Intel SS4200E Entry Storage System with Retrospect Software
From Intel
The Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E is a complete yet flexible hardware and software NAS solution that instantly adds storage capacity to small business and home networks. Powered by software from EMC, the worldwide leader in information management, the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E offers an intuitive user interface and easy 4-step setup process. Out-of-the-box RAID and Retrospect backup software together deliver the necessary security to protect irreplaceable digital data like business files, photos, videos and music libraries. With four USB 2.0 ports and four SATA ports, the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E can be connected to most digital devices as well as the home network, for shared, centralized data access.
Amazon Sales Rank: #37372 in Consumer Electronics Brand: Intel Model: SS4200ENA Dimensions: 21.00 pounds
The Intel SS4200E Entry Storage System is a complete and flexible Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution that instantly adds storage capacity to small business and home networks. Powered by software from EMC, a worldwide leader in information management, the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E offers an intuitive user interface and easy four-step setup process. It supports up to three terabytes of secure storage for irreplaceable digital data such as business files, database entries, photos, videos and music libraries. .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: 20px; } table.callout { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, serif; margin: 10px; width: 250; } td.callout { height: 100 percent; background: #9DC4D8 url(http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/callout-bg.png) repeat-x; border-left: 1px solid #999999; border-right: 1px solid #999999; padding: 10px; width: 250px; } ul.callout { list-style: inside disc; text-indent: -12px; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; } h5.callout { text-align: center; } The Intel SS4200E Entry Storage System offers: Intel Celeron processor 420 running at 1.6 GH and DDR2 512 MB memory. Headroom for up to 3 TB of storage. 4 USB 2.0 ports and 2 eSATA ports for peripherals support. RAID and retrospect backup software for data protection. The Intel SS4200E offers a compact package that can be customized for your network needs. View larger. Easily add four SATA drives for up to 3 TB of storage View larger. Easy Configuration and Set Up With four USB 2.0 ports and two eSATA ports, the Intel SS4200E can be connected to most digital devices, as well as the home or small office network, for shared, centralized data access. The system supports all PCs and networked devices, including Apple computers and devices. Through an automatic, easy four-step configuration process, you can set up a single, centralized location for the storage and protection of all your valuable digital data. With one point of access, each user on your network can easily share material without having to maintain separate copies on each networked machine. With up to four USB 2.0 ports at your disposal, you can also gather and share your peripheral devices with family and colleagues. The SS4200E also stores all your games, video and other multimedia applications and stream them to networked devices such as the Xbox 360, Wii, or MP3 networked devices. The system software will instantly recognize and support most standards-compliant hardware that is added to the network. Secure, Flexible and Scalable Solution for Your Data The SS4200E features out-of-the-box RAID and EMC Retrospect backup software that together will provide the necessary security and protection for your most important data. The Retrospect software automatically backs up all networked hard drives to the SS4200-E, which is then additionally protected by RAID technology. The security and data protection features can be configured to provide automatic notification when something goes wrong so that your valuable data can be saved. The SS4200-E was designed with flexibility in mind, giving you the ability to customize it according to your needs. The system comes without hard drives; you add only the storage capacity that you require. The SS4200-E features an Intel Celeron processor 420 at 1.6 GHz for high performance and power efficiency, and it includes enough headroom to accommodate as much as 3 TB of data in a RAID 5 configuration (up to four 3.5-inch SATA hard disks), using currently available 1 TB drives (sold separately). So as your digital storage needs grow--whether from your home video and photo files, surveillance system requirements, or networked gaming consoles--you can increase your storage capabilities on demand. The Intel SS4200E Entry Storage System is backed by Intel's 3-year limited warranty.
OK, I love this thing I have had a couple of Network Attached Storage devices and this is the wolf in with the sheep. I'm currently moving data over to it and getting a sustained 25MB/sec write across my gigabit ethernet connection, which is 10MB/sec faster than my more expensive NAS. Ok so 25 MB/sec is not huge but for the price it's excellent. Reads I am seeing over 50 MB/sec, I did a number of different tests because I did not think such a unit to be able to reach such performance. I installed into it 4 X Hitachi Ultrastar A7K1000, which are the older 5 platter 1TB drives. The A7K's are heavier duty than the deskstars rated at 1.2 million hours MTBF. But again for the Amazon price ($166 at the time of this review) you just can't beat them. The unit was easy to setup (I did download and installed the latest firmware from Intel before I did anything on the unit. 1.11 firmware) I did not install the packaged software, I just lookup it's IP address on my network and used the HTML web access to configure it. (Which is also what the software does, it just find the device for you) I have not tried the backup software and I doubt I will, I am using the NAS for live data which is why I love the read speeds. If I had the money I would buy another.... Oh and I almost forgot, the unit is very well made and quiet when running. It scared me when it first turned on, fans run at full speed. However a couple of second in the fans slow down and you can hardly hear it. Bonus for me, you can even dim the LED's with the 1.11 firmware. The high mode setting lights up the room. Two thumbs up from me Best Home NAS for the price I've had my unit for several months now, and it's performed extremely well. When I was looking for a NAS based system I did a lot of research and actually purchased several units to test. They all went back because the best transfer rate I could get was 12MiB/s and typical was under 10MiBs (read and write). While this unit does not have all of the fancy features some of the others does, it's performance as a network storage device is fantastic, delivering an average of 40MiB/s with 4 x 500MB drives in raid5, with highs of 45MiBs. One recommendation is to upgrade the unit's RAM from the stock 512MiB to 1GiB, doing this bumped my average transfer rate for read or write to 45MiBs. Upgrading the drives to a 4x1TB raid5 (Seagate 7200.12's) increased performance to an average of 50MiBs and high read speeds of 78MiB/s! The case is a bit large, but it's very quite and doesn't output much heat. It might output more than other NAS devices (according some reviews), but it outputs a LOT less than any PC I have. It also is very easy to access for adding or changing drives or RAM. There are two parts to the software, the server admin and client apps. The server is admin'd via a web browser interface, and is very usable. I've not had any issue trying to figure out how to do something, or any need to refer to documentation. The client software consists of a simple app that just looks up the unit's IP address and opens a browser for you (but if you give the device a name, you can use that without any need of that software). The other part is the backup software from Retrospect. I've used it for both Mac OS X and Windows backups and it works OK. It doesn't compare at all to Time Machine in terms of user friendly design, but if you read the documentation it's not terribly difficult to figure out. It definitely has a very old, complicated interface that should be revised, but it also does provide for a decent amount of control if you are looking for more complicated back scenarios. Overall I am quite impressed with this unit, and for $300 (when I purchased it) it out performs all other units I was looking at under $700. In fact I just got saw an add for the new TS-419U NAS that has a faster CPU, 4x the RAM and is over twice the cost and still only just outperforms the stock SS4200e, and matches my upgraded unit. Awesome! I bought this based off the first review. And I am inclined to agree. Setup was a breeze. I also did not install any of the software, and set it up via the web interface. I also had to upgrade the machine to the latest firmware. The box is whisper quiet and has an email notification system that will send you emails/updates on the status of your disks. This is probably one of the best NAS boxes I have played with. It has all the features that I wanted in a NAS system and would recommend this to other people looking to buy a home/small business NAS. I put 1.5 TB Seagate disks x4 in the system with RAID 5 giving me about 4.2 TB of usable space. And the performance is great. I have already transferred over a TB of data to the system and have had 0 issues so far.
