Customer Reviews
Serious usability, reliability, and performance problems 
2008-07-01
I purchased the LaCie implementation of this Intel small-office storage array early last year. The design specs for this Network Attached Storage array are impressive -- a four-drive storage array that can be configured as RAID 0, 1, or 5. Unfortunately, the system proved to be buggy from the outset. Despite many email exchanges with tech support, none of our users were ever able to see the array as expected -- we all had to map the drive using its IP address. Several times, the array simply disappeared from our network and had to be restarted. Then last week, the array disappeared from the network and stayed invisible. We could access the administrative controls via a web browser, but we could not access any of the files. I spent hours on the phone with tech support, but they were mystified. To make matters worse, this unit does not support automatic backup to another device, which makes backups time consuming and clumsy. As a result, if the unit fails, as ours did, your backup is likely to be out of date. In a nutshell, it does little good to have multiple drive redundancy if the unit itself fails.
I have had much better luck with the Netgear ReadyNAS small NAS RAID boxes (Netgear acquired this line from Infrant). The Netgear ReadyNAS Duo that I bought to replace the failed Intel SS4000 was much easier to install, is dramatically faster than the Intel SS4000, and has a much better set of features. Based on my experience so far, the Netgear ReadyNAS has been as pleasant a surprise as the Intel SS4000 was an unpleasant one.
Based on the reviews I've read on tech sites, the new Intel model, the SS4200, is a very good networked storage device. It's supposed to be screaming fast, and the software (which Intel got from storage giant EMC) is supposed to be great. In a nutshell, it looks like Intel's second try at small-office networked storage is a huge leap forward, but based on my experience, their first try (the SS4000) wasn't ready for prime time.
Do Not Buy 
2008-06-24
Setup is pretty easy, but slow. It took more than a day to initialize my 4x500GB drives in RAID 5. Nice looking unit, nice admin web interface.
Now the bad stuff - I just lost all of my data stored on the unit! After 2 months going back and forth with Intel support, I was told that there's nothing they can do. I lost a few days talking to them, and on top of that, I lost a good client because I lost some of their crucial data.
For some reason, my data just disappeared after a reboot. No prior warning of any kind, all of my hard drives are working fine, I can see the system on my network but all of my files are gone.
I was told by INTEL SUPPORT that the software raid got corrupted somehow and there's nothing they can do to fix it. To their credit, they tried to help me fix it but it did not work. The reason I bought this system was to ensure that my data is safe with Raid 5, never thought that the raid can get corrupted.
Also, when we are talking about cons, the system was always very, very slow, that is something to think about.
Do not buy. I tried to return it to Intel and get my money back, but they do not accept returns, you can just get a replacement unit. I am not sure I trust the unit any more to store any data there.
If you do buy it for some reason, make sure to check Intel site for working hard drive list - there are bunch of mainstream hard drives that are not supported, so make sure you know what you are buying here. If you buy a drive that is not supported and something goes wrong, they will just tell you to use supported drives.
Well made and reliable 
2008-02-15
We have been using one of these for about a year with 4 x 500GB Western Digital SATA drives. We buy the slightly more expensive WD drives that are made for RAID setups. Anyway, in RAID 5, we get 1.5TB of reliable network storage shared by several Windows XP machines and one OSX Mac.
It is a little tricky setting up each client machine but once you get it done things work well.
Two areas for improvement:
-Although we use SATA II drives in this NAS, it only supports SATA I speed, so we are losing a little. This isn't a big deal since this is being used for backup/archiving only;
-Drives attached to the USB ports cannot be formatted NTFS.
We have suggested these improvements to Intel. Hope their next version has it.
Anyway, the unit has been reliable and is very reasonably priced.
Please be Clear 2008-01-25
It would be nice if it were really explicit whether there are any drives included in this package...I infer from the price (and the lack of any mention of disks...?) that those are extra. But since I can't really tell I will move on and hope for something more helpful and less misleading.
