Gadgetory

today I've got a pretty cool product from Patriot to show you guys this is the javelin s for media server and what this does is pretty much everything that I can think of in terms of a standalone nass box and some things that I actually didn't even think of so why don't we start we have 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 nasty 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 Javelin 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 BitTorrent client so you can download and edit all of your favorite torrent files 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 you PNP and DLNA 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 entire web's 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 your music pictures videos via digital media players on the home network such as the patreon box office all right a lot of tick squeeze box OneTouch backup of an external hard drive or digital camera via USB that's actually a really cool feature that's something that's a software thing maybe that a lot of NASA's do not support with their USB ports all right now stan has 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 these software solutions are either very elegant or very terrible in my experience so 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 back up for automatic line back up okay good good good jumbo frame support so this is a one gigabit NAT so you do have a fast transfer support and it supports network print server by a USB connected printers you can accessing it attach an excess USB and eSATA 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 two year warranty and here is a little network map which I'll show you more in a minute which has a bunch of different ways that you can use the javelin so flexible upgrade configurations I mentioned it supports four drives we say it supports a raid zero and a stripe I mean ok 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 rate Wan 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 what any one drive fails you're going to have all of your data replicated somewhere else on a completely data identical drive rape 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 5 is three drives or more and it allows you to have any one drive fail and then you can another drive and rebuild the array as if it was never gone so it supports the capacity of two drives 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 5 is cool because with uh spare disk 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 in to be ready to replace it and then you can at your leisure take out the dead drive and put in a new one the deadliness for it does support three terabyte drives so you can throw up to 12 terabytes of storage ok that's ok into this tiny little box becomes very well tacked 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 there being any damage to your drives or your javelin in transit that box back together notes alright 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 gold plated connectors looks like a six big cable and then we have a power adapter looks like it has a built-in power supply so no uh no external power very very 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 QuickStart 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 javelin and pulling all of your drives out of it I mean it's so small I'm guessing they could just grab the javelin on less and half of Kensington lock which I can't tell yet if it does it's actually kind of a slick looking little unit that's another thing that a lot of NASA's don't really have going for them is they tend to look kind of dumb and since it's something that you either on or near your desk it's done 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 drives ledges which you use to put the drive on and slide it into the unit itself this data 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've loaded up with drives it could be a little bit on the heavy side and you don't want to move it around to avoid any damage to the drives you've got compatible with Windows 7 sticker as well as a deal on a 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 crashed on me a little while back and it was very difficult to figure out how to reset it because I had no hard reset switch okay sorry sorry I pull my tangent here Gigabit Ethernet port eSATA 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 available for USB storage whatever the case may be and I'm sorry this one on the back 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 figure that out later all right finally we've got an 80 millimeter 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 if 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 a fine mesh over them so you should be just a matter of going like this to clean the dust off then 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 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 please read the manual this is the OneTouch back up button so you'll use that every time you want to do a OneTouch back up which basically just means it's triggering a software event to run a pre-scheduled backup that you have configured already so yeah that's pretty much it alright next a couple more things so Patriot recommends using enterprise or raid edition class hard drives for maximum reliability when using raid 0 or a grade 5 configuration it's a good reason for that raid 0 as I mentioned before like not as for speed it's not for reliability you lose one drive out of a four drive raid zero all the data is gone so just don't use that at all and then for raid 5 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 Patriot's network map here where you have the javelin as the center of the house right there and then you have you know a UPS being managed by it you have external hard drives a printer you can backup the data Lin 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 or 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 gonna 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