zero_'s Full Review: Promise SmartStorâ„¢ NS4300N Network Storage Serve...
There's a lot to say about the SmartStor, but a lot of it's going to have to go unsaid on my part. Most of it involves one or more of George Carlin's seven dirty words.
The SmartStor is a Network Attached Storage device that stands alone as a "computer" on your network, capable of holding up to four SATA hard drives and chaining them together in various RAID modes. You're meant to buy it, plug it in, do some minor configuration, and it'll Just Work on your home or office network.
The trouble is, it doesn't Just Work. As a matter of fact, it's rather broken.
The specifications and marketing fluff, for instance, directly mention several times that the SmartStor has full support of ActiveDirectory, can be joined to your business network's domain, run NTFS natively, do ActiveDirectory file and user security, et. all.
This is a lie.
The SmartStor pretends to have ActiveDirectory support, but this feature does not actually work. Joining a domain always fails. Tech support is rude and singularly unhelpful, and the reps I spoke to were dismissive of my problem and experience, swore that they'd "never heard of such a thing," and immediately blamed my network configuration (no problems, the rest of my entire business' network is functional), ActiveDirectory setup (no problems, other machines - even Linux ones - can join the domain no problem), and repeatedly gave me false information and instructions in a desperate bid to get me off the phone.
For instance, one tech instructed me to run the nslookup command in Windows, and upon reading back to him the result immediately declared "It doesn't show a domain name, your domain is broken. It's a Microsoft problem, goodbye." This is false. Nslookup does not display the currently active domain unless you give it additional parameters. And, for the record, my domain was working just fine.
At several points the techs told me "DNS lookup doesn't work," "Domain resolution doesn't work," and various other methods of domain connection are also known not to work. At first they recommended using the IP address of the domain controller instead of its name. I did, and it didn't work. I called back and the story was now "Oh, IP address resolution doesn't work. Use a fully qualified domain path..." Which is exactly what I did the first time.
For business users this is a complete non-starter. Promise's tech support is terrible on the verge of insulting. The product specifications are a lie. The packaged software is incomplete and buggy: The configuration wizard fails every time, even when following the included instructions to the letter. When installing it, the EULA in the installation program is a short blurb from the cookie-cutter installer framework instructing the developers to "add EULA text here." Attempting to configure the SmartStor via the configuration wizard when on a different subnet as the SmartStor fails and erases your data with no recourse. It is a totally incomplete product.
The documentation is laughable and includes only best-case-scenario walkthroughs of how to configure the box via the buggy software on Mac, Gnome, and Mac OS X. No table of error codes is provided in the printed, electronic, or online documentation on Promise's site. And believe you me, I had to look at a lot of error codes. Error messages in the browser based configuration utility are nondescriptive and in broken semi-english: "And AD Fail to Join."
Tech support personnel immediately and snippily asked if I'd installed the latest firmware. No firmware revisions for the SmartStor have been issued for a year. The latest firmware is dated early 2006.
Promise is visibly uninterested in completing or supporting this product (caveat below). It doesn't work. Do not buy.
I'm compelled to make a note that I tested this product with a very early version of its internal firmware, and early versions of its supporting software besides. Not a beta or prerelese version, mind you: An actual retail version of the firmware and software, as delivered on a unit shipped to me from CDW (if I'm allowed to drop names), quite some time after the product's initial release.. I've heard tell, including directly from someone at Promise (see this review's comments section) that there have been considerable updates made to the device's firmware to address the issues I've raised in this review.
Do these updates actually any of the problems I had with the SmartStor? Hell if I know. I don't have one anymore -- After determining it to be wholly inadequate for the tasks it was advertised to perform, I sent mine right back to the retailer. But I can say with absolutely no degree of certainty that your mileage may vary from mine.
Does that make sense?
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 419 Driver Availability: Windows, Linux, and Mac
The Promise Technology, the worldwide leader in SAS/SATA RAID, brings its proven enterprise-class RAID technology to the SOHO/SMB users. SmartStor saf...More at PCNation
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