16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is NAS for small businesses!, April 28, 2011
This review is from: Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 4-Bay 4 TB (4 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage ST340005SHA10G-RK (Personal Computers)
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This is going to be a long review as the product's expectations need to be set right for buyers of this product.
To give you a background from where I come from let me start with the fact that I work for a Global IT company that has been developing and selling Enterprise class RAID storage solutions for years, since the good old SCSI RAID days and since we have been developing Fibre-channel and SAS storage devices and ventured into cloud computing and we very well understand the limitations and expectations from customers.
The most common complaint we have is my NAS is performing slow, The WEB UI sucks, or it takes forever to rebuild my RAID array. But these common complaints are nothing really to do with the product hardware but how customer accesses and uses his NAS storage and what expectations were set during the sale of the solution to customer.
Coming to BlackArmor NAS 440 NAS storage device from Seagate, The product documentation is clear! This was designed for a "shared storage" for small businesses, if someone hopes that they can use it in a home environment they will be disappointed especially if multiple devices trying to stream high bitrates of Blu-Ray or MKV HD video, or Video files out of Hi-Def camcorder etc; out of this box; but for people who edits small word doc or excel files in a shared CIFS environment and backup purposes in a small office environment it is perfect little device that is protected by RAID 1 or 5 redundancy and encryption for peace of mind.
There is a lot of negativity shared by users of this product here on Amazon and elsewhere, But we have to be realistic about the expectations out of 7200 rpm SATA interfaced hard drives in RAID 5 configuration, There is only so much those SATA interfaced drives can do with a severely underpowered RAID/Server controller with multiple possible services that it is running.
Enterprise class RAID storage uses SAS Drives and or Dual channel Fibre Channel drives for redundancy and the spindle RPM of those drives can be as high as 15000 for faster data access and generally supplemented by a very powerful controller (CPU) backed up by a huge data cache and battery backup protected for Power failures etc; But all that comes with a huge cost for small businesses that they may never use the full potential of an enterprise class RAID storage, But for a device that costs little over $600 and has almost all popular access methods of file sharing IMHO is quite adequately priced and performs just okay.
Agreed that the web UI is slow and there is very little one can tinker, But again, remember for whom this was designed for... It was not for people trying to boot off this device and play games, or stream HD video for TV or similar media hungry devices, it was designed for mom and pop shop owners who like to have a backup data storage device in their backroom just in case if their laptops or desktop PC's were to crash.
The included client Backup software component is a pretty good value as it includes 10 licenses and does its job relatively well. The other plethora of services that little device has to offer includes FTP, CIFS, NFS, Printer spooler, WIKI server, Media Streaming, Global access, NTP, ISCSI and Drive encryption is impressive, but again if one decides to use all those services simultaneously you are going to have a performance issue when trying to access data stored on the four HDDs in RAID configuration.
DO's and Don'ts
DO's
RAID Level (Suggest to keep at RAID 5 with 4 HDDs)
1. Make sure that you keep the RAID 5 array that is shipped from factory; this will give you peace of mind if any one of the HDD's was to fail.
Alternatively, RAID 0 offers the full advertised 4TB capacity and slightly better performance, but even if one HDD fails, you will lose all your data. It is not worth that risk for that slight performance gain.
Network speed (All devices must use Gigabit interfaces)
2. Make sure that you have a GIGABIT router or switch to access this NAS, The WEB user interface performs better in Gigabit network and so will be the speed to access your data.
DON'ts
1. Don't have high expectations in terms of data access or web UI speeds, It WEB UI is used for initial setup only and some maintenance activity and does its job slowly but adequately.
2. Don't attempt to change RAID type on the fly if you have already loaded your data on this device, the reconstruction rebuild process may take days and you may even lose data.
3. Don't overload the controller with unnecessary services that you never intent to use, Disable services that you seldom use and you will find slight performance increase.
Off lately, in my spare time at home, I have been building NAS storage for my home network by making Frankenstein versions of commonly available hard disk drives and hacking routers and converting them as NAS servers in an attempt to have a common repository of media files in one place. I have been successful in most of my attempts as long as I keep my expectations right especially when it comes to the speed at which the data can be safely retrieved in a NAS environment. Please read my other reviews on Amazon and you will find products that I purchased to build a Home NAS.
Please see the pictures that I have posted on the product reviewed here on Amazon and provide feedback in the comments section of this review, if you do not like this review and voted that you did not like it, Please comment why you did not like it! All feedback is welcome.
Thanks for reading this long review.
*** Update May 02, 2011 *** Benchmarking was done!
Read and Write of Large VOB Files in CIFS Samba environment (Mounted Drive letter in Windows)
** Single instance with no other activity on the NAS
Read & Write Speeds
[*] Write speed of 19.1MB/Sec
[*] Read speed of 43.6MB/Sec
Read and Write of small JPEG files in CIFS Samba environment (Mounted Drive letter in Windows)
** Single instance with no other activity on the NAS
[*] Write speed of 13.6MB/Sec
[*] Read speed of 25.4MB/Sec
Performance test results using Latest Firmware File Version: 4000.1211 With RAID-0 with 4-disks (1TB 7200 RPM disks) on a Gigabit only Network, RAID-5 with 4-disks will be slightly slower but very small performance degradation.
*** Update May 09, 2011 *** Streaming HD media is now possible!
I started to play around with various RAID types and even updated Seagate Drive firmware in the hopes that this device can be used to stream HD movies to
Western Digital WD TV Live Hub 1 TB Media Center or similar Media streamers like
Boxee Box by D-Link, I finally can state this for sure that Steaming HD media is surely possible... Here is how..
1. You will have to delete the RAID 5 that comes from factory (Software RAID 5 using 4 drives)
2. Create individual RAID 0 using single 1TB drives or replace the 1 TB drives with 2 TB drives if you feel 1TB is too less.
3. Connect the Seagate BlackArmor to a Gigabit switch and Viola! Stream your favorite MKV or ISO DVD files to the Media streamers! they work great!
I personally feel that the slowness is due to the Software RAID implementation and many more services one needs to run this in Business environment makes this device slow for Media streaming right out of the box, but if you delete RAID 5 and setup 4 SPAN devices (No data redundancy is available) but the box can be used for media streaming easily in home environment.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still generally happy with these units after a couple of years..., July 15, 2009
I was reading the previous review about it being a nightmare to setup, and I must say it has been as easy as pie for me...Now I haven't put it under massive stress yet, but so far it has been very solid. As far as the software goes, I only installed the Seagate 'discovery' program, used it to get into the web interface, then configured everything from there. Once I configured the basics I uninstalled the discovery program and tossed the disk into the drawer. I am just using it as a file server, but my media center hooked into it effortlessly through SMB/CIFS, and everything else hits it with a hard IP address. So far it hasn't skipped a beat, even with simultaneous Read/Write operations.
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**UPDATE** (JUNE 2010)
It has been nearly a year since I wrote the review above, and I wanted to update my review:
While I have not used any of the ancillary items, (e.g. Global acess, or the seagate backup utility) the unit has been going strong without a single hitch. My setup is very simple, and I highly recommend putting this behind a U.P.S. of some sort (even a small one).
At the time I purchased this unit, I also bought another one (a less expensive one) to have some sort of basis for comparison. Now that it is a year later and I require another NAS for another application, I am going with this one again because performace-wise it has been rock solid, I found the interface to be clear, intuitive and well developed.
The next application I will be placing one in is a much more mission-critical position, and it will be tasked. In this application I will be able to obtain better metrics on it's speed, as I push it to the limit of it's network interface, and hit it with three different protocols simultaneously.
(UPDATE DECEMBER 2011)
After two and half years of service, here is my summary thus-far:
With two units in operation for a combined life of about four years, and have only had one drive go bad, which was easily replaced and rebuilt. (not under load, however) - note** both units were set to 'power saving' mode, which spins down the drives after a period of inactivity)
The BlackArmorNAS can handle multiple clients, but I would suggest limiting it's scope for household or a small business use, as it isn't what I would consider 'enterprise class'. The web interface is intuitive and solid, email notification works well, and it doesn't seem to have any problems dealing with multiple protocols (e.g. FTP transfers, Windows SMB and NFS data requests simultaneously).
Where this system falls incredibly short is in the built in 'media server' - it lacks in compatibility, and has virtually no options. Unfortunately, I imagine a lot of folks would be interested in using it as a media server, so I can't understand why Seagate dropped the ball in this department so badly, it is my only disappointment with this system.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just what I needed, August 23, 2009
Let me start my review by stating that I am a wedding photographer and a second grade teacher. (Note that I didn't say Network Administrator, Lab Tech, DeVry Grad, etc.)
Here's my experience:
Installation:
I had this thing out of the box and running in less than ten minutes. It came set up for Raid 5, which is what I needed so that was a big plus. If you want another form of raid, you'll have to walk through the steps to set it up yourself.
Size:
The unit itself was smaller that I expected (look in the Amazon description for measurments). This is a plus because it fits nicely ON my desk. With that being said, it is a beautiful looking unit. The shape and design are modern and easy on the eyes. An added bonus of it being able to sit on my desk is that I can glance over at anytime to check its status.
Software:
As far as changing the settings on the unit, I found it to be pretty straightforward. I would describe it like changing the settings on a router, except instead of going to an IP address, you click an shortcut that installs on your desktop.
Instructions:
The instructions that come with the unit are very minimal. They were enough for me to get the Raid 5 going and install the software. I did peek at their online documentation and I found it to be satistfactory to me. Because I didn't set up an iTunes server, use encryption, etc. I cannot speak about the ease in which these feature are set up.
Summary:
All in all, I am 100% satisfied with my Seagate Barracuda NAS. It was a turnkey solution for adding redundancy (backing up) my important files.
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