D-Link ShareCenter Shadow DNS-325 review
An incredibly low price makes up for slightly slow transfer speeds and a somewhat drab interface in this budget NAS enclosure
Specifications
2 disk bays, N/A storage supplied, 1x 10/100/1000Mbit/s Ethernet ports
The DNS-325’s performance in our speed tests wasn’t particularly impressive. It can stream media to several clients without interruption or dropped frames, but if you want to carry out large, frequent and fast backups you’d best look elsewhere. Its RAID 1 performance was rather poor in our large file transfer tests, averaging 16.8MB/s, but the DNS-325 proved itself in our small file test with an average 11.9MB/s. Its RAID 0 scores were much faster, being 14.1MB/s average for small files and 24.4MB/s for large ones. The slower RAID 1 speeds may cause dropped frames if you’re streaming HD video to multiple clients.
At a price of just £87, and providing a very respectable range of features, this NAS is perfect for re-using any old hard disks you may have around, and even though it isn’t fast it is a decent file and media server, which makes it a great Budget Buy.
Basic Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Price | £87 |
| Rating | **** |
| Award | Budget Buy |
Storage | |
| Capacity | N/A |
| Formatted capacity | N/A |
| Default file system | ext3 |
| Price per gigabyte | N/A |
| Interface | SATA2 |
| 3.5in drive bays | 2 |
| Free 3.5in drive bays | 2 |
| RAID modes | JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1 |
Interface | |
| Ethernet ports | 1 |
| USB direct access ports (front/rear) | 0/0 |
| Other USB ports (front/rear) | 0/1 |
| eSATA ports (front/rear) | 0/0 |
| Other ports | none |
Networking | |
| Ethernet connection speed | 10/100/1000Mbit/s |
| Universal Plug and Play support | yes |
| UPnP media server | yes |
| iTunes | yes |
| Print server | yes |
| USB disk server | yes |
| Web server | no |
| FTP server | yes |
| Protocols supported | TCP/IP, SMB/CIFS, AFP, FTP |
Miscellaneous | |
| Size | 132x104x198mm |
| Weight | 1.2kg |
| Vertical positioning | no |
| Ethernet cable included | yes |
| Additional features | Time Machine backup support, personal cloud storage/web file server, optional Squeezebox server, optional photo gallery, optional blog hosting |
| Power consumption idle | 16W |
| Power consumption active | 23W |
Buying Information | |
| Price | £87 |
| Warranty | two years RTB |
| Supplier | http://www.dabs.com |
| Details | www.dlink.co.uk |