Get NAS-ty: Reg puts claws to eight four-bay data dumpsters

Storage you can see, clouds you create

Buffalo TeraStation TS4400D

Buffalo's TeraStation has been a long-standing heavyweight in the NAS game, offering solid build quality, lockable bay doors, internal power supplies and UPS support it's certainly aimed at the small to medium business crowd. Certainly these users would appreciate that this unit posed no problems performing the initial setup and, in fact, it was probably the easiest of the lot.

In the box you'll find a microSD card with a USB adapter with the operating system on it, simply populate with disks, plug in the SD adapter, flick the boot switch to USB mode and turn it on. Make yourself a brew while the magic happens and when the LCD display tells you to, just reboot with the switch back in HDD mode and you're good to go.

Home screen menus

Despite looking much like its predecessors, the TS4400D packs a fair performance punch with a 1.86GHz dual core Atom D2550 and 2GB of DDR3. This generous spec contributes to a top four spot on this list in terms of raw outright speed with sequential and random performance of 89/87 MB/s read and 106/99 MB/s write respectively.

Disappointingly, Buffalo has been somewhat lax in keeping up on the software front though. While the TeraStation does indeed feature a much needed revamp in terms of its web interface that marks a substantial improvement over the previous generation, it lacks one key feature found on every other entrant here: a marketplace for additional and third party applications.

App selection is minuscule

For a pure data storage system, the TS4400D is still well equipped with the usual NAS software suite and there are apps for various mobile operating systems that allow remote admin on the go. Essentially, it's an old school NAS with modern performance under the hood - good for business users, but not for the gadget obsessed.

Price £360 (unpopulated)
More info Buffalo

Netgear ReadyNAS 314 (RN31400)

A few years ago, Netgear was a pioneering force in the NAS world with one of the largest third party software development communities, but following a switch from ARM to Intel chips, support for much of these valuable tools fell by the wayside. On the other hand, fortunately so did the old RAIDiator operating system with its somewhat cluttered interface.

Replacing all of the old industrially themed nonsense of RAIDiator is a wonderfully clean and snappily responsive dashboard that puts every configurable option within just a few clicks. Once you've rubbed the magic lamp and registered an account you'll be able to click your way into to the genie+ Marketplace and help yourself to a variety of useful apps to enhance your NAS experience.

Home screen

Just to be absolutely sure that the ReadyNAS 314 is up to the task with this new generation of software, Netgear has equipped it with a 2.1GHz Atom chip and 2GB of RAM which lets it keep close pace with the TeraStation. On my test network, it clocked in with sequential and random performance of 96/87 MB/s read and 104/86 MB/s write respectively.

Seeing such performance in the upper echelons of its class is made even more impressive by the fact that this is achieved with the ReadyNAS also running real-time virus protection and constantly monitoring changes in the file system to provide continuous block-based snapshots very much akin to Apple's TimeMachine.

Some of the available apps

I think it's fair to say that Netgear is back and making great strides to restoring its name at the top of the NAS charts. This one is a bit pricey, but you won’t regret parting with the money.

Price £420 (unpopulated)
More info Netgear