Seagate STAR401 Diskless System BlackArmor NAS 400 Network Storage Server for SMB User

Pros: Cheap

Cons: Slow speeds over 1gbE
Slow backup speeds
Sluggish UI

Other Thoughts: I was extremely disappointed with this NAS, the read speeds over a gbE were significantly slower than competing products, the UI was slow and cumbersome, and backups/rebuilds are super slow. Decided to return and purchase a Synology instead.

Pros: Cheap price
Small unit
Status display

Cons: Horrible setup
Horrible support

Other Thoughts: Picked up 2 of these units during a Newegg sale. What should have been plug-and-play has turned into plug-and-curse-like-a-sailor.

Setup on this thing is a mess. You can't set it up until you have drives slotted, then it has to build it's array. Only then can you try the discovery software to access the unit. I had mine unplugged from my network at the time and it set itself up with 192.168.2.1 address, when I plugged it into my network later it grabbed a DHCP address. While the unit could be "discovered" it could not be managed, apparently it formats the drives with the IP and that IP can't be changed without reformatting the drives (read this in the documentation).

So I pull the drives, wipe them on my desktop and return them to the unit. Now it complains about foreign drives and refuses to boot! I've tried other drives, wiping them again, seems the unit is bricked!

Will try to straighten this out for a few more days before I return both units as lemons.

Seagate's support pages for these are a mess, apparently the units were originally made by Maxtor, half the documentation refers to contacting Maxtor for support or using Maxtor utilities!

Based on my experience so far I can NOT recommend this unit to anyone.

Pros: Inexpensive

Cons: After a year, one drive in the Black Armor 400 NAS failed. it was setup as RAID5, but the entire volume (all 4 disks set as RAID 5 volume) failed. Seagate support would not assist - the raid 5 is a "warm fuzzy" that does not work - and they don't mind lying to you to sell you one.
There is no redundancy here so everything is lost. Also, you can't replace a single drive as this is a sealed unit. you would have to replace the entire NAS -

Pros: I have two of these units. The first one I purchased is over two years old and have never had a problem. I use it as a movie and music server. The first one I took the 4 one terabyte drives out and replaced them with 4 two terabyte drives. In the second unit I purchased it empty and have four 3 terabytes drives. I will agree it did take almost a day to format the four 3 terabytes drives but as you get older you have more patience.

Cons: I wish these units supported Sata 3 although for viewing of movies it would be a moot point.

Other Thoughts: I had no problems in setting up the shares in either unit. I did upgrade each as new firmware became available.

Pros: Bought this NAS for my home entertainment center. Originally purchased w/ one 2TB seagate HD. Drive install was very easy. Setup was a breeze. Recognized right away. Settings menu via the web browser is easy to navigate. I like that has two ethernet ports in the back. I'm using both, plugged into my WD N900 router for the fail safe option it has. Oh, the WD router came free with the purchase of this NAS which is an extra plus. NAS seems well built and very quite. I've streamed HD shows to both my raspberry pii's and latop at the same time with no issues. One hardwired and 2 wireless. Got a 3TB HD on the way to fill up my second slot.

Cons: None, so far

Pros: cheap, plays with windows nicely.

Cons: discovery software crashes on start with 10.8.2 os. Support told me to reboot the device even with it working with windows fairly well for software crashes on macbook . Rebooted many times,no change. Took 17 hours to format drives. you probably will have to work with network to get more than 2mBS. i am at 15MBs now. Network was fine with good speed for other devices all along

Other Thoughts: I got a idiot who replied to my email to tech support,
not very good document,
did not work with time capsule.
software should work with os especially macs.

Pros: 1. Physically well designed. The hard drive enclosures are some of the easiest to manage, which is nice. Not much else good to mention though.
2. Lan aggregation through 2 ports.

Cons: 1. It takes litterally days to format and setup 4 drives.
2. After days of waiting for the default setup, ONLY THEN can you reformat it to RAID 0 (RAID 5 is default), and then you wait another 2 days. Horrifying. BIOS or Windows features can do this in minutes.
3. These have a high rate of failure, even if your drives are fine. It's a product that you hope and pray will boot up okay every time.
4. The devices webpage (admin area) is unstable and often times is difficult to find in the "Discovery" window.
5. Sometimes a drive goes offline and requires it to "Recover", which is another 2 days. UNREAL.
6. All-in-all, it had potential, but ended up being one of the worst NAS devices ever made.

Other Thoughts: Don't waste your money on this unit, or any of Seagates NAS devices.

Pros: I put four drives in and everything worked. I used seagate 3TB drives that I took out of seagate usb drives. I did a full format on them before I installed them and it just worked, and it has been working without any issues

Cons: The price went up since I bought mine. When it drops back down I will buy another one.

Pros: Good

Cons: Good

Pros: NAS is an attractive little package with good speed and performance.

Cons: included documentation leave a little to be desired but further information can be had online.

Other Thoughts: Most of these reviews are bogus, and i seriously question most these folk's tech knowledge of 5-high. If you know how to set up NAS units and you know how they function this unit it fairly seamless. It is a low priced unit and does not operate like a 2k+ NAS but definitely outperforms it's price point. I am using this at my home and as far as one customer stats that hd streaming is out of the question. This is not true, as i do it on a daily basis with no hiccups. You need to understand your network infrastructure and the basic concepts of networking and storage before you can make erroneous claims and generalizations about a product and it's maker