IT Pro Verdict

Not the fastest or best featured NAS appliance but it’s cheap and cloud access is a cinch to configure

Reasons to buy

+
Good value; Easy installation; Simplified cloud access; Quiet

Reasons to avoid

-
Short on storage features; Unimpressive backup performance

By Dave Mitchell

published 29 July 2015

in Reviews

More on the hardware

WD uses a tray-less drive loading system where you just slip them into each bay and close the locking lever behind them. The only drawback is this arrangement doesn't support SFF hard disks.

The chassis has two power inputs so redundancy can be added with a second power brick although this costs 70 ex VAT. You could use a UPS instead but the power brick uses C5/C6 clover-leaf connectors and not a standard kettle lead.

Build quality is very good and the appliance's single cooling fan is whisper quiet. The 2GB of memory is easily upgraded to 6GB by removing the cover and popping a 4GB SO-DIMM module into the spare slot on the side.

Along with dual Gigabit and a single USB 2 port, the DL4100 has two USB 3 ports with the front one accompanied by a backup button After inserting a USB storage device, we pressed the button and the appliance automatically copied its contents down to a predefined share.

Here our remote user is linked over the cloud via the desktop and both iOS apps

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Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.