP address and configuration screens. But that doesn’t mean OWC has spared you from a headache: You have to not only type in a 20-digit device ID just to connect the NAS box to your rig but also input a “write key,” which is printed on a label on the enclosure, if you want more than read-only access. So much for simply dragging and dropping files or controlling users via a handy web interface!

We’re used to doing a little legwork to get a NAS device to work, so the NASPerform’s configuration wouldn’t normally draw our ire. However, the entire system works on a mount-unmount interface. To edit the read/write settings, you have to unmount the drive first–which caused Windows XP to crash each and every time we attempted to do so. In fact, we never did get the drive unmounted. By some act of divine power, we were able to uninstall the program, if deleting the program can really be considered a solution.

The device comes with no additional features whatsoever. It’s a storage box. End of discussion. Its speeds are painful—the device rivals the Buffalo TeraStation Live for the coveted Slowest Data Transfer Speeds award.

And really, that’s all she wrote. The NASPerform comes only in sizes up to 750GB, so you can kiss away your dreams of having a terabyte of network-attached storage. That’s if you buy this device, which we hardly recommend as an ideal solution for your network-themed storage needs.

LaCie Ethernet Big Disk

David Murphy — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:26:40 -0600

The 2TB LaCie Ethernet Big Disk is appropriately named, we suppose. Other potential monikers: the LaCie Ethernet Big Headache, the LaCie Ethernet Sucks at Networking, or perhaps even the LaCie Ethernet Where Did My Drive Go. We jest, but there’s truth to our ramblings–the LaCie Ethernet Big Disk is horrific as a network-attached storage device, mainly due to our frequent failures to get Windows to even see the drive.

The included CD comes with a bunch of manuals, but the meat and potatoes is a small configuration application. You load it up to find your LaCie drive (sure beats typing an IP address into your browser, we suppose), and a single button-press launches the drive’s web-based configuration utility. Play with the settings all you like–there’s not much to do, save for enabling the Ethernet Big Disk’s media server.

The real fun comes when it’s time to find the device on your network. We tried looking for it in the default MSHome network path–no luck. We tried following the manual’s instructions and typed in the device’s name (\\EthernetBD). Zilch. We finally tried using the device’s actual IP address, which let us access the device (named Ethernet_bd, unlike what’s stated in the manual).

The Big Disk delivered acceptable speeds, but not anything to cheer about. The device lies squarely in third place in this roundup of four, but speeds are irrelevant if you can’t transfer files to or from the device using Network Neighborhood. Since many network boxes can connect just fine 100 percent of the time, we believe the Big Disk has a Big Fault.