Western Digital Sentinel DX4000 16TB NAS Review

In general a NAS box is just an external hard drive caddy that is attached to your network rather than by USB or even Firewire. Because of this we can find a whole host of other features and utilities bundled into them giving them the leading edge over the other options available on the market.

As opposed to the NAS solutions we typically look at, the DX4000 comes loaded with Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, a strain of Server 2008 that is cut down purely for this application. Its accessed and run entirely over remote desktop, although there is a web interface that can be configured for use later on instead. Another point we will highlight on before we go into the test results is the RAID levels. Unlike other systems that allow for different levels of RAID to be configured, the DX4000 is limited to just two levels and these are auto selected depending on the number of drives installed into the system. With two drives installed, Windows Storage Server sets the array to RAID 1 and with three or more drives, RAID 5 is the array of choice. This does somewhat sound a little strange given the fact that even though this is advertised as a 16TB NAS, you’ll only ever have no more than ~12TB to play with, but Western  Digital do advertise that data security is guaranteed out of the box.

Model # Interface Capacity Operating System WDBLGT0160KBK Gigabit Ethernet x2, USB 3.0 x2 16 TB Windows/Mac WDBLGT0120KBK Gigabit Ethernet x2, USB 3.0 x2 12 TB Windows/Mac WDBLGT0080KBK Gigabit Ethernet x2, USB 3.0 x2 8 TB Windows/Mac WDBLGT0060KBK Gigabit Ethernet x2, USB 3.0 x2 6 TB Windows/Mac WDBLGT0040KBK Gigabit Ethernet x2, USB 3.0 x2 4 TB Windows/Mac       System Requirements Internet connection (for system updates and web access) Wired or wireless router with an available 10/100/1000 Ethernet port Connectivity 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports 2 USB 3.0 ports CPU Intel Atom™ D525 1.8 GHz Dual Core 2 GB RAM Server Operating System Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials Supported Client Operating Systems Windows XP with service pack 3, 32-bit versions only Windows Vista with service pack 2, all 32-bit and 64-bit platforms Windows 7, all 32-bit and 64-bit platforms Mac OS® X Mountain Lion, Mac OS® X Lion, Mac OS® Snow Leopard and Mac OS® X Leopard* File sharing support for Linux and Unix *May require updating your system with latest MS and WD updates. Supported Web Browsers Internet Explorer Apple Safari Mozilla Firefox Google Chrome Network Authentication Active Directory Network protocols CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, WebDAV, Bonjour File Sharing Protocols CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, WebDAV RAID Levels RAID 1 (2 drives only) and RAID 5 (3-4 drives) Automatic migration and capacity expansion Package Contents Small Office Storage Server 1 RJ45 Ethernet cable AC Adapter with power cord Quick Install Guide