The SS4000 with drives ejected

Intel's marketing blurb describes the SS4000-E as "an intelligent network storage solution for small office, medium office, and home network environments". But as we'll see shortly, its feature set is more suited for office than home use.

The SS4000-E is not first quad-drive RAID 5 NAS to hit the market, which continues to see a steady stream of new entrants. The first to market was Buffalo's Terastation which has had good success and stays priced competitively. Infrant is another notable competitor with its ReadyNAS X6, 600 and NV line. Other products in this space include the Thecus N4100 and Anthology Yellow Machine.

The front side of the device includes seven LEDs that provide information about system, disk and network connection status, and activity on both of its 10/100/1000 Ethernet network interfaces.

SS4000E rear view

The back of the SS4000E includes a large cooling fan for the hard drives on top, with a smaller fan at the bottom for the power supply. Given the two fans, noise levels are about what you'd expect - ok for a noisy office, but home users will want to park the box in a closet, basement or other unoccupied space.