Evesham SilverSTOR XS review

Network attached storage (NAS) devices are useful in the workplace or home, as you can share and back up files over a network without having to dedicate a PC to the task.

In a home environment this can be especially useful if you need to share gigabytes of music, video and photos between several computers.

The SilverSTOR is about the size of a Shuttle small form factor PC and has 1TB of storage thanks to four 250GB SATA 150 hard disks, although other capacities are available. The hard disks can be hotswapped quite easily since the key-lockable trays slide out of the front of the unit. Hard disks are simply screwed into these trays, so they are easy enough to replace.

Blinking LEDs indicate disk activity and whether a hard disk has failed or not and the SilverSTOR can even send you an email in the event of disk failure. Two Gigabit Ethernet ports are present and a mini PCI WiFi adaptor can be added. If you need wireless connectivity, the SilverSTOR can instead be connected to your wireless router via an Ethernet cable. However, accessing your data wirelessly will be a lot slower than using Ethernet.

The SilverSTOR offers software-managed RAID 0, 1 or 5 arrays, so you can choose between different levels of data redundancy or just maximise the amount of available storage capacity depending on your needs. You can also configure spanning, also known as Just a Bunch Of Disks (JBOD), which doesn't offer a performance increase or data redundancy. With RAID available, configuring the SilverSTOR XS for this mode seems like a strange choice to us.

Configuring the various options may require you to refer to the manual, especially if you aren't familiar with the different RAID variants, so it's a shame that the manual is a PDF rather than a printed guide.

The SilverSTOR attaches directly to your Ethernet router or switch, so administering the SilverSTOR is done using a web browser on any network-attached computer, Windows or otherwise. Initial setup using the printed quick installation guide was easy enough, although a setup wizard would have been even better.

Users and groups of users can be given differing levels of access to different folders located on the SilverSTOR so no-one can see, copy or delete anything they shouldn't. The web interface for configuring these Access Control Lists is quirky and fiddly, with a logic all its own, although the Access Control Lists can use an Active Directory server instead if you have a Windows Server PC.

Folders can be assigned a drive letter using the standard Windows Map Network Drive command so they show up in Windows Explorer in the same way as any other disk.

Over an Ethernet network, our large file test wrote files at 7.19MB/s and read files at 6.39MB/s; small files were written at just over 1MB/s and read at a snail-like 0.14MB/s. This performance is in line with similar devices, although the small files performance is quite poor.

The SilverSTOR's hotswapping capabilities and multitude of configuration options make it an appealing option for small and medium-sized businesses that have a Windows domain to manage their networks. However, it's expensive for the capacity. Buffalo's Terastation offers the same capacity, is easier to configure for home environments and, more importantly, costs half as much.

Author: Alan Lu