Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 NAS Device Review

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, August 19, 2009, 12:56 PM EDT

With the growing popularity of cloud-based storage solutions, such as the Amazon S3 and Nirvanix services, many businesses--both large and small--are eschewing traditional onsite file servers, and instead opting for offsite, third-party storage solutions. But the ongoing cost of maintaining cloud-based storage as well as the often unproven reliability of it makes it a less than ideal solution for some businesses; and this leaves those businesses with the conundrum of how to store and serve files, provide safe backups, and enable remote access, without breaking the bank.

For such businesses, maintaining an onsite Network-Attached Storage (NAS) solution is often the best answer. NAS devices are much less expensive to own and maintain than traditional file servers, and are often much easier to manage--sometimes even requiring very little networking knowhow. Business-level NAS devices typically differ from consumer-level devices (which are meant for home networking environments) in that they often offer greater data reliability in the form of RAID, and they sometimes even offer data encryption options to keep your files safe from prying eyes.

One such NAS device that is geared for small-businesses is the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440. The 440 is a four-bay NAS device that comes with four, user-serviceable, internal SATA drives, which can be configured as RAID 0, 1, 5, or 10 arrays, or as JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Depending on which RAID mode is being used, drives can be swapped out without needing to shutdown the device--commonly referred to as hot-swapping. The 440 also includes a total of four USB 2.0 ports, which can accommodate additional storage in the form of external hard drives or for attaching a USB-based printer to make the printer accessible to users over a local network. Another feature of the 440 is that it includes two Gigabit Ethernet ports for port-failover or aggregation.

Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440 NAS Device Review

Tags: NAS, security, Backups, Remote access, Media streaming, Network-Attached Storage, iTunes server, Seagate BlackArmor NAS 440, DLNA server

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com