Pros: Quiet, Super Fast, and easy to install, and solid construction.
Cons: can't increase capacity on-the-fly, single partition, no torrent client, and need blank HDs
The Bottom Line: For a entry level storage or for someone who want to hack, this is a wonderful system. If you want all the bells and whistles without the hassle, look elsewhere.
igglue's Full Review: Intel SS4200E Storage System w EMC (SS4200ENA) Sto...
EMC and Intel worked together to bring this offering. I am not a fan for EMC for several reasons. But that's mostly an in-depth technical reasons (culture at EMC and working with Iomega. Which EMC acquired and rumor has it that this acquisition apparently killed this deal. No big loss for us). Basically, this is a stripped PC with a solid 64bit celeron. Which seems slow but in case of most NAS, it's probably an overkill. Which is probably why this system is faster then most NAS you can buy, at least at this price range. But let's talk about the basic of what this means to a typical 'home' user. 1. 4 Disk System2. Gigabit ethernet port3. 4 USB and 2 ESATA ports4. 4 Internal SATA ports What's included1. ss4200-e2. 2 metal 'stand' brackets3. Ethernet cord4. Power cord5. CD6. A big setup pamphlet Setting up1. Put in BLANK hard disks. (Ones with existing data will not work!)2. Put 4 bright screws in with hand (no tools)3. Open case4. Open metal bracket5. Insert HD, attach 2 cables per drive6. Close bracket/case7. Power on8. Insert CD and follow instructions Seems simple? It sure is. And it's really easy to mount drives. With FIO router as my DHCP/DNS, both my Mac, PC, and Linux systems are able to mount the drives via the name without a problem. What's so easy?1. Includes backup software. I haven't used it. Maybe because I used to work on backup software and I detest them.2. Works with MediaPlayer and ITunes. If you open your iTunes, your file server will shot up under 'shared'. In fact, I'm playing a song right now.3. Just drag and drop files4. Setting up the drive is easy. Just power on and it's good to go5. Some fancy options. LIke write cache support when UPS is on.6. Dead quiet once it's up. Fan can go high speed and really noisy but that's only when it first starts up. The rest of the time it's dead quiet.7. Easy to access. No tools needed. Seems very easy so far. So why don't people like it?Well, there are few really limiting factors to this box. And few of them are what I call a 'deal killers'.1. Lack of scalability. You can't add drives to this system. You are pretty much 'stuck' with what you have.2. No mix and match of drives. Well, not as nice as others. Other NAS allows you to mix and match drives of different sizes. Well, not with this guy.3. 1 partition. It's nice to have couple of partitions.4. Can't expand to ESATA. You can attach ESATA drives but it can't be part of the raid. Which to me doesn't make sense.5. No client like Torrent. Lots of NAS out there support torrent so you don't have to keep another PC active.6. Must have blank hard drives. This is PAINFUL. You can't just kill the partition. You have to zero out parts of the drive or the box will just hang.7. No video card. Since there's no video card, you either have to go look for a pci-e 1x video cable (found on ebay for < $20), and put a slow pci-e video card or do what's call an unattended install of an OS. The latter is painful. Unfortunately, EMC really stripped the software to the barebones. Although it has some user functionality, lack of partitions as well as forcing users to use 2 or 4 drives really puts a damper to what could be a killer NAS. But mainly the inability to 'add' drives really kills me. Or even create 2 partitions with 2x1.5tb and 2x1tb drives. For most people, it won't matter. But for some of us hard core guys watching 1.6ghz of processor just sitting there idle seems like a waste. Especially since it's not in sleep mode but just quietly sucking down power. So why would I recommend this? Well the best thing about this box is the speed. It basically pumps the data into the system so fast that you need a gigabit network. I clocked from a seagate 7200RPM 500gb momentus into the NAS through a gigabit at 48MB a second. That's a whopping 400mb of network speed. So if you want this system to scream, attach it to a gigabit switch that won't step down if other non-gibabit devices attach to it. Basically if you want the fastest you can't go wrong with this system. Keep in mind that I used a mirrored drive with 2x7200rpms with 32megs of cache and copied about 20 gigs. Overall, I am pleased with the system. But I'm saddened that software is bare bones.
The Intel SS4200E Storage System w/ EMC software; no hard drives. Intel SS4200E Entry Storage System with Retrospect Software - SS4200ENA The Intel ...More at Compuplus.com
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