Kit of the Year More and more Register Hardware readers started storing files in network-attached drives this year, and we began our coverage of this hot topic in earnest. We haven’t looked at every model from every manufacturer, but here are the Nas boxes that most found favour in 2009.
Qnap TS-219P Turbo
Cool and quiet on the outside and chock-a-block with features on the inside, the TS-219P has a more comprehensive firmware than any other dual-bay Nas we’ve tested. It’s not the quickest product of its kind and its power management needs a small upgrade, but Qnap has created a Nas box that geeks and laypeople alike will spend many hours enjoying.
Review The term Network Attached Storage or NAS seems rather simplistic and doesn’t really do justice to a device like Promise’s Smartstor NS4600, which comes with four drive bays and a heap of server abilities. Add to this its polished black shell, funky blue lights, built-in power adapter and exquisitely quiet fan, and you’ve got yourself a living-room-friendly storage behemoth.
Review The term Network Attached Storage or NAS seems rather simplistic and doesn’t really do justice to a device like Promise’s Smartstor NS4600, which comes with four drive bays and a heap of server abilities. Add to this its polished black shell, funky blue lights, built-in power adapter and exquisitely quiet fan, and you’ve got yourself a living-room-friendly storage behemoth.
Smartnavi provides controls for both Macs and PCs
Installing Promise’s Smartnavi application enables control of most functions from a PC. Among other things, it lets you schedule backups of your PCs and start bittorrent downloads. With the latter, you drag and drop the .torrent file onto a “drop zone” – a small icon that floats on the Desktop – to get the NS4600 downloading. SmartNavi also works with Macs and is used to integrate the NS4600 with Apple’s Time Machine backup application as well as supporting Bonjour networking to access storage devices and printers. Read the rest of this entry »
