Intel SS4000-E Entry Storage System Intelligent Network Storage System

Setup is pretty easy, but slow. It took more than a day to initialize my 4x500GB drives in RAID 5. Nice looking unit, nice admin web interface.Now the bad stuff - I just lost all of my data stored on the unit! After 2 months going back and forth with Intel support, I was told that there's nothing they can do. I lost a few days talking to them, and on top of that, I lost a good client because I lost some of their crucial data.For some reason, my data just disappeared after a reboot. No prior warning of any kind, all of my hard drives are working fine, I can see the system on my network but all of my files are gone.I was told by INTEL SUPPORT that the software raid got corrupted somehow and there's nothing they can do to fix it. To their credit, they tried to help me fix it but it did not work. The reason I bought this system was to ensure that my data is safe with Raid 5, never thought that the raid can get corrupted.Also, when we are talking about cons, the system was always very, very slow, that is something to think about.Do not buy. I tried to return it to Intel and get my money back, but they do not accept returns, you can just get a replacement unit. I am not sure I trust the unit any more to store any data there.If you do buy it for some reason, make sure to check Intel site for working hard drive list - there are bunch of mainstream hard drives that are not supported, so make sure you know what you are buying here. If you buy a drive that is not supported and something goes wrong, they will just tell you to use supported drives.

I had to buy two of these, the first one failed with all of my data on it, I bought the the other to recover the information. It worked yes but that unit failed after two months. I had luckily learned my lesson and backed up everything onto a few dozen Blu Ray Disks.This unit has serious issues when trying to back up a file that is over 2GB even after an update to the latest firmware, the device just freezes. I would not recommend this device for any one. Buy something else, something more reliable and robust.

This was pretty slow with the transfer rate.

The device comes in a very-well made box and even includes antistatic bags to "productize" it for your own resale. That is kind of cool, really. the reason I mention the box is because it clearly was well-thought out. The device includes 2 USBs which I believe are for backing up your storage or--more likely--extend your storage capacity. I could not find a way to do the backups automatically.There were several "issues" I ran into.The LEDs on the front are not really helpful. They only indicate activity. They do not indicate whether you have a 1Gbps network (some NICs do). They do not indicate an error (red-yellow-green are pretty cheap). They do not indicate that it is coming up or shutting down. So after pressing the power button you have to wait several seconds before using it or knowing it has turned off. Repeatedly pressing the power button, I fear, only makes shutdown more uncertain.There is the problem with drive sizes. You can only have up to 1GB drives *and* (like all other RAIDs) the drives have to have the same size, otherwise everything is "dummied down" to the smallest capacity. Even then, I do not believe that larger drives will actually work. With RAID-5 you only get 3GB from 4GB drives. That suits me just fine. However more drives today /start/ at 2GB, so the limitation will cramp any newer desktops or laptops. The reseller contacted me--now, this is really different and cool--to ask how large of drives I will be mounting on it. When he learned that I had 4-1GB drives, he advised me to get the latest firmware update. When I got it, however, it already had a more recent firmware version than what I found on Intel's site.The RAID is kind of funny. RAID-5 is supposed to distribute the data across four or five drives so that if any one fails the others can recover without skipping a beat. Some say that there is an "index drive" and it should fail, all is lost. That is RAID-4 not RAID-5. Now, the instructions say you cannot remove one of the drives without losing data. Also, you have to keep track which drive goes in what bay. That is *not* RAID-5. RAID-5 is tolerant down to 3 drives. IOW, in theory you should be able to move, swap, or remove a drive seamlessly. I guess that may not apply here; so... what happens when a drive dies?The device supports only a few standard network file systems. As far as I can tell, HTTP is not one. NFS (Unix/Linux) and CIFS (Windows)protocols are the primary ones; there are others, but they are less common.The web interface is awful. It is slow and hard to find what you need/want. Also, you need a Windows box to connect to the device initially. The tool is a Windows app that searches for the device. Doing a port search failed for me, and because I have a linux box, I had to scrounge up a Windows box to ferret out the device. Ultimately, I got it set up and contrary to many comments, the device did have the latest firmware, it was not slower than my wifi, it works, etc.Would I recommend it to anyone? No. It clearly needs experienced hands.

This is an absolute bargain. As shipped, it only supports 500GB drives. However, with a simple firmware upgrade, downloadable from Intel, it will support up to 2TB drives, which will give you 6TB of storage in a RAID5 configuration. This is an older product, but it's easily configured through a web browser. Intel has a Vista version of what it calls the "console" that will run under Windows 10. However, all it does is find the NAS on your LAN and, if you want, map the NAS drive. This NAS only uses LEDs -- no LCD display -- so you'll either need to use the console software to locate it, use some other software, e.g. LanHelper, or check your router and see what IP address it assigned. It seems reasonably fast over my 1GB LAN. In short, this seems like a pretty solid NAS, easy to setup with better-than-average documentation. If you don't need the latest and greatest, this NAS is a good choice.

It would be nice if it were really explicit whether there are any drives included in this package...I infer from the price (and the lack of any mention of disks...?) that those are extra. But since I can't really tell I will move on and hope for something more helpful and less misleading.