Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A simple and effective network RAID storage solution, August 24, 2007
The Promise SmartStor is similar to the Buffalo TeraStation which I also own. Here are the differences:
- The TeraStation comes pre-configured with drives while the SmartStor lets you add your own, potentially giving you more flexibilty and also letting you save money by finding the best deal on disk drives. I configured mine with four 750GB drives giving me 3 terabytes of raw storage. I selected the RAID 5 option which formats it as 2.25 terabytes of available storage and lets you recover from any single drive failing by simply replacing the bad drive. The downside of RAID 5 is slower writes but it's worth it for me since I am using it as a media library which means you mostly read data and only write once when you first set up your library or add media to it. The beauty of RAID 5 is it protects ALL your disks in an array using only one of them as overhead. So in a four disk array you get the full capacity of three (and in an eight disk array you would get the full capacity of seven).
- The case design is sleeker than the TeraStation. The disk drives pop in and out very elegantly and easily and the overall case is smaller while squeezing in all the same functioanlity. This case design blows away the original TeraStation which needed to be completely dismantled to replace a disk. The newer TeraStation Live and Pro II now have easily removable disks like the SmartStor but the case has gotten even bigger than before.
- The fan noise on the SmartStor is a little louder than the TeraStation (which is the only reason I gave it four stars instead of five). I set mine up in the closet of my study and with the door closed I can barely tell it's there. Bottom line if it was going to sit under or on my desk I'd probably go with the TeraStation for it's quieter operation, otherwise I think the SmartStor is a winner.
In any case, I am never going back to unprotected storage now that I have experienced these systems.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not really the best value.. Hidden shortfalls that the matketing stuff doesn't tell you...., October 22, 2008
This unit is nice to look at, but under the hood, it falls short. I will be returning mine as soon as I migrate the data off of it.
The Synology CubeStation CS407e is only a little over $50 more, and has LOTS more features, is QUIET, and has a UI that has had much more thought put into it. Be sure to look at them both before you buy..
Top 10 issues I have with the SmartStor:
1. It is more noisy than my computer! That's a show stopper right there.
2. No local (web based) file managment. If you need to move large chunks of data from one share to another (see item 3), you have to move it all over the network and then back again into the share you want.
3. Cannot rename shared folders. This is just an unacceptable missing item that is a repeating theme in my opnion.
4. Documentation covers only the most obvious things. No documention on the plug-in's except the most rudementary and obvious things. No documention on finer points of how they implement RAID and RAID recovery.
5. If you add a 1TB drive to a RAID array of 3 750GB drives, you just lose that extra 250Gig of space. That disk capacity should be available for other volumes...
6. Rebuilding a 750GB RAID 5 Volume took well over 24 hours..
7. Extending a RAID 5 volume to add a foruth (1TB) drive is even worse. Mine has been going for three days now and is only about 65% done.
8. Some documentation says it works with XBOX 360, other documents say it's not suported and will be supported in FR4 of the firmware, which it says is to be released in August. It's mid October, still not there.. At best, they are not keeping their documentation straight. I could not get my 360 to see it, with all the updates applied.
9. FTP sever drops a logged in user at the volume level instead of the share level. If you have more than one volume, you have to hunt for the volume that has the share with the files you want. Another tpyical lack of attention to detail.
10. FTP is not configurable to use SSL or other security, and uses real accounts. So you have to pass access information to your data over the net in clear text. Completly unsafe to use in real life this way.
11. Bonus problem: If the NAS loses it's connection to the LAN in any way... Say you restart the switch, re-route the cable, whatever. Ypu are done. The unit becomes completely unresponsive and you have to shut it down via the power switch to get acceess to your data again.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
very loud for a media storage unit, March 1, 2008
I probably won't be keeping this. I've invested a lot of money in this project - this unit (300), 3 x 1T harddrives (600), replacement fans for the main exhaust fan, a set of torx bits for the security screws, quite a bit of time in driving. The review at small net builder did warn on the fan noise, but without taking the unit apart, what you can't tell is that the fan noise is not solely from the main exhaust fan - quite a bit of the fan noise is coming from the power supply exhaust, a small, high-RPM fan.
The power supply runs hot, and is located below the drive bays. This makes it quite inaccessible and a real threat to the drive in the lowest position. The drive carriers are a joke. Can't afford all four of your drives at the outset? Do not lose the countersunk screws for fixing the plastic to the drive - no other screw will do, not even another countersunk screw.
I bought this device thinking "great, I can set this up, do a secure access to my network from teh office when need be, and yank down files - all without leaving a PC on."
Only problem is, this unit is louder than my PCs are. It is, in fact, louder than two of my PCs running at the same time, one with the case open as I write this. The PCs aren't 'silent,' either - an AMD 3700 in a retail package, a Pentium D something with the retail fan and heatsink.
Both power supplies have been replaced with higher-output, quieter power supplies, but the fans in use for CPU and case exhaust are vanilla.
I definitely want a capable NAS headend for the house. I would be very surprised if it's this one, unless the upgraded firmware does a lot of power management and magically fixes the p/s fan.
For an office, this would probably be a decent unit if you can stand the slow rebuild times - it's noise level isn't off the charts for an office, certainly better than a Snap server or other real kit would be.
But for most office environments, this unit is overkill, a decent RAID1 two drive unit ought to be fine; if you need a box that can do what this one can do, you probably have a room to throw it in, and ought to be looking at a Snap server. If you want something to work with at home, well, plan on locating in a place where it's okay that it's ALWAYS loud.
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