Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)**9/24/09** UPDATE
I have had the server running for quite some time now and have seen the perks and downsides. I currently now have 4 1Tb drives in it in a Raid 5 setup. I am running the last firmware version before the jump to 3.xx.xx. So far I have had good luck with the email notification system. It works really well but is very weak in the fact you can't control what you get emails about. Sure I want to know if the server has rebooted or if the UPS is on battery power but what about downloads finishing?
the add ons for this are few and in between. Usually you have to use a module from the 5200 system and hope it works. I have had success with the web server, ssh, sshuser, and twonky modules. Though I locked myself out of ssh pretty quickly. (not familiar with unix commands)
As for the built in features. The itunes server works as expected. If you use that same server to host your files for your computer itunes program you will notice the very slow transfer speeds. i.e. the server has an itunes server that will show up on any computer running itunes as a shared source. Any music in that folder will be accessible to play through the users itunes running in their computer. I say the transfer speed is slow if you are using that itunes server folder as your computer's itunes music folder as well. A lot of the slow down is due to the insufficient memory. This unit comes with 256MB of ram but should come with 1GB. You can upgrade it yourself but it will void the warranty. here is a compatible memory module ([...]) I haven't tried it but from the forums it helps transfer speeds and overall performance by about 20-50%.
This unit comes with both a upnp and media server to stream to digital media receivers like the xbox 360 or ps3. Problem is, the media server likes to quit unexpectedly. I got it working for a bit but now it won't initialize for any length of time. I ended up turning that off as well as the itunes server, and the upnp stuff. This made the server run a bit better overall and kept me from being as annoyed. After installing the twonky server all of those problems are behind me. This module (same one from the 5200 server) works great and streams video and music perfectly to my ps3, xbox360, and LG blu-ray player.
The overall user interface for the 2.xx.xx firmware is pretty bad. It is both ugly and tedious to work with. Accessing this from the internet isn't very hard once you set up the WAN settings and open the port on your router. I used the [...] port so I keep things secure. there isn't a way to update the certificate on the server without ssh so you have to settle with the browser saying it is an unsafe site. Using the webdisk feature is pretty nice other than the fact you can only download one file at a time. Also if you try and download a large file the server stops responding to http requests. So that is fun... The new firmware is supposed to address some of these issues including the crappy web interface so I'll chime in when I decided to upgrade it.
All that said it has done a great job at keeping the data and raid in good shape, which is really the main point. I use mainly the AFP since I run mostly Macs and it works great. Also the samba shares work great too. Adding users and setting ACL on folders is easy. The one thing about that though is user passwords seem to have problems when you use special characters like $ and (, * etc. Not sure what that is about.
You must have any usb drive you plan on plugging in formatted to FAT or NTFS if you want it to be read and only FAT if you want it to be written to. that was annoying.
I am using a 10 plug APC UPS with the server and it works fine with it. As soon as power drops I get an email and the server is set to shut off once the battery level gets too low. This is great if you don't want to lose your raid and thus ALL YOUR DATA! I actually went through a power outage before I got the UPS and the server went down. When it powered back up however it immediately rebuilt the raid. All was well. That was a great feature and I was very happy to see it in action.
Another gripe is the files. When you create a share there is no way on the server to copy files from one share to another. You have to mount both and copy them through a computer which seems time consuming and pointless.
also this does not work natively with mac osx time machine. their are work arounds but are not straight forward and are not guaranteed to be stable.
All in all after everything I have seen and worked with I would re-rate this a 3.5 stars. I kinda jumped the gun on the 5 stars. I am looking into the mediasmart ex495 as of now.
I have had this running with 3 1Tb WD Green drives for a couple of days. The WDEADS... something drives. (I'll update that later)
They are in a raid 5 setup that took about 8 hours to build. The initial setup was really simple. I set it up using my Mac and used the provided program on the setup cd to set my admin password etc.
After that it was very easy to setup all my settings via the web interface @ the servers IP address. Most of the stuff is pretty self explanatory but some is a bit confusing (this is my first real NAS). I was able to setup and start building the raid in a matter of seconds after I looked through the provided settings.
I did forget to upgrade my firmware at first so I just did that recently to get added support for Bonjour and Gmail settings. Great enough it didn't erase any of my previous settings. There is about every file sharing protocol I can think of SMB, FTP, AFP, etc. and you can set up email notifications to email you as soon as something happens, i.e. server reset, failed disc, etc. You have options for all the types of raid setups and they are easy to maintain. There are modules for the machine that let it run a web server for hosting websites and databases using php, sql, sql-lite. I am an app developer for Apple so this will come in handy for sql-lite databases and using push services.
The hard drive installs were very easy and slid right into place. The first hard drive (the top) made somewhat of a loud pop when it was set in place so I pulled it out to check and all was well. the other drives went in so effortlessly I was worried they were not making the sata connection. The machine tells you on each drive if it has power, it is accessing, or it has a problem. The two Gigabit ports on the back come in really handy for using as a web server and basically anything. It has 3 total usb ports, the one on the front would be best for making copies of usb drives (which can be done totally through the front lcd interface) and the back two would be great for using a wifi dongle (use only the ones they suggest I imagine, mine is hardwired), or other usb hard drives for added storage.
the lcd is pretty bright so I wouldn't want it somewhere it would be distracting, and the beep sounds it makes are pretty loud (which is a good thing when the server is in another room). This can be disabled if you'd like. You can add lots of users with individual permissions to individual folders which is great if your friends want to access your NAS but you don't want them seeing your finance documents. It runs uPnp protocol to stream to stuff like xboxes, it also uses the dnla protocol to stream to other devices. It runs an iTunes server as well so you can see it as a shared library in itunes. I am unsure about syncing yet, I haven't tried to set up an iTunes library on it yet and sync my iPhone/AppleTV but I will update when I do. I think there will be a problem with the ATV because of the 4 digit passcode. I doubt the machine does that. There is also a power management setting that you can turn on/off the system at various times of the day, for each day of the week.
This is a lot of info but it was all stuff I was searching for when I was about to buy. So far I really love the machine and I will update if that happens to change.
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The N4100PRO also improves on its predecessor by adding RAID 6 and RAID 10, providing users have even more options for data storage. Whats more, the N4100PRO also supports RAID expansion, allowing users to add more storage to their RAID volumes as their needs arise. With the N4100PRO, users have the flexibility to store their data their way. CPU: AMD Geode LX800Memory: 256MB DDR400 SDRAM2 x GbE Intel 82541 Interface2 x 16 LCM Module3 x USB 2.0 Host Mode (2xFront, 1xRear)4 x Hot Swappable Disk Tray
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