today I've got a pretty cool product from Patriot to show you guys this is
the javelin S4 media server and what
this does is pretty much everything that I can think of in terms of a standalone
Nas boox and some things that I actually
didn't even think of so why don't we start with what's on the packaging on
the outside and then we'll go from there so Patriot figures these are the main
talking points I have my own notes on what I think are the main talking points
so we'll compare them later on first of all it is an iTunes server so you can
use a single iTunes account for all computers in your network that's handy
okay it is a Logitech Squeezebox server so you can stream to Logitech enabled
devices that's also handy you can do Nas to NAS backup so you can actually image
with another Javelin unit within your network or outside your network so that
means you can do off-site backups using
a couple of in units that's very cool
and that's actually not something that was on my list so I'm glad they brought it up it is time machine compatible so
this is another Apple thing please don't don't hit the dislike button time
machine compatible is a handy feature it has a bit torrent client so you can
download and manage all of your favorite torrent files um remotely okay remote
media playback so you can stream your media through a web browser or
iphone/Android mobile app that one's really cool that one in my eyes should
be up at the top UPnP and DNA certified okay so you can
seamlessly connect to other Home media devices and finally you can share you
can show off your media with friends and family anywhere so you can share files
over the inar webs all right here we go product highlights this is all pretty
similar stuff oh no actually there's more here okay so data storage over the
network and internet with Mobile Media Center and dashboard access photo albums
documents and more so that's that internet sharing bit okay you've got the
DLNA digital media server so that gives you instant access to music pictures
videos via digital media players on the home network such as the Patriot box
office all right um Logitech Squeeze Box
uh OneTouch backup of an external hard drive digital camera via USB that's
actually a really cool feature that's something that's a software thing they've enabled that a lot of nases do
not support with their USB ports all
right NZ to NAS replication we already covered that snapshot for instant backup
and restoration backing up your home PCS is something that is critical for any
Nas to do now the software Solutions are either very elegant or very terrible in
my experience so uh that's something
that I'm glad that Patriot has worked into the javelin because backing up your
PC is the only real solution running something like a raid one in a home
computer is not a real solution because if you get a virus you still get wiped
out so doing nightly backups is something that I would definitely
recommend to everybody smart sync backup
for automatic client backup okay good good good jumbo frame support so this is
a 1 GB Nas so you do have fast transfer
support and it supports Network print server via USB connected printers you
can access an attach and access USB and
ESAT external hard drives as a folder share on the javelin S4 so you can
actually expand the storage beyond the four Drive Bays that are included with
the javelin S4 it has a 2-year warranty and here is a little Network map which
I'll show you more of in a minute which has a bunch of different ways that you
can use the Java so flexible raid configurations I
mentioned it supports four drives we it supports a raid zero and a stripe I mean
okay please please never set up four
drives in a raid zero in a backup device that completely defeats the purpose
don't do it wrong raid one mirror this
is a good way to set it up so you can actually take two drives or four drives
and you can set them up to mirror each other so even if any one drive fails
you're going to have all of your data replicated somewhere else on a
completely um data identical Drive RAID 10 is mirror
and stripe performance and backup I still don't really recommend it because
you're going to be limited by gigabit Ethernet anyway you might as well just
stick with your raid ones or your raid fives so raid five is three drives or
more and it allows you to have any one
drive fail and then you can put in another drive and rebuild the array as
if it was never gone so it supports the capacity of two drives with with three
drives so it's quite a bit more efficient than raid one where you need
two drives to support the capacity of one drive but you have the disadvantage
of rebuild time if a drive does go down in the array now raid five is cool be or
with a spare dis is cool because you can throw four drives in your Javelin S4 if
and one of them is sitting there idling doing nothing if any one drive fails
that idling doing nothing Drive will automatically build itself into the
array to replace it and then you can at your leisure take out the dead drive and
put in a new one the javelin S4 does
support 3 terb drives so you can throw
up to 12 terabytes of
storage okay good it's okay into this tiny little
box comes very well packed as you guys just saw it's got a big old thick layer
of foam on all sides of it this is up to about an inch thick on all sides so I
really wouldn't worry about being any damage to your drives or your javelin in
transit all right let's put that box back together I wanted to show you guys
that Network map later so we'll show that and here I'm just going to move
back a little bit so you don't see my notes all right in terms of accessories
we don't have too much we've got what feels like a very solid very heavy duty
Ethernet cable with goldplated connectors looks like a 6t cable and
then we have a power adapter looks like it has a built-in power supply so no uh
no external power brick very nice nice okay we've got drivers and manuals the
fan contains hazardous moving Parts don't you know put your fingers or other
objects in it you've got a quick start guide which is like in a lot of
different languages and stuff so you're covered pretty much no matter
how things go and this looks like some kind of a key my guess is that it's to
keep other people from just walking up to your jabin and pulling all of your
drives out of it I mean it's so small I'm guessing they could just grab the
javelin unless it has a Kensington lock
which I can't tell yet if it does this is actually kind of a slick looking
little unit that's another thing that a lot of nazes don't really have going for
them is they they tend to look kind of dumb and since it's something that you
have to have either on or near your desk it's it's it is nice when it looks
good all right so there is the javelin
itself and you know what give me a second to get things organized
here all right so we finally got the unit itself out all I have to do is push
there the door opens at the front and I can see all four SATA interfaces at the
back of the unit it comes with four of these Drive sledges which
uh you use to put the drive on and slide it into the unit itself this did end up
being a key so you can actually lock this front door no problem but as I
mentioned before if I was going to steal something from a javelin I would probably just take the whole Javelin
itself it's fairly small fairly light although once you load it up with drives
it could be a little bit on the heavy side side and you don't want to move it around to avoid any damage to the drives
you've got uh compatible with Windows 7 sticker as well as a DNA certified
sticker Patriot logo and then you've got your power button with a built-in LED at
the front and that pretty much does it for the front you've got activity LEDs
for the hard drives as well as a network LED
here on the back we have a gigabit
Ethernet port we have a hard reset switch I love seeing hard reset switches
because even the best software crashes
sometimes I actually had a tablet crash on me a little while back and it was
very difficult to figure out how to reset it because it had no hard reset
switch um okay sorry sorry I on a tangent here gigabit Ethernet port e
SATA interface two USB interfaces so that means you can have one of them
permanently attached to a printer for example and you can have the other one
uh available for USB storage whatever the case may be and I'm sorry this one
on the back is is actually the power button and the one on the front is not a
power button so what is the one on the
front I don't know okay well I'll figure
that out later all right finally we've got an 80 mm cooling fan we have our
power in here and then I just want to take a look at the overall construction
of the unit so you can see here we've got access via the bottom panel to
nothing that's screwed shut but we do have four rubber feet here on the bottom
so that's going to keep the javelin S4 from moving around when you've put it
down on the table it's also raised a little bit so I don't know here yeah
there's a good way to see it so you can see that it's going to get some
convection cooling coming up through the bottom and that's where the fan is going
to take in some of its air that's at least based on my observation and then
the rest is going to come through these vents in the front which have uh a fine
mesh over them so it should be just a matter of going like this to clean the
dust off them once in a while and then there's also ventilation around the
outside edge where air should be able to pass quite freely into the inside around
the outsides of the door so that's uh that pretty much takes care of
ventilation and it appears that this is not ventilation at all because you can
see that once I open it up there's actually no access to the bottom
compartment from the top so it looks like that's purely
a power supply component
RTM folks RTM means read the manual this
is the OneTouch backup button so you'll use that every time you want to do a
OneTouch backup which basically just means it's triggering a software event
to run a prescheduled backup that you have configured already so yeah that's
pretty much it all right next a couple more things so Patriot recommends using
Enterprise or Raid Edition class hard drives for maximum reliability when
using raid zero or Raid five configurations good reason for that raid
zero as I mentioned before like not it's for Speed it's not for reliability you
lose one drive out of a four Drive rate zero all the data is gone so just don't
use that at all and then for raid five the array is quite vulnerable if a drive
fails during that period where you haven't put in a new drive and let it
rebuild itself while it's rebuilding if another Drive fails it will all be gone
so it is best to use Enterprise class drives now finally let's have a look at
Patriots Network map here where you have the javelin as the center of the house
right there and then you have uh you
know a UPS being managed by it you have external hard drives a printer you can
back up the javelin itself to another Javelin over the Internet that's a
really cool feature I love that okay you've got portable devices like phones
that you can stream media to you've got a network media player like a box office
hooked up to your TV Xbox 360 you've got
it connected via wire to a wireless router switch which you can stream media
to your laptop or to your computers including Windows and Macintosh
computers and finally any UPnP and DLNA
devices and even Linux computers
themselves so there's going to be a full Tech tips episode coming on the javelin
where we show some of these features but for now that is my unboxing thank you
for checking it out and I'll turn this around the right way don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips