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By now, it has become quite obvious there is a never ending need for storage. Specifically, more storage in a physically smaller space and always available, no matter where you currently are. The Googles and Microsofts of this world want to you be believe cloud computing is the next big thing, and they may just be right, the always-on culture is constantly gaining ground with no sign of slowing down. However, what if you don't feel like handing out your data to the big corporations, but still want a simple way to access your data no matter where you are located at that specific moment?
Not too long ago, the answer would have been building your own server, but that often comes with its fair share of problems, and who wants to deal with that? The alternative to that is network attached storage, or NAS for short. These units are specifically design to accomplish one task -- store data. When you only have one thing to focus on, it generally results in a better solution. The last barrier to bring these into your home was pricing and with units now available for well under $200, so that's pretty much a non-issue.
Which brings me to Patriot's latest entry, the Valkyrie. It is an affordable, two drive unit, which features pretty much everything you need for home storage, whether it's media streaming, downloading, file sharing or simply backing your precious data. This Patriot NAS supports a pair of SATA2 3.5" drives up to 2TB each. All that in a small form factor and powered by a minimalistic processor sipping barely any power.
Read on to find out if it is really as great as it sounds!
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It's the Marvell processor they use (like most cheap NAS) that is slow
It's a tiny board in a small enclosure too so they probably ran into thermal limitations...
Hi Guys
Just thought I would let you know about the "Patriot Valkyrie Dual 3.5in NAS Enclosure" that is currently selling as one of the cheaper NAS's around. I purchased this a week ago from pccg.
As I could not find any recent good reviews I thought I would do a quick write up.
Basically I wanted it to be able to store network files & use as a bit torrent downloader.
My initial thoughts are that it was relatively easy to set up, the box is very sturdy and looks quite good.
Pros: It does what I want it to do, basically and has DNS access and a whole lot of other things with it. Hard drives are easily installed and slot in. Box is quiet I can't even hear it and it draws about 15Watts under load (from my dodgy ebay power meter) on idle it is significantly less depending on the type of drives you have.
Cons: It is incredibly slow to access, transfer files (sort of defeats the purpose of buying it). I was attempting to transfer data from 1 HDD to the other HDD (in BOHD mode) The best speeds I was getting was about 10mb/second. Now I was tranferring 100GB to the other drive (both sata 2s) and it took 6hours.
The same goes for transferring files from the LAN to the box, basically I was getting anywhere from 5mb – 10mb a second, very rarely did it pop over 12mb for more than a few seconds.
The software that comes with it, is clumsy, crap, doesnt work properly in firefox and extremely basic. The Bit torrent section is very basic, and consists of, add file, download, delete. There is a 'global settings' but this only lets you select how fast to download, not scheduling or anything like that. It really does look like a 12 year old knocked it up in front page express.
It has USB extension ports, for other devices, but they dont work! Yes you actually have to format the device first in its own preferred file format before it will let you recognise it. I tried 3 different devices and it would recognise none!.
Most of the features struggle to run when even 1 hard drive is in use, so if you expect to transfer files, while a bit torrent is running... good luck.
I streamed a movie from in (in div x format) to my tv and it seemed to run quite well. There was no stutter or anything like that, however it took ages to load the div x about 20-30 seconds.
The support from Patriot is really pathetic, you only have to log onto there forums to see the amount of unhappy people. Patriot have been promising a firmware update for about 4 months now that should 'fix' everything but as yet nothing has been heard and there is no actual employees that respond on the forums. Think battlefield 2 and the promised patch that came 2 years later?.
If I had to choose again I would build my own crappy file server as at least you could get the full use of the network!. I have 10/100/1000mb connections on my network and to get 5mb a second is just pathetic.
If you want a cheap NAS box to download torrents, or can restrict it in your router, and don't mind having to wait a stupid amount of time while your files transfer,and you dont actually have to 'back anything up' then this would be for you!.
If however you want a device that works, stick to something else because this is a waste of money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Please feel free to ask me any questions and I will update this post with them.