New Seagate NAS boxes kick off at $1,400 for 2TB

David Flynn
31 July 2009, 7:30 PM


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The aptly-named BlackArmour systems have landed on the local market, with the four-bay boxes offering 2TB through 6TB of off-the-shelf storage.


Running out of room for all those high-def video downloads, system images and automated backups of your home PC network? Now there’s another NAS solution eager to solve your storage woes.

Seagate this week launched its BlackArmour NAS boxes, which pack four drive bays and come preloaded with (you guessed it) Seagate hard disks. There’s no barebones model available with all four bays empty, alas.

But the starting price of $1,399 for the NAS 420 gets you a pair of 1TB drives for a total of 2TB on hand, while two spare bays remain available for later upgrades.

The NAS 440 comes with all four bays filled – you get 4TB (1 x 1TB drives) for $1,899 or 6TB (4 x 1.5TB) for $2,599.

A Seagate spokesman confirmed that an 8TG model packing four of the company’s premium 2TB hard disks is on the cards, but there’s no word on how long it’ll take or how much you’ll have to pay.

The drives can be configured for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 (although you’ll need more than the two drives of the NAS 420 for RAID 5 and RAID 10) as well as JBOD or “Just a Bunch of Disks”, which treats individual drives as one big bucket.

A 1.2GHz processor runs the embedded Linux OS. Each box can act as an iTunes or DLNA server, along with having external FTP and Web access – the later through Seagate’s free Global Access gateway. This provides one account to match each user account on the NAS with support for as many as 50 users.


The rather nondescript and angular black metal box contains a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports plus four USB 2.0 ports (three on the rear and one on the front) for sharing a printer or external hard drive, as well as backing up the contents of the NAS onto a spare external drive.

Each system comes with a customised and Seagate-branded version of Acronis’ True Image backup software (and ten client licences) for Windows XP and Vista, with management via a slick Web interface. While the systems work with Mac computers no Mac backup software is supplied.

There’s also a download manager which can be scheduled to fetch large files during off-peak hours, although you won’t find handy additions such as an inbuilt BitTorrent client nor support for other plug-in programs.


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Tony23 (New user):

This and the Drobo look very expensive. Both are no doubt excellent products, but at what point will people have an old sata ready case ready to whack 4 drives in instead? There just seems to be a whopping premium on these products that is pretty darn difficult to justify. These guys do know that money stopped growing on trees a few years ago. You'd think if you purchased 4 of their drives, they'd give you the rest of the kit for nix! Any way it's freeNAS for me!!

31 July 2009, 7:52 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (User):

A bit pricey. You could buy a desktop PC for less with just as many hard disks... And like Tony23 says, stick FreeNAS on it (Seagate's basically done that anyway).

The other thing is why do these "home" NAS boxes all come in tower like cases? What's wrong with a less sexy but far more functional flat box with an optional rack mount bracket? It might not look shiny, but at least you could sit the router or something like that on top and save desk space.

31 July 2009, 9:26 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

The PikeMaster (New user):

Quoting Tin:
A bit pricey. You could buy a desktop PC for less with just as many hard disks.

True. And it will not have any restrictions of hdd choice. Ie Seagate Drives only in Seagate NAS.



31 July 2009, 10:21 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

agami (New user):

I've tested a few NAS boxes of this ilk that cost around $500-$600, sans drives. If I were going to spend the kind of dosh Seagate are asking I would opt for the slightly more expensive but more worthwhile Drobo 800 with DroboShare, which incidentally is what I ended-up doing.

Running a PC with FreeNAS will draw more watts. No free lunch.

03 August 2009, 10:04 AM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Raindog (New user):

Quoting agami:
Running a PC with FreeNAS will draw more watts.

That is a pretty wild statement and one I don't necessarily agree with, but its a good point missed in much of the glossy brochures.

It seem that in the majority of cases neither the manufacturers or the consumers have really though through what the needs are.

The seagate box is curious in that it is well underdone as a business device and misses the mark as a domestic appliance in several areas.

It's near impossible to find one of these boxes that is silent which means they will inevitably be destined for the cupboard or the garage, and once you've gone to that effort you may as well be going for a home server that offers a lot more than any NAS.

Zombie clickers wont get much use out of any NAS other than as a huge extension of a disorganised My Documents folder.
Those more advanced and actually capable of putting a NAS to good use will likely have a a lot more needs to fill and more than likely have more than a few older PCs sitting about.

The power consumption difference between an old PC and this box are negligible once the monitor and other junk is removed.
An old PC plus some beefy drives and an open source server build is a lot more functional than a NAS box for a lot less coin.
For that matter I could throw together a new Poweredge tower and drives for less than the asking from Seagate. The dollar difference would cover more than a few years worth of server electricity consumption.

I can help but see these things as a passing curiosities. If they can pitch a device out at sub $500 I can see some uptake but other than that there is no real fit. What does this NAS do that much better than a couple of USB hard drives for most users?

People in the market for one of these would be much better pitching at at fully functional server and they'd get it for similar fruit.






03 August 2009, 10:59 AM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (User):

Quoting agami:
Running a PC with FreeNAS will draw more watts. No free lunch.


I haven't looked at the Seagate devices specs, but look at the specs of some of the higher end NASes that run Windows... You can get desktops with lower specs.

03 August 2009, 2:09 PM (3 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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