Iomega NAS 405M
The Iomega unit has a moderately deep 1RU form factor. The front panel styling tends to the futuristic and includes status LEDs for the four drive bays, two LAN interfaces, and system. The four drive cradles, although not quite as smooth in operation as the Quantum, are nevertheless very good with positive feedback when seated. The cradles are fitted with IDE drives but the cradle's end connector resembles a high density SCSI connector.
At the rear of the unit you will find two 10/100 Ethernet ports, a serial port, PS/2 port, VGA port, and SCSI 3 port. A PCI-64 Adaptec 29160LP SCSI adaptor card takes up the unit's internal PCI slot—which is only a 32-bit port. The Iomega's motherboard also includes a pair of USB ports and a PS/2 mouse port, but these are simply blocked by not including the relevant cut-out at the rear of the case. The motherboard was fitted with a 1GHz Pentium III CPU, and a pair of 256MB SDRAM modules occupied the two memory slots.
There is a single power supply and no provision for a second; cooling fans are quite sparse as well. The power supply has a small cooling fan and a larger unit cools the CPU via a metal deflector but there is no direct cooling of the drive bays. As a result, we found during operation that the unit tended to become hotter than the other three.
Setting up the system was relatively easy, although the large "Setting up your System" sheet was very rudimentary when compared to some of the other vendors', notably Compaq. The bulk of the documentation, which is actually quite good, is in PDF format.
In common with the Compaq NAS, the Iomega is "powered by Windows 2000" and utilises the Microsoft Web Interface.
The Iomega features a reasonably fast CPU and a healthy 512MB of memory, coupled with four quite fast IDE drives, each with its own dedicated IDE channel. The medium and large file copy results reflect this and in these tests, the Iomega was the fastest of the units equipped with 100Mbps Ethernet. Inexplicably, it was the slowest of the NAS units in the multiple small file copy test and only marginally faster than the AnexTEK in PostMark.
| Product: | Iomega NAS 405M |
| Price: | AU$9206 |
| Vendor: | Iomega |
| Phone: | (02) 8875 7851 |
| Web: | www.iomega.com |
|
|
|
| Interoperability: |
Supports Windows (SMB), Netware, NFS, Appletalk. |
|
|
|
| Futureproofing: |
Relatively little expansion potential, somewhat improved by the external SCSI connector. |
|
|
|
| ROI: |
½Moderately priced for its features and performance. |
|
|
|
| Service: |
½2-year warranty and free support during standard business hours. |
|
|
|
| Rating: |
½ |
|
|
|
6%
1%
