The Sum ‘n’ substance:

Thumbs up: The Black Armor offers quick throughput; genius solutions for back up; plenty of customizable options; mammoth size storage space; remote access; easy to expand; supports RAID 5, RAID 0, RAID 10 and Span.

Thumbs down: Advanced features of the black armor can be utilized only with in depth networking knowledge; instruction manual is not well-explained; does not have separate ports; not compatible with all routers.

Inside the trunk: NAS server; host connectivity :gigabit internet; maximum storage capacity of 4 TB; a status LCD;1.2 GHz Processors Installed; RAM of 256 MB ; RAID type controller with Serial ATA-300 interface; Network adapter ; Data link protocols followed: Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Ethernet : Transport protocols Bonjour and File Transfer Protocol; Remote management protocols HTTP , HTTPS ; Network Services Compatible: FTP, HTTP, HTTPS , Microsoft CIFS , Apple Bonjour Protocol , Network File System (NFS); also contains E-mail alert and FTP server.

The whiz kid speaks: The black armor is definitely one of the cheapest massive storage devices on the block. Priced at $750, the armor beats everybody’s favorite the Synology DS209+ price wise. Because the DS209+ comes in at $500, minus the hard disks. The black armor is available in 4 TB and 6TB capacities and can be expanded to 8TB, if you put in your own cash.

Razzle dazzle: The Seagate Back armor has a compact rectangular cabinet covered in a smart black paint. The LCD screen sits on the protruding forehead. Inside the cabinet there are four different ports, each port is capable of holding one SATA hard disk of any capacity. That means the maximum storage capacity will run up to 8 TB. The cabinet comes fully loaded with the hard disks and is available in three versions; a 2TB; a 4Tb and a 6TB. All theses drives are easy to replace with any external tools or help. At the bottom of the front panel, there is a USB port, a power button and three blue LED’s which signify the status and power on modes. At the back you have the exhaust fan and three more USB ports and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.

Inside dope:
The LCD screen on the front panel, displays the status of the USB drives connected to it, and supplies info such as link status, IP address, data, time, etc. There are two unmarked buttons to the right hand side of the LCD, which are supposed to be the directional keys for the LCD. They may be a little confusing at first, but you get used to it real quick.

The key to Seagate Black Armors back up solution is the very intelligent Acronis True Image, which provides licenses for 10 computers. This makes it capable to perform a full system restore on a crashed computer which is stored in the armors as back up memory.

Some of the other unique and effective features of the armor include the creation of separate accounts. This can be done through a default ‘admin’ account, admin account can be used to access the device, but it has very limited access like you cannot use the remote NAS server to access the net. Every account holder can choose to create his own public share folders. So the black armor can work as a domain member. The NAS offers four ways to set up the hard drive: RAID 0, Span, RAID 5, and RAID 10. For setting up RAID 5 you need to have three hard drives and for RAID 10 all four a re necessary. Or a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. Configuring the RAID 5 with four 1 TB hard drives will take you an hours time, minimum. The black armor also features an iTunes and digital media server which allow you to stream music, video, and photos to compatible devices like PC’s, video-game consoles and set-top boxes. For this, all you have to do is, place the media in a shared folder. Then, there also is a download management feature, which automatically downloads latest features and updates and most of all can manage up to three downloads at a time. It can be set on a timer, lie late nights to avoid the bandwidth traffic jams. Next we have something called the Global Access solution that allows people to access its content using the internet while keeping up with the security.

The performance of the black armor was extremely good, although the write speed was apathetic compared to the read speed. The performance can be classified into:

RAID 0: specialized in performance
Write speed: 179.7 Mbps
Read speed: 334.0 Mbps
RAID 5: specialized in balance of security of data and speed transfers
Write speed: 145.0 Mbps
Read speed: 336.6 Mbps
RAID10: specialized in security. Combination of RAID 0 and RAID1.
Write speed: 160.2 Mbps
Read speed: 310.6 Mbps

This device can also support both USB external storage devices and printers but lacks in support for IP cameras.

Nitty-gritty: The Seagate black armor has a laundry list of features that offer a good performance and a very good value for money. It functions perfectly well for small and large businesses and also for home user with more than one computer and large data. The only advice left would be, join an advanced networking course to allow you to optimize the functions of the Armor, because it is that complicated.

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