Promise SmartStor NS4700 review

RAID specialist Promise Technology has a launched two new products aimed at small businesses as part of a revamp of its SmartStor NAS appliances. One, the SmartStor NS4700 reviewed here, can accommodate up to four 3.5in SATA drives. A six-bay version (the NS6700) is available, without disks, for £1,775 + VAT for those needing more capacity.

The NS4700 is a pretty substantial device, weighing in at 7.1Kg with all four disks in place. It's also very well constructed, with the drives mounted in sturdy plastic carriers that slide easily into the hot-swap bays.

Ours came with a set of four 2TB disks, although you can buy the chassis bare (£610 + VAT) and source disks of your own. The only limitation is a lack of support for the latest 6Gbit/s SATA technology. Still, that's not unusual on this kind of small business product at present and shouldn't be seen as a major drawback.

Power comes from an eco-friendly 80 Plus certified supply, with automatic power down of the disks when not in use. The appliance can also be programmed to power off and back on again according to a pre-set schedule, and to stagger drive spin-up to further minimise energy consumption.

A large fan at the back provides most of the cooling and, although this proved a little noisy at first, it soon settled down. That said, it isn't the quietest of boxes and we wouldn't want to sit next to it.

The gigabit network ports are at the rear along with four USB connectors, and a further USB socket is located at the front. The rear USB ports are there to attach external disks, primarily to take backups, and are limited to USB 2.0 speeds rather than the faster 3.0 implementation.

The port at the front is a little different in that it can transfer files in the opposite direction to a pre-set folder on the NAS storage. And that can be done simply by plugging in a memory stick or USB disk and pressing the copy button underneath.