Promise SmartStor DS4600 & NS4600

Network and direct attached storage

By Scott Bartley / Tuesday, September 29 2009

Networking specialists Promise sent us two almost identical units this month. First was the SmartStor NS4600 network attached storage (NAS) device and second was the SmartStor DS4600 direct attached storage (DAS) device. For all intents and purposes these machines are the same apart from the way they are designed to connect to your PC. Obviously, the NAS version is designed to plug into your home network via an Ethernet port on a router, whereas the DAS version prefers to connect via either eSATA, USB 2.0 or Firewire 400/800.

The advantage of NAS is that it can be connected to a single point on the network and available to all other PCs simultaneously. It’s convenient and enables easy access to shared resources, the only potential downside being that access speeds are limited to the top speed of your network equipment. The NS4600 offers Gigabit speeds, but even this can’t compete with direct attached devices. So if speed is a requirement for your mass storage needs, then DAS may be the better alternative because it plugs directly into your PC’s sub-systems for maximum throughput. With that decision made, many of the other features of the two devices are similar or identical. Let’s take a look at the shared physical features of both units.

The SmartStor is a four bay enclosure (hard drives are not included in the price, these must be installed, by you, after purchase) that can provide up to 8TB of storage. Hard drives are loaded via a front panel and are hot-swappable. Installation requires a small plastic bracket to be screwed onto the drive, which can then be slotted quickly and easily into the enclosure. Most enclosures we’ve seen here at PC World use metal brackets so the plastic kind used here seemed a little flimsy. Promise tell us their reason for using plastic is that it decreases noise levels by absorbing internal vibrations, but we didn’t particularly notice these enclosures as being any noisier or quieter than other comparable units we’ve tested.

With the drives properly installed there is some further installation required before the NS4600/DS4600 is ready for use. This involves installing the supplied SmartNAVI software, which allows users to perform the initial set up (choose from RAID 0,1, 5 or 10 depending on your requirements) and access much of the advanced functionality these devices have to offer. Things such as DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) support for serving audio and video around your network, iTunes servers, USB printer sharing, automatic backup (it’s even compatible with the notoriously fussy Apple Time Machine) and photo albums.

Such features are pretty much stock standard for NAS/DAS device these days so to stand out from the pack requires top notch construction, good performance and well-implemented features. We wouldn’t say the Promise units are class leading in these respects but they’re certainly in the upper echelons, providing solid all-round performance and quality construction. The software interface is decent and gets the job done, but of all the NAS devices we’ve tested we’re yet to find a single one with an interface we’d take home to mum, this one being no different. Keep working on it guys.

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