On the Inside

While there is no front panel access to the drives, the SS4200-E is designed for accessibility and serviceability.  In fact, you can remove the cover and install the drives without any tools.  You remove the top cover by unscrewing the two captive screws and lifting the panel off.  Once removed, you’ll see the location for each of the four drives (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Inside view

For each drive bay, there is a single captive screw that holds the drive bracket in place.  Each drive bay is equipped with four “RVR” (rotational vibration reduction) screws for mounting a supported drive (Supported drive capacities are from 80GB to 1 TB.)  Though normally shipped without drives, our evaluation unit supplied by Intel arrived with four 750 GB Seagate Barracuda ES.2 drives (ST3750330NS) installed. 

According to Intel’s technical specifications, the estimated time for a trained technician to remove the top is 0.5 minutes, and the time to remove and replace a drive is 1 minute.  Based on timing myself for these operations, I have to agree that they are in line.  I was disappointed that there is no way to lock the top cover to secure the drives.  With such easy accessibility and no need for tools, drives could be quickly removed even if the NAS were secured with a security cable.

The SS4200-E is powered by an Intel low voltage Celeron M420 running at 1.6 GHz.  It ships with 512 MB of DDR2 SDRAM (PC4200) in a single slot that can be swapped for 1 GB module.  This is significantly more memory than you’ll find on most NASes, and is, in part, partially responsible for its excellent performance.

Check out the slideshow for more internal photos

Setup

Client setup is quite simple.  You merely insert a CD and run the HTML-based installation.  A wizard doesn’t guide you through the procedure, but if you click on the software tab and then install client software, the process starts.  Client operation is virtually the same on a PC or on a Mac. 

The setup installs a “sohoclient” application and places an icon on your desktop as well as in the system tray if you're running Windows.  It also installs Retrospect Express, EMC’s backup software.  To access the SS4200-E, you merely click on the icon.  Alternatively, if you know the IP address of the device, you can type that into your browser.  You access the SS4200-E through HTTPS (secure http) via a self-issued certificate.  Either way, you end up at the SS4200-E’s home page (Figure 4).

Figure 4: SS4200-E home page

Tags: BYOD, Intel, NAS, RAID,

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