Shuttle KD20 2-Bay RAID Network Storage

This is a simple storage option. It asks few questions and provides safe storage. Installing the drives is a snap: remove the drawers and place the drives inside them. Add a couple of screws and they're sliding back into the bays. Done and done. The one thing I will say about the finder software: the KD20 shows as unnamed, not Omninas. That was a little confusing for me and had to find the answer for myself. I haven't had this long, but it looks good so far. The transfer speed is not the best, but large file transfers are time consuming anyway. The software could be more useful, but does the basics. 3/25 update: Still liking this product, the only downside for me is the power button. It's a very bright blue and can be annoying. I just turned the unit around and let the button shine on the wall; but eventually I'll need to mute that glare.11/5: I did have to turn the fan from auto to always on. I was losing connection and it turned out to be a heating issue. With the fan on, it's back to being a solid performer and the fan is barely audible for me.

works great, not the speediest, but for my basic needs it saved me $100 off the synology, and I didn't need all the bells and whistles. currently using it as a file server only, i am not using the extended media server or private cloud stuff.if this product had an option to sync out to amazon glacier or windows azure blob storage, this would easily be a 5 star product.

I bought the KD-20, 3.5 years ago. It was cheap and I figured why not give it a try. I put in 2 WD green 1.5TB drives and I was off running with a RAID 1 configuration. It was great being able to share music through out my house and pictures and... well if I didn't access it for a week or so it would fall off the network. Rebooting brought it back. I tried upgrading the firmware, setting the fan to always be on. Putting it in a well ventilated location. I even set it up next to my main switch. Had a few chats with Shuttle support and finally resigned myself to rebooting it once a week. I mean its tolerable, but not ideal.Then about a month ago, even the reboot wouldn't work. I did find that if I turn it on with only one of the drives plugged in, it will bring me to the setup page and I can set everything up until the disk configuration, when it will say I'm missing a drive. With both drives inserted it just hangs and I am unable to do anything. So I think it was an interesting adventure but I need to find something that is reliable.

You won't find a better 2 bay 8TB capacity NAS for this price. Have had no issues with mine and it is very easy to install, setup, and access from anywhere. Might not have the fastest transfer speeds out there but works great for its intended purpose. Plus it uses next to no power and the fan will only kick in when it needs to and is controlled by the temperature. This thing is silent except for when the drive spins up when in use. Since part of the outside is aluminum it acts as a giant heatsink and rarely uses the fan.

So I had a ZyXel and this Shuttle KD20 and I have them running side by side. Software wise, when comparing it to the ZyXel, you will really begin to understand how underperforming the software is.The software lacks FTP ability, lacks the ability to specifically identify key folders that you want to backup to an external hard drive (meaning you have to back up the WHOLE NAS, vs just one folder). Creating the cloud NAS website wasn't as straight forward as you they portray it to seem as well. Port forwarding with my ZyXel was so much easier then using the Kd20.Physically the box looks beautiful. It is mostly an aluminum outside and I have to admit, when it runs and isn't hot, it's quiet. But that being said, when the fan does spin, it makes a nasty loud noise. Maybe it's because I might have had a defective fan, but it really was loud.Transferring wise too, it was WAY slower then my ZyXel. When I transferred 20gb files on my ZyXel, it would take about 30-40 minutes tops, with the Shuttle it took at least 1 hour to transfer. In addition to this, for some reason the Shuttle would often do a good 100gb of transfers, then it would suddenly drop off my network and suddenly reappear (as if it was almost saying..I"M TIRED OF THIS, let's restart). This would interrupt my transfers and then I'd have to manually look for the corrupted files on the NAS.I ended up getting so sick of the Shuttles junk performance so I ended up just buying another ZyXel server. Sigh...I felt like I wasted 85 dollars.

home NAS with everything you expect from a home NAS for 1/5 of the price of others.everything works as expected, very easy setup and you even have private cloud apps to get into your data from everywhere.

[Update Review March 17, 2015]I have bumped this review to one star from four. This NAS drive completely failed after about a a year and a half of use. I found that one of the hard drives failed inside it. The other drive was salvageable but data was lost since it was set to RAID 0. Luckily there was no important data on them. I tested other working hard drives in the unit, but the NAS won't recognize any one of them. Of my three NAS devices, this one was the newest and it was first one that completely failed.[Previous Review from August 28, 2013]I have a Netgear Stora MS2110-100NAS previously. Loved that product and would have got another but it was sadly discontinued. So I decided to pick this one up to accommodate the extra hard drives I have laying around. So far I really like this product. It was cheaper than my previous enclosure and takes up less desk space. For the price, don't expect to see speeds that match up with your Gigabit network. But it is fast enough to stream videos and to access my documents without much delay. It had similar performance to my previous enclosure. I occasionally lose connection to this device and need to reboot but that seems par for the course for many network devices. My only major issue is that it is loud. The vibration and fan noise coming out of the device is quite annoying. It seems to never stop even when the drive is not being accessed. Luckily it is kept in an area where that isn't too much of an issue. Overall great product!