Desktop Computer Review: Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110 2 TB Network Attached Storage ST320005MNA10G-RK Review

I have 3 machines on my home network, each with four users.Backups of each machine should be private, while shared data (pictures, music, etc) should be public.The 110 claims to be able to do just this.However, I could never get it to work.Users had to enter their password even to access the public share.Some user passwords were not accepted, despite numerous attempts and careful verification that the user was typing the password correctly.When I finally gave up and deleted all the private shares and just put all the data in the public share, some users still had to enter their passwords to get access.The only way to resolve this was to delete their windows accounts and create a new ones.Needless to say, when you have a highly customized account, this is rather painful!
I do not use the Seagate backup software so I can't comment on that except to say that it doesn't give the user much control, and stores the files in a format that isn't easily accessible if you just want to find one or a couple of files.I am using Allway Sync which provides more control and makes it easy to recover individual files.
In my experience so far the device is impressively quite; the only time I hear it is when it clicks as it sleeps or wakes up.No big deal.
The one thing I find unfathomable is why they made the front USB port only available as a one-way backup of thumb drives.This is just stupid.I want to plug in a portable drive to back up the NAS but I can't use the front port and the rear port is very inconvenient to reach.Why not make the front port universal, as in Universal Serial Bus, instead of limiting it?Just weird.
Finally, I'd like to suggest to Seagate that they offer some kind of on-line backup service.None of the existing services work with NAS drives, but Netgear offers a proprietary service for their NAS drives.Online backup would be the final step in absolute data security and I'm surprised Seagate hasn't thought of this easy revenue stream.

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Product Description:
The BlackArmor NAS 110 server is a network attached storage solution designed to provide centralized storage, data backup and media streaming for up to 10 PCs. Help protect important data with automatic full-system backup, SafetyDrill+ bare metal recovery software and powerful hardware-based encryption.