The NS4600 is a four-bay unit that measures 7.4 x 6.0 x 9.0 inches and weighs 5.5 pounds without hard drives. Since the drives aren't included, we loaded the NAS up with four of Seagate Technology's Barracuda 7200.12 drives, each having a capacity of 1 TB. The drives are installed by mounting them into individual plastic brackets that are included with the NAS. These brackets then slide into the unit and connect via the SATA ports.

As is expected from a product in this category, the NS4600 supports multiple versions of RAID including RAID 0, 1, 5, 5+spare and 10. But RAID is only the beginning of this device's feature set -- with loads of extras, the NS4600 is capable of doing many other things.

When it comes to critical data, the NS4600 covers the bases with one-touch backup of devices that are plugged into the USB or eSATA ports in the back. It also can take real-time snapshots and do incremental backups, as well as replicate data between two units across the Internet or a LAN.

The device features a built-in Web server that can be used to host intranet or Internet Web sites, and for those who want a little entertainment mixed in, the NS4600 is chock-full of media features. Besides a photo album and media player, a unique element of the device is that it is also a DLNA Certified Digital Media Server (DMS). This means that the NS4600 can be automatically discovered by Digital Media Players (DMPs), Digital Media Renderers (DMRs) and Digital Media Controllers (DMCs), allowing pictures, music and video to be shared instantly at any time in the home. With a growing list of devices with this capability, we're sure this feature will soon become a necessity.

Other multimedia elements include an iTunes server with video support, and an on-board Bit Torrent client that can download and share files without the computer needing to be left on.

During our testing of the NAS, we weren't disappointed. To measure speed, two directories with various file types were copied from the testing PC to the NAS and back again. The first, a 1.2-GB directory, contained 23 files and the second, a 3.2-GB directory, had 41.

Copying the files to the NS4600 yielded similar results to those of some of the best-rated NAS devices we've tested. The 1.2-GB folder took 2 minutes, 26 seconds, while the 3.2-GB folder took 7 minutes, 55 seconds.

Reading from the device proved to be much faster, with the 1.2-GB and 3.2-GB folders taking 54 seconds, and 5 minutes, 55 seconds, respectively.

Configuration on the NS4600 is done with a program called Smart- NAVI, which is installed from the included CD. After the device is configured, administration is done via a browser-based console. Although we wouldn't go as far as to say the admin console is intuitive, it is still easy to figure out without any instructions. Likewise, the console's interface is a little bit clunky looking but, fortunately, it doesn't interfere with the ease of use.

It seems like a new desktop NAS is being released almost every month and most of the recent ones have very similar features. While the NS4600 fits this description, it also adds another layer of backup and multimedia elements that make it at least one step ahead of the competition.