Introduction Inside, Features Performance Comparative Performance, Closing Start

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Introduction

A few months back, we reviewed Seagate's NAS 2-bay and NAS 4-bay. Both products are powered by a Marvell ARMADA 370 running at 1.2 GHz with 512 MB of RAM and offered good value - especially in the diskless versions.

This review will focus on the Seagate NAS Pro product line of two, four and six bay NASes. Each model is offered in both diskless and diskful configurations shown in Table 1, using various combinations of 2, 4 and 5 TB disks that provide storage from 2 TB up to 30 TB.

Only two models have one storage configuration that yields the same amount of raw storage. There is an 8 TB configuration for both the 2-bay model (2X4TB) priced at $699.99 and for the 4-bay model (4X2TB) priced at $899.99. Of course if you want fault tolerance, the 2-bay NAS will only yield 4 TB of fault tolerant storage using a RAID 1 configuration. The 4-bay model will yield ~ 6TB of fault tolerant storage using RAID 5.

The NAS Pro 2-bay shown in the callouts below looks very similar to the "Non-Pro" NAS. The 2-bay Pro model lacks an LCD panel, so, like the 2-bay Seagate NAS, status is conveyed using multi-colored LEDs and two backlit buttons. The 2-bay NAS also lacks the 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports found on the 2-bay NAS Pro. Each model in the NAS Pro family also has a USB 2.0 port on the rear panel to supplement the two USB 3 ports found on all Seagate NAS and NAS Pro products.

Seagate NAS Pro 2-bay callouts

Seagate NAS Pro 4-bay callouts

For both the 4-bay and the 6-bay NAS Pro products, it looks like the front panel callout for #1 was just picked up from another model. #1 actually points to scrolling buttons to control the menus displayed on the LCD Panel.

Seagate NAS Pro 6-bay callouts

As noted above, the NAS Pro 2-bay lacks an LCD panel, so you'll still need to keep the LED status chart handy. The 4-bay and 6-bay NAS Pros have an LCD panel, but much of the status information is still displayed using LEDs.

Seagate NAS Pro LED status summary

The table below, also taken from the hardware manual, shows the menu for the LCD panel found on the 4-bay and 6-bay NAS Pros.

Seagate NAS Pro (4 & 6 bay models) LCD Menu