Lenovo IX4-300D

[Jeggs101]

Anyone have experiences good or otherwise with the Lenovo IX4-300D? Seems to be a decent little system and cheaper than Synology or QNAP.

Amazon.com: Lenovo IX4-300D Diskless Network Storage (70B89003NA): Computers & Accessories

Here are specs:
Description Lenovo Iomega ix4-300d Network Storage
Form Factor
Desktop form factor; supports up to 4 3.5" SATA HDDs (trays included)
Processor
Marvell Armada XP 1.3GHz MV78230 processor
Memory
512MB DDR3
Ethernet
2 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet ports (RJ45 connector)
Configurations
4-drive configurations include SATA-II Server-Class 7200rpm hard drives
RAID Support

RAID 1, 5 (Parity), 10 (Mirroring)
0, JBOD mode available
Note: RAID/storage pool should be the same capacity, speed, and manufacturer. Mixing different types of drives may result in unpredictable behavior.

Power Consumption

Max: 60W
Min: 20W (drives spun down)
Peak: 80W for 10ms
Note: These values represent a fully loaded device with the highest capacity HDD. Values may differ with other configurations.

Ports

2 USB 2.0 ports; 1 USB 3.0 port
2 x RJ45 10/100/1000Mbps (GbE) Ethernet port

LAN Standards

IEEE 802.3
IEEE 802.3u

AC Voltage
100-240 VAC
Acoustic Noise
32 dBA maximum
Temperature, Humidity, and Altitude
Ambient Temp - Operating: 5° to 35° C; Non-Operating: -10° to 60° C
User Interface Localization
User interface localized for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portugese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Swedish, Dutch, and Polish
System Requirements

Available 10/100/1000 Mbps network Ethernet port
Internet Explorer 7, Firefox® 3.x, Chrome 9, Safari 4 or later browser
Personal cloud and remote access require an internet connection; UPnPâ„¢ compatible router or administrative rights to port forward; 2.5 Mbit/s download, 500Kbit/s upload (not compatible with Active Directory or XP 64 bit)
PC Users: Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8
Mac® Users: Mac OS X 10.6 - 10.8
Linux® Users: Redhat Enterprise 6, Ubuntu 11, OpenSUSE 11.4, other compatible Linux versions

 

[MiniKnight]

Seems like it's cheaper than an Atom or Celeron build but less useful. What else would you run on it?

20w MIN is not so great for a 4 drive NAS using an ARM processor with only 512MB RAM.

 

[dba]

I have no experience with the Lenovo, but the specs look very similar to a Synology DS414.

The Synology is quieter, uses less power, and has a great app library, but the Lenovo is less than half the price.

Six months ago or so, before I bought my first small NAS, I probably would have bought the Lenovo. Having owned a Synology, and having discovered that many of the apps are in fact very useful, that would have been a mistake for me.

So if a very basic low-cost file server is what you are looking for, the Lenovo may win based on price alone, and is probably just about as fast as the Synology DS414 (which isn't that fast). If an extra $300 won't kill you, then I highly recommend the Synology instead. What I do like about either choice is this: Four disk slots. I originally thought that two disks slots was enough for me. It wasn't. I ended up needing both the disk space and the extra IOPS. It turns out that just about everything on a small NAS is IOPS limited and not RAM, CPU, or (usually) network limited.