Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 (4TB)

A downside to the BlackArmor is that its write speed could be better compared with its read speed. However, once it's set up, the NAS offers very fast read throughput rates, hassle-free remote access, great expandability, and a vast amount of storage capacity: 8TB and beyond. Note: The device is sold in 2TB, 4TB, and 6TB capacities. Currently, you will need to supply your own drives to reach 8TBs, as Seagate hasn't released that model yet. Also, the NAS's high initial price point, while not a problem for businesses, may stress most consumer's pocketbooks. If you're looking for a simple NAS for the home, we recommend the WD My Book World or the Iomega Media Home Network drive. For most small businesses, however, the BlackArmor has what you need.

Design and setup
The BlackArmor NAS server has a bold-looking design with four bays on its front and a top that protrudes further, showing off its tiny LCD. Each bay can hold one SATA hard drive of any capacity, meaning that currently the device can hold up to 8TB of storage. Currently, the device comes in three versions: with two hard drives (2TB BlackArmor 420) or with all four bays populated (4TB or 6TB BlackArmor 440), and you can completely replace these hard drives yourself, without any tools. You can also hot-swap any hard drive when the device is in operation in case of hard-drive failure. Seagate recommends you only use its hard drives and only provides tech support when you use its hard drives, but both BlackArmor versions work with SATA hard drives from any vendor.

Considering its large size, the BlackArmor's fan is surprisingly quiet. Also, it is the first NAS server we've seen that lets you replace its cooling fan. This is a useful feature, as over time the fans tend to collect dust, become noisier, or just stop working.

On the back of the BlackArmor are two Gigabit Ethernet ports and three USB ports, with another USB port on the front for quick and convenient thumbdrive connectivity. The device supports both USB external storage devices and printers. A small LCD on the front displays the status of the USB-connected device, providing information such as IP address, link status, data, time, and so on. On the right side of the LCD are two navigation buttons that we found rather confusing to use at first, as they are not labeled. The BlackArmor's backup solution is based on Acronis' excellent True Image and comes with a license for 10 computers. One of its more useful features is the capability to quickly recover a crashed computer by booting from the included software CD that lets you perform a complete system recovery from a backup contained on the BlackArmor NAS.

Thanks to the included discovery software utility, setting up the BlackArmor was a simple task. Once you have everything setup, the utility assists in finding the NAS server on the network and will let you map network drives to its two default share folders: "public" and "download." Fortunately, the utility isn't needed to access the NAS as it fully supports SMB protocol and can be easily found using Windows Explorer.

You can also use the discovery utility to launch the BlackArmor's Web interface, but this is where the simplicity ends. Unfortunately, you will need to figure out a lot by yourself as we found the NAS server's manual rather scant on details.

Features
Though it lacks support for IP cameras, the BlackArmor 440/420 NAS server has a long list of features. In this review, we touched on only those we found significant or unique to this device.

General features: The BlackArmor has a standard user account management. By default, the device comes with an "Admin" account that lets you log in and create other user accounts. Though this default account has administrative privileges, it doesn't include all of the features of a user-created account. For example, you won't be able to use the Admin account to access the NAS remotely over the Internet. This is confusing since most, if not all, NAS servers, give the "Admin" account the same (or more) access to features as it does regular accounts.