Whilst there are many NAS boxes of similar performance to the H340, the comparison charts see up against other multi-drive NAS boxes reviewed by Reg Hardware recently. Here we see that the H340 easily out-paces Buffalo’s LinkStation Duo in all operations and compares favourably with the Asus TS-Mini (also a WHS device) in write operations, but ultimately falls behind it in read operations. This may be somewhat related to the fact that the H340 is running two HDDs whilst the TS-Mini has two bays; it only had one HDD installed. This, coupled with the lack of RAID support in Windows Home Server, is likely to reduce the H340’s read ability.
Solidly built, but aimed more at home users rather than power users
Although it’s not the fastest multi-drive NAS, there is certainly sufficient bandwidth to comfortably stream 1080p content and perform any other typical I/O task with relative ease. Certainly, Acer has set the bar high for expandability with a multitude of additional ports and an incredibly intuitive drive removal system, which allows even a novice user to expand their storage ability in a matter of minutes. As for power consumption, there's room for improvement but it's not that much above others of this ilk clocking up 40W at idle and 44.9W under load.
Verdict
So if you need a NAS solution which is built to withstand a tactical nuclear strike, holds four disks, has six expansion ports and interacts well with most popular devices, then keep your attention focused on Acer’s Easystore H340. However, the lack of RAID support will certainly put some folk off right from the start and you’ll have to be prepared to do battle with the McAfee nagware too. That said, if you are an average home user and impartial to these things but still want to store more holiday snaps than you could ever take, then Acer H340 is designed to appeal to you. ®
More Nas Box Reviews… |
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 Asus
Home Server TS Mini |
 Freecom
Network Media Centre |
 Netgear
ReadyNas NVX |
 Iocell
NetDisk |
Acer Easystore H340 2TB Nas box
COMMENTS
RAID
No RAID, no interest, couldn't you have said that on the first page though so I didn't waste my time reading all 3 pages....
Not bad
For the price, £400 for the 2TB - recently built myself something similar using the nicer looking Chenbro ES34069 and a Jetway Atom JNC92-330 which has a RAID5 4-port SATA daughter board, being the 330 it has a little more "umf" than the Acer and the RAID array allows me to use four 1.5TB drives in RAID5 for 4.5TB of redundant storage - the difference in price for 2TB drives was a little much to justify the extra space, which frankly isn't really needed anyway as this is only half full. Used WD Green drives to save a little more power too.
All these slight improvements though ended up costing me around £850, so really I could've had two of those and been £50 better off ;)
Still - the Chenbro looks tons better, great little case.
Chenbro ES34069: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=42
Jetway Atom JNC92-330: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=47#jnc92-330 daughter board: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=34#modules
Absurd
How can losing all your data when a disk crashes be an improvement over RAID for a home user? (As opposed to a business user? You mean, home users WANT to risk all their data on a single drive? )
On Linux, I avoid RAID hardware and use software RAID (for 2- or 4-disk servers, simple mirrored disks rather than RAID-5). Why on earth can't WHS do anything like this? (Answer: perhaps because if it weren't a useless toy, it would eat into sales of expensive "proper" windows servers?).
Anyway, if it doesn't have redundancy to protect your data from one failed disk, it's less use than a chocolate teapot.
Speaking as one of the uninformed
I am really glad to hear that it has a proprietary form of redundancy, that's lovely. But I don't feel too guilty, since the review didn't mention it at all.
