SmallNetBuilder

Tritton Simple NAS - Basics

The Tritton Simple NAS is very small. When I first took it out of the box, I thought that maybe I had been shipped a model designed to hold a laptop 2.5" hard drive. But after reading the instructions, it was clear I had the right one.

Figure 1: Tritton Simple NAS

The box is designed for a standard 3.5" drive (up to 400GB supported) and is only 7 1/2" long by 4 1/2" high. Looking it over, I saw a fan vent on the back along with a power connector, a 10/100 Ethernet jack and a power button. There was also a punch-out space for a USB connector, but it was not open.

Also included in the box is a power adapter, short UTP network cable, and a CD containing software to assist in data backup to the device. Although Tritton advertises Macintosh support, the backup software runs under Windows only. All of the other NAS I've looked at have used a USB 2.0 port for additional disks or for a printer. But Tritton has chosen to limit this device to be a single-disk file server and nothing else.

The case is made of medium-weight aluminum with a plastic front sporting a single Status LED that indicates both power and disk access. There is no light to indicate a problem with the drive, nor is there an "Disk Full" indicator. When I opened the device up to install my hard-drive, I initially thought I was missing some parts that I would used to attach my drive. There was nothing more than the case and the main circuit board with the attached back panel. But when I read the directions, I found that installation was a matter of screwing the hard drive directly to the plastic edge surrounding the main circuit board and sliding it into the aluminum case.

This made me a bit nervous that I'd short something out, but Tritton has designed it so that everything is properly isolated. There is also a cable that runs from the main board to the LEDs on the front. It wasn't a problem plugging this in, but when I took the box apart later, it was a real pain to unplug. So it appears as if the Simple NAS is designed for one-time assembly.

Once I had the device put together, I plugged in a network cable, power cord and turned it on. I immediately noticed that the box was louder than any other of my NAS units. Perhaps a side-effect of having such a small case caused Tritton to go with a more powerful fan.

Like all other NAS devices I've looked at, this one acquires an IP address via a standard DHCP request and then is configured via web browser. Tritton advertises support for both Windows and Macintosh, but I started with my Windows laptop. The instructions indicated that the web browser should be directed to http://storage/ and this worked fine from my Windows system, but my Apple OS X system failed to resolve the URL.