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Review: |
Eminent were kind enough to
send us their EM4072 GigaShare PRO NAS DUO for review.
NAS is becoming very popular
for sharing media and files around the home via a home network. In this review we
will examine how the EM4072 performs as a NAS, and its usability.
Eminent may not be a brand you
have heard of outside of Europe, or even the Netherlands, but Eminent have a
long history of providing communication equipment, so let’s see how the EM4072
performs.
If you would like to read more
about Eminent, you can find more details at their website.
Packaging
The device we received for
review was the retail package. Let’s first take a look at the packaging.
Box front
Box rear
Box top
Box left and right sides
NAS hardware system
Now let’s take a look at the Eminent
EM4072 NAS box itself, and the supplied accessories.
As we can see from the above
screenshot, the package contained the following items.
- EMINENT GigaShare NAS PRO
DUO EM4072 - European power supply
- UK mains cable
- European power cable
- CAT6e Gigabit LAN cable
- Instruction book
- Software CD-ROM
EM4072 NAS box
EM4072 front
On the front of the box we can
see a power, link, and activity LED’s, we can also see the box provides support
for dual HDD in a RAID configuration. We can also see that the EM4072 supports
Samba server, FTP server, DHCP server, and P2P server. The Eminent EM4072 is
also attractively styled, perhaps understated, but very tasteful.
Now let’s take a look at the
back of the box.
EM4072 rear
On the rear of the unit we can
see following connectors and switches.
- Power switch
- Reset button
- Gigabit LAN socket
- Printer/USB socket
- DC 12V in socket
We can also see a cooling fan
at the top of the box.
Chipset
As the unit was on loan, we
didn’t feel we should open it up to look inside. However, the Eminent EM4072 is
based on a STORLINK SL3516 CPU (GEMINI) with an M-TEK G24102MKG RAID
controller, and 128MB of DDR2 RAM.
Fitted HDD
Our review sample came fitted
with 2x Seagate ST31000322CS Pipeline HD2 series HDD configured as RAID0.
These drives are SATA2 compliant, have 8MB of cache and a rotational speed of
5900RPM.
Please note
that the Eminent EM4072 will normally be supplied without any pre-fitted HDD,
and instead be supplied with 2x SATA data and power cables, allowing the user
to fit their own HDD storage solution.
Supplied SATA data and power cables
Software CD-ROM
To complete the package, the
Eminent EM4072 is also supplied with a range of utilities and software which
can be installed onto the NAS.
Our review sample came with
all the necessary software pre-installed, but the supplied CD-ROM includes all
the software required and instruction manual in several languages, including
English, in PDF format.
Let’s head
to the next page where we will have a look at the features of the Eminent
GigaShare NAS PRO DUO...
