Black Or Not Black?
Despite its name, the Vox BlackBox is a silver-colored NAS device. The aluminum housing is 12.2 cm wide x 20.5 cm long x 10.5 cm high and features two hard drive slots. Without the hard drives, it weighs about 1.6 kilograms. The model we’re testing includes two 500 GB Western Digital WD5000AAKS disks, so in RAID 0 mode the unit provides 1 TB of hard drive space. The price for the Vox BlackBox with 1 TB of storage is about $300.
The Accessories
The unit is supplied with all necessary cables. When unpacking, you immediately notice the power cord with rubber connector—the BlackBox is one of the few devices that comes with an integrated power supply, which is much more convenient than an external brick. The advantage here is that if you turn off the device using the power supply switch, the power supply itself does not consume power. NAS devices with external power supplies can consume up to several watts even if they are turned off; this unnecessary energy is only consumed by the power supply, which costs you money.
Two Fans
The disadvantage of the internal PSU is that you have to exhaust not only the heat of the hard drives, but also that of the integrated power supply. This explains the two fans on the outside of the housing with diameters of 3 cm and 4 cm. The noise level is thus a little bit higher than comparable products with external power supplies.
Connectors
On the back of the device you’ll find the power socket, the two fans, a power switch, the main on/off switch, the 10/100/1000 Mb/s RJ-45 Ethernet port, and a USB 2.0 port for connecting an external drive formatted with the FAT32, EXT2 or EXT3 file systems. The device can be returned to default factory settings using a reset switch on the back, pressed by a paperclip.
The hard drive slots can also be opened using a paperclip, even though you’ll find two plastic “keys” for that purpose included in the box. A real lock would have been nicer, because anything else is just false security. But sadly, more and more manufacturers seem to be using this hard drive slot design. SansDigital’s Mobilestor MS2UTN+ employs the same feature.
Easy Hot-Swap Using Hard Drive Slots
The hard drive slots themselves are solid and the locking mechanism is well designed, guaranteeing that nothing can be bent or broken by unintentionally having the hard drive not connected all the way. The one thing that could use work is the track on which each hard drive tray slides into the Vox BlackBox. They are made out of plastic, which causes the containers to jam and get stuck.
