There are a few names that spring to mind when thinking of NAS (Network Attached Storage) and if we are honest Promise Technology really is not one of them. In fact, if we are completely honest, until a few weeks ago we were not even aware that Promise was producing NAS devices. Still, Promise is a company that we are very familiar with, but for other reasons.

Over the years we have used numerous Promise RAID controllers, as we have found them to be both excellent value and reliable. So then we have high hopes for a Promise NAS device given their past track record with storage related products. Still, while there are similarities in developing storage controller cards and network attached storage devices, the latter requires more than just well designed hardware.

See, there is a key ingredient that can quite simply make or break a NAS device, and we often find this is where it tends to go wrong. Products such as the new Promise Technology SmartStor NS4600 rely heavily on software, as this is how the user not only sets up and customizes the NAS device, but it is primarily how they use it.

For example, you only have to look at software applications designed by various motherboard manufacturers with the intention of doing wiz bang things, to understand that not just anyone can program software that actually works and more importantly works well. For this reason, when we began testing NAS devices a few years ago, things did not exactly go smoothly.

Back then products from companies such as Thecus and Qnap looked very promising on paper, but when it came time to set them up, walking on glass with bare feet turned out to be more enjoyable. Then along came Synology, and to our amazement they got it right the first time, and have continued to improve since then.

Now we have the SmartStor NS4600, which is designed to deliver 4-bay NAS technology to the masses. Still, the remnants of the early days continue to haunt us, and we fear that while the sleek and shiny SmartStor NS4600 looks the goods, it could be let down by poor software. Nevertheless, this is our first experience with a Promise NAS device, and we are hoping for a smooth glitch free experience...

Helping to make the SmartStor NS4600 look a little more modern are the large number of blue LED lights, which thankfully are not all that bright, so the activity lights won’t go turning your office into a night club. The front door, and I say door as it opens as a door does, has two unusual air vents in it, these do distract from the design somewhat and they are on the front which is a little unfortunate.

Pushing air through the SmartStor NS4600 is a single low-profile 80mm fan, which we found to be very quiet when operating. Cool air is drawn in through the rear of the case and exhaled out the two vents located in the case door. Interestingly, while the case door vents appear to have dust filters, the fan grill where the air is sucked into the case does not.

What we found most remarkable about the design of the SmartStor NS4600 was its size, this 4-bay NAS device is tiny. Amazingly it measures just 18.8cm tall, 15.2cm wide and 22.3cm long, while the total weight without hard drives installed is just 2.5kg. This is impressive, as the Synology DS409 which is also a 4-bay NAS device measures 18.4cm tall, 16.8cm wide and 23cm long. Although this does not sound like much, it means that the Synology DS409 does in fact have a considerably larger foot print.

However, what makes the size of the SmartStor NS4600 even more remarkable when compared to the Synology DS409, is that it also houses the power supply within the unit where as the DS409 features an external power supply. These power supplies are actually quite large, and we often find it annoying having to tuck the version that comes with the Synology units out of the way somewhere.

Moving on, there is no forward mounted I/O connectivity on the SmartStor NS4600 as everything is out back, which is not all that uncommon for a NAS device. Around the back we have a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a single eSATA port, and a Gigabit LAN port, along with the power supply connector.

Pulling the SmartStor NS4600 apart to show you the internal workings was a little fiddlier than we are used to, primarily because it is not meant to be taken apart. Where as many NAS devices that we have tested in the past require you to remove the case lid to install the hard drives, the SmartStor NS4600 is a little smarter about how it approaches this. Using hot-swap bays there is no need to remove the case lid, as drives can be quickly installed using the case door.

Eventually we did manage to break into the SmartStor NS4600, which will have likely voided our warranty, so we strongly recommend you do not do this, particularly given you have absolutely no need to. As the pieces slowly came apart we developed more and more of an appreciation for how well the SmartStor NS4600 is designed.

With the mainboard removed it was time to find out what makes the SmartStor NS4600 tick. It turns out that this NAS device is powered by an Intel EP80579 processor operating at 600MHz. While this is far from the most powerful processor we have found lurking inside a NAS device, it is a considerable step up from the Freescale MPC8343 400MHz processor of the older NS4300N model.

Helping out is 256MB of DDR2 memory, which is stuck directly to the PCB, making it impossible to upgrade the capacity. Again while we have come across NAS devices with far more memory, the 256MB capacity of the SmartStor NS4600 should get it by. Of course there is also a Promise controller featured in the NS4600, as it makes use of the FastTrak PDC42819 RAID controller, which as you guessed supports four SATA ports.

Promise then go on to say that the “SmartNAVI can discover the client side network topology and optimize the SmartStor for the user's environment. This technology enables the user to configure SmartStor in two steps without any network knowledge. Additionally, an enhanced interface helps users access services on SmartStor via system navigator and quick menu. The easy Setup Wizard requires only few clicks to complete SmartStor NS4600 installation.”

Unfortunately the SmartNAVI software that they are banging on about turned out to be terribly buggy on our Windows Vista 64-bit test system. For a few hours this software alone had me pulling my hair out, and although I did eventually get the SmartStor NS4600 working, I must admit that I have no idea how. This experience and more will be covered in the next section of the review, but for now we will just say that the SmartNAVI software turned out to be anything by intelligent.

Like most NAS devices the SmartStor NS4600 features embedded web-based GUI management software. The WebPASM allows the user to configure, monitor, shut down, and restart SmartStor NS4600 from either a local or remote site. The web-based GUI management software provides a basic setup wizard, user and group setup, file and print sharing, RAID management, various backup methods, network configuration and power options.

Other features, such as the Download Station, Photo Albums and Media Center, must be accessed using the SmartNAVI software. This means that the web-based GUI management software is really only used to setup basic things such as user accounts and shared folders. While it can do a few other things, it is far less powerful when compared to the Synology Disk Station Manager 2.1 software.

Furthermore, the WebPASM looks like something that was developed in the early 90’s, it really is a truly awful looking interface. Compare the screenshots to the Disk Station Manager 2.1 software and you will quickly get an idea of what I am talking about. Overall the software side of things is not looking good for the SmartStor NS4600 as it lacks flexibility, function and design.

Once the four hard drives were installed we booted up the SmartStor NS4600, which was actually a little harder than it sounds. There is a large circular button on the front of the device that looks suspiciously like a power button. Therefore, being the adventurous type I pushed it, though to my surprise nothing happened, which didn’t seem right, and before you ask the power was connected correctly.

This had me stumped long enough to consult the user’s manual, and I cannot tell you the last time I used one of these. Anyway, I worked out how to use the manual and it too agreed that the large circular button was indeed used to power the SmartStor NS4600 up. Since it wasn’t doing that, I started to look all over the unit for some other way to get it fired up.

Around the back, hidden away in silver camouflage, was another circular button that looked very much like it could get things going, and to my amazement it did. Still to this day I have no idea why the real power button is hidden around the back, with a decoy on the front. Oddly enough the front button does turn the SmartStor NS4600 off if you hold it for a few seconds, but then fails to turn it back on, go figure.

Anyway, once this was all worked out we installed the SmartNAVI software on the test system, which supposedly possesses artificial intelligence. Unfortunately this intelligence had trouble connecting to the SmartStor NS4600 despite locating it on the network almost instantly. When it would grant us access to the SmartStor NS4600, the setup wizard was quickly run and in the end a volume was created.

Unfortunately, once this was supposedly done, we tried to connect to the SmartStor NS4600 and launch the web-based GUI management software to no avail. The SmartNAVI continually gave us an error stating that there was a problem with the SmartStor NS4600 and if it persisted we should reset the entire system. Having done this countless times over the next hour or so, we tried every possible setting in the wizard.

Configuring the SmartStor NS4600 to use our network settings did not seem to work, as the device itself would forget our settings and revert back to the defaults. However after repeating the process over and over again in an effort to try and work out where it was all going wrong, it just worked, and I was so overwhelmed with joy that I really didn’t want to know why, it was just enough that it was finally working.

Once the SmartStor NS4600 was working we were less than impressed with its abilities. The software simply lacked the ability to customize certain things, and in the time that we had to play with the SmartStor NS4600 there were aspects that we could not work out. For example, when browsing the SmartStor NS4600 from a networked computer there are a number of unnecessary folders creating clutter that cannot be removed.

Every user that accesses the SmartStor NS4600 will come across at least seven different folders in the root directory. Despite the fact that we did not want to use certain features, they were still enabled anyway, and we had stuff like a “www” folder for the web server and a “download” folder for the Download Station, which we were not using.

This is a minor issue, but it was one that we found quite annoying, and it showed that the SmartStor NS4600 lacked the ability to be personalized. The SmartStor NS4600 would not allow us to remove these folders as they were required despite the fact that we were not using the associated feature. When compared to the Synology NAS devices for example, the SmartStor NS4600 is seriously underwhelming in the software department.

Intel Core 2 Duo Test System Specs - Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 (2.60GHz) - x2 2GB DDR2-1066 G.Skill (CAS 7-7-7-18)- ASUS P5Q Pro (Intel P45) - OCZ GameXStream (700 watt) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - ASUS Radeon HD 4550 (256MB) Software - Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 9.5 Promise Technology SmartStor NS4600 - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) Synology Disk Station 409+ - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) Synology Disk Station 109 - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII) Synology Disk Station 107 - Western Digital Black 500GB (Serial ATAII)

The buffered performance of the SmartStor NS4600 is impressive, matching the performance of our desktop test system. Interestingly the SmartStor NS4600 was able to smoke the Synology DS409+, which for some reason is not all that impressive in this test.

The SmartStor NS4600 delivered excellent performance when testing with the file system benchmark in SiSoftware Sandra 2009. Here the SmartStor NS4600 matched the read performance of the more expensive Synology DS409+, while the write performance of the DS409+ was 25% greater. This meant that a basic modern desktop with a single hard drive was faster in this particular test.

Finally the last SiSoftware Sandra 2009 test that we are going to run is the network bandwidth test. As you can see, the desktop test system does well here, peaking at 66MB/s. The SmartStor NS4600 and Synology DS409+ are limited to roughly 56MB/s according to this test.

In terms of performance the SmartStor NS4600 is quite impressive really, matching the latest Synology products in most tests. The above CrystalDiskMark results shows the SmartStor NS4600 closely matching the performance of the Synology DS109+ and our desktop system when configured using a single hard drive. The Synology DS409+ was faster, but so it should be given it costs a fair bit more.

The next CrystalDiskMark test looks at sequential 512KB read/write performance, and as you can see our desktop test system running Windows Vista is not too good when it comes to reading such small data blocks. The SmartStor NS4600 on the other hand was very good, providing a throughput of 52MB/s, making it just 8MB/s slower than the Synology DS409+. The write performance on the other hand favored the SmartStor NS4600, which was a surprise.

Although the Synology DS409+ did regain control when running the 4KB read/write test, the SmartStor NS4600 was not exactly far behind, delivering our second best result. Again you will notice that our Windows Vista desktop test system sucks when working with these small data blocks.

To simulate moving a large file, such as a disk image, we first uploaded it to each configuration and then downloaded it, measuring the time it took to move a 5.59GB file in each direction. Uploading to the SmartStor NS4600 took 149 seconds, while the Synology DS409+ took 121 seconds. Then when we downloaded the same file the SmartStor NS4600 made us wait 179 seconds. This is not bad going, though it did make the SmartStor NS4600 one of the slowest tested NAS devices.

Now we are going to look at the transfer speeds that those times translate into. The RAID0 test system reached an upload speed of 80MB/s, while the average download speed was 71MB/s. The SmartStor NS4600 was considerably slower with an upload speed of 37MB/s and a download speed of 31MB/s.

Because the SmartStor NS4600 uses less memory and a lower clocked processor, it is around 33% less power hungry when compared to the Synology DS409+. This made the SmartStor NS4600 considerably more efficient than the desktop test system.

Rather it was a case of being frustrated with the SmartStor NS4600, because it was only let down by poorly designed software. The build quality of this NAS device is superb, as it truly is one of the best designed 4-bay products that we have come across. Then there is the performance, and while the SmartStor NS4600 might not blow your socks off, it does have some go about it.

When compared to the more expensive Synology DS409+ we found that the Promise Technology SmartStor NS4600 was surprisingly competitive. For around $420 US the performance of the SmartStor NS4600 is as good as any 4-bay NAS device. In our subjective testing the SmartStor NS4600 was able to sustain transfer speeds of between 30-40MB/s as advertised.

Again, while the SmartStor NS4600 is not going to set any new speed records, the performance does match the price tag, and ultimately that is all we can ask for. Unfortunately, with any NAS device performance is only half of the equation, and without the software to back it up you may not be getting what you paid for. Sadly this is the case with the SmartStor NS4600, as we found the software side of things to be a complete let down.

Rather than keep things simple, it seemed as though Promise were trying to make the software too powerful and this is where it all went wrong. Rather than house all the settings and options in the WebPASM software, they tied many of the SmartStor NS4600 functions into the SmartNAVI utility. This means this software must be installed on every computer that plans to use features such as the Download Station, and that quite plainly is a pain in the backside.

Ideally we would have liked the option of using either the SmartNAVI or WebPASM software to utilize these features. Furthermore, having the ability to completely disable and remove certain features would have also been nice, particularly if you never plan to use them. Comparing Synology’s Disk Station Manager 2.1 to the SmartNAVI software is like comparing chalk and cheese, the Synology software is just that much better.

Given that Synology now offers a non-plus version of the DS409 that carries the same price tag as the SmartStor NS4600, we would have trouble recommending the Promise product simply due to the software issues. Furthermore, the DS409 features twice as much memory, and a processor that operates at twice the frequency, so we can only assume that the performance will be as good or better than the SmartStor NS4600.

Overall we were pleased with the performance that the Promise Technology SmartStor NS4600 delivered, we were wrapped with the design and build quality but we were underwhelmed by the software. This has been the case with so many NAS devices in the past, and therefore it is not all that surprising that the SmartStor NS4600 has been let down in this regard. For now we hope that Promise can improve this aspect of the SmartStor NS4600 with further Firmware updates, helping to make it a more competitive product.

Reviewed By Steven Walton