Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Review

Control Panel Tour
The control panel for the Plextor PX-NAS4 looks dated compared to those of QNAP, Synology, and the like, but it is functional. For the most part.

The login screen and the initial few non-admin screens.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

The dashboard page shows a lot of information in an organized way. The CPU usage indicator automatically refreshes, but the others do not. They can, however, be manually refreshed.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

Date and time settings

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

SATA storage: RAID and volumes, as well as USB and iSCSI storage. The unit can be both an iSCSI initiator and target. It also can do SMART hard drive monitoring.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

IP Address and network settings, including control of the dual gigabit Ethernet ports. Available modes are Link Aggregation, Fault Tolerance, Load Balancing, and Port Trunking.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

Adding an NFS drive and NFS settings. I found a display issue which seems to affect at least Chrome. It does not affect Firefox. Curiously, NFS shares are not shared with SMB shares. They are completely separate storage systems on the Plextor PX-NAS4, a unique quality. This might have some niche use, but most folks want all network file system servers to point at the same directories.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

User and group management

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

Share management, or, really, “display all shares, modify SMB only”. It’s a little frustrating.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

Automated backup via rsync and manual restoration of a backup

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

A feature unique to the PX-NAS4 is its snapshotting feature. It’s possible to take snapshot of the data on the unit and store it locally or remotely.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

The unit comes with a free copy of Genie-Soft’s Genie Backup Manager, a Windows-only backup tool. The license is for an unlimited number of the Lite clients, meaning you can install this software on any Windows machine on your network and backup to the NAS.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

FTP server and media server. The FTP server uses the SMB shares, as does the media server.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

You can choose the source and destination for USB copy, including copying back to the USB drive.

Plextor PX-NAS4 Network Attached Storage Device

System log and configuration backup, plus control panel configuration, firmware upgrade, and hard drive silencing tools

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