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Review: WD Sentinel DX4000

by Parm Mann on 8 March 2013, 15:30 3.0

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabtk5

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Final Thoughts and Rating

...the DX4000 offers up to 16TB of storage in a package that's simple to configure and maintain, from both an admin and client perspective.

WD is expected to become a major player in centralised business storage, and one of its first efforts - the Sentinel DX4000 - shows that the company has what's required to succeed in this market.

Well built and suitably easy to use, the DX4000 offers up to 16TB of storage in a package that's simple to configure and maintain, from both an admin and client perspective. Everyday performance stacks up well against the competition, and in USB 3.0 connectivity, power redundancy and tool-free hot-swap drive bays, WD has a couple of hardware incentives that help round off the package.

The Sentinel DX4000 will no doubt attract small businesses that are ingrained in Windows environments, yet it isn't without fault. It's clear that Microsoft's NAS operating system faces an uphill task - Windows Storage Server simply isn't as fully-featured as the Linux-based alternatives - and there's no getting around the inordinately-slow RAID rebuild times.

Core features that provide very little fuss still make this a viable addition to any small office, but a lack of built-in flexibility - including the inability to create multiple RAID volumes or a dedicated FTP server - coupled with limited hard-drive compatibility and a tiresome recovery process prevent the DX4000 from picking up an out-and-out recommendation.

The Good

Large 16TB capacity
Very good build quality
Power and Ethernet redundancy
Creates complete PC backups

The Bad

Long recovery/rebuild times
Limited drive compatibility
Restricted feature set

HEXUS Rating

3/5
WD Sentinel DX4000

HEXUS Where2Buy

The 16TB WD Sentinel DX4000 small office server is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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The rebuild / build times on this is somewhat a worrying issue (price seems decent but the lack or certain features makes this a no go)
RAID 5 and 16TB is probably a really really bad idea, the chance of data loss is quite high.
Jay
RAID 5 and 16TB is probably a really really bad idea, the chance of data loss is quite high.

Yeah, raid 6 or 51 should be a minimum at this level.
miniyazz
Jay
RAID 5 and 16TB is probably a really really bad idea, the chance of data loss is quite high.

Yeah, raid 6 or 51 should be a minimum at this level.

Definitely - It would be madness to use RAID0 for 16TB, even if it was just a temporary video framestore - I feel the review should have made this much clearer, especially as the benchmarks were testing RAID5. Unfortunately with the limited number of bays it makes level 6 or 51 somewhat pointless/unfeasible.

Rebuild time is not surprising and inevitable given the amount of data that has to transferred across the bus, especially in this case with a consumer-level SAS/SATA backplane and controller. I have an 8 x 4TB array at home and about 6 days is what it took to build.