Western Digital ShareSpace 4 TB 4-Bay Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage with RAID 5 - WDA4NC40000N

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Binding: Electronics
Brand: Western Digital
EAN: 0718037733647
Format: CD
Label: Western Digital
Dimension: 9.45 x 12.99 x 11.42 inches
Manufacturer: Western Digital
Model: WDA4NC40000N
Publisher: Western Digital
Studio: Western Digital
Warranty: 3 years warranty

Features and Descriptions

• Box Contents - Network storage system with RAID, Ethernet cable, 2 hard drive mounting rails, AC adapter, Software CD, and Quick Install Guide
• Compatibility - Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS X 10.4.11+, and 10.5.2+
• Dimensions - Height 7.73 x Depth 6.30 x Width 7.84 (196.2x160.1x199.2mm)
• Weight - 10.78 pounds (4.9 kg)

This high-speed network-attached storage system with capacities up to 8 TB and a space-saving footprint gives you all the benefits of a big time data center without the need for a big time IT department. Perfect for centralizing and sharing data or streaming media on a small office or home network.

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Ratings & Comments(Average:)

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- How much are your baby's pictures worth?
A couple of months ago the primary hard drive on my home workstation suffered a very bad crash. I wound up having to get a Sabrent USB-DSC5 Serial ATA or IDE 2.5-/3.5-Inch to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter with Power Supply to triage that old hard drive and salvage some of my data out from it. However, even with tools and a pretty good hardware/software background I wound up losing some data but fortunately, I was able to recover the vast majority of the data from the drive -- which included 3 years worth of baby pictures (that would've been the worst loss) but I did lose some tax records, quicken backups, etc. The data I managed to recover wound up spread across 3 portable drives and two laptops because I didn't have an empty drive of that size.

That was jus a horrible experience and it left me very worried: single hard drives fail, even backup hard drives fail.

That led me to this little device. It's really 4 hard drives working in an array (called a RAID array) that act as one single volume (drive). The data goes into this device and is redundantly spread out among 4 drives. If one hard drive in this device fails, pull it out, slap a blank one in its place and the array rebuilds itself and you lose no data --- it works.

This is the same technology that is used by corporations to back up their data.

A few things to note, this is not a 4TB box. It comes with 4TB worth of drives but in order to get data redundancy you'll likely have to use RAID 1 or RAID 5 (it comes preconfigured for RAID 5). This means that you lose about 1/4 of your storage right off the bat to the redundancy. Out of the box, this thing showed 2.68TB of redudandant storage available (about what I expected). You can certainly use it as 4TB plain drive but you won't get any redundancy: I highly recommend using RAID 5 or another redundant mode.

In any case, setup was a pinch. I plugged this thing into the wall and plugged it's ethernet connection into my network switch which is plugged into my wireless router and all my laptops around the house instantly saw it.

I installed the drivers from the included CD on my laptops (Windows 7 and Windows Vista) and very qickly I had my H: (Home drive) up and running. I'm migrating and reconsolidating my data back to my new NAS (network attached storage) as I type this.

PROS:
- very small (it's a little cube about 9x9x9
- very easy to install
- you don't need to have a specific computer turned on (it's stand alone)
- plugs directly into the network and is seen by all computers
- it's not wireless (so it's more secure, security is handled by my home's wireless router which makes it wireless to me)
- comes with automatic backup software so you can backup your computers to it automatically.
- Big (4terabytes)
- WD offers data backup services to offsite, which means you can even get that level of redundancy.

CONS:
- I've heard that this is not a "true" hardware RAID but rather a "software" RAID but this isn't a datacenter, it's for my home and all I want is for my data to be redundantly safe.


A few other things:

- if you're a digital photographer, you know that pictures are big (since getting a DSLR, my picture collection is upwards of 100GB and growing, so definitely if you're a digital photographer, you need someplace safe to store those giant picture collections).
- if you have an iTunes subscription, this thing has a build in iTunes and Media Server built in (and music and video-movie collections are also gigantic and you don't want to lose them.
- increasingly the need for data, video, image storage in a regular home is increasing exponentially and devices like this are becoming not just needed but indispensable

I think in the years to come with movies, pictures, and music taking up even larger amounts of space, the need to store these things securely is going to become paramount and devices like this are going to become a commonplace in the home.

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- Strongly recommend against this NAS RAID
This product is a fine example of what happens when salespeople who do not understand technical requirements of customers and a hardrive company attempt to get in the NAS business. The whole point of a RAID array is to protect and provide a safehaven for your information. This device is enormously deficient in many areas, the main one being that your data is not safe if the main controller software fails to operate. I have had their drive for a little over a month now, and when a device fails completely in this short of time, it is a real warning sign that it is poorly designed and thus undependable. After speaking to a call center in India and waiting on hold for 10 minutes, I was finally transferred back to a call center back in the states somewhere. I was then put on hold for an additional 30 minutes, and then was connected to a technician. After about 5 minutes of working with him, he proceeded to explain to me that I was in need of returning the device to my retailer, and unless I took it to one of their data recovery specialists, it would be lost. In summary, from my humble opinion, I cannot depend on western digital and their products. I will go elsewhere and be sure to not recommend their product, as they do not wish to take care of their customers needs.

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- DO NOT BUY THIS NAS!
DO NOT BUY THIS NAS! I would give this thing a 0 if that were possible. This is a terrible RAID 5 solution. After only 2 weeks of use one of the hard drives appears to have failed...but the whole point of RAID 5 is as long as only one drive fails you should be able to rebuild the array and not lose any data. That was most certainly not the case. After 2 unsuccessful attempts to recover the one drive failure with help from the WD forums (and eventually WD customer service - they didn't reply until about 1.5 weeks after i contacted them)...my drive is still inaccessible as is all of my data. In fact, now according to the configuration/status panel all 4 of its hard drives are now having issues and appear to be wiped of my 2+ TB of data. Everything appears to be gone, every last digital picture, my music, my movies, my work files, etc...all gone.

Now i'm looking at paying thousands to a data recovery specialist IF they can even do anything for me! Horrrible drive, DO NOT BUY THIS NAS! I'm devasted by this, years worth of data seemingly gone in an instant...somebody needs to sue these people for such a terrible product. Hey, maybe that'll be me with my data recovery bill? Seriously though, do yourself a favor and avoid this product or if you already own one, buy another brand of NAS and transfer your data to that one ASAP, then return the WD sharespace...its worthless.

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- Slow Resposne Times / Horrible Warranty Service
I've had this NAS for less than 2 months. Acceptable response times unless >1 PC is accessing it. 2, maybe 3 simultaneous reads are ok but 2 or more and the device in unsuitable as a decent media server. It's barely acceptable as a file server. If timing is not an issue, this product is ok.

My biggest complaint is the warranty service. One of the drives failed. That in of itself is a problem since I've had this device for less than 2 months. I was unable to complete the online warranty service unless I wanted to RMA the entire ShareSpace. After speaking with their customer service, I may just return it. After removing the failed drive to use its serial number for the RMA, the customer service rep (who spoke broken English, although that's not why I was on the phone with him for over 40 minutes) informs me the warranty for the drive is "out of region". I could care less. I just expect them to fix it. The customer service rep informed me that I would have to remove all of the drives to obtain the serial number of those drives before he could complete the RMA. Ridiculous. I have no interest in tampering with good hardware for such an insane process. If the RAID were restored, fine. But without RAID that data is too important to risk for this nonsense. I expected I would be able to retrieve this information through the embedded web server, nope. The customer service rep had no idea if that was possible, and from what I can tell, it is not.

Bottom line, buyer beware.

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- Good stuff
It worked plug and play with my mac system. However, documentation was limited for the more advanced features. Still, so far.. so good.

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