Figure 7, which is from the Disk Settings menu, shows a graphic representation of how the drives in the Media Vault were configured. In this case, the two 500GB drives were configured to act as a single, logical 1 terabyte disk.

Figure 7: Disk Settings

Figure 7 also shows four partitions on the external USB disk. This screen also enables you to change the internal disk configuration to support mirroring (RAID Level 1). With mirroring enabled, your storage capacity will be cut in half, but you'll have additional protection in case of disk failure. A test I ran to see if the Media Vault could recover from a failed secondary disk was successful, but it took 13 hours (!) for the replaced drive to be fully restored. Like other RAID-capable NASes, the Media Vault was available for use during the rebuild period, but with reduced performance.

Note that only the secondary drive (the drive in the expansion bay) is designed to be easy to replace. The internal drive can be replaced in cases of failure, but additional "hoops" have to be gone through. More on that later.

Figure 8 shows the Network Settings menu. Using this menu, you can change the normal settings such as DHCP vs. static address, workgroup name, and others.

Figure 8: Network Settings

The Network Settings menu also allows the device to be configured in Workgroup Mode so that a single password can control everything or in user mode so that you can define individual users and folder protection levels based on each user. Figure 9 shows the user creation menu where you can create new users and assign privilege levels.

Figure 9: User Creation