NAS In Your Home: Vox's BlackBox

Features
By Marcel Binder
published

Conclusion: Good Build Quality, Mediocre Performance

The Vox BlackBox is a solid NAS device with two hard drive slots. At a price of around $300, the silver enclosure provides 1 TB of storage capacity on the network. You can add more external memory to the Vox BlackBox via USB, and thanks to its hot-swap support, defective drives can be exchanged without any downtime.

The configuration of the Vox BlackBox is carried out via a Web interface, which has a horribly outdated design. The nested menu structure of the configuration and the lack of any support or help function will undoubtedly irritate less experienced users.

On the other hand, the support for network protocols is substantial. In addition to the SMB/CIFS protocol, the BlackBox can handle the FTP and NFS protocols, as well as Bonjour. The NAS device can even download files via BitTorrent, but only in conjunction with Internet Explorer.

However if dig a little deeper into the Vox BlackBox’s performance, you will be somewhat disappointed with data transfer rates. When working with lots of smaller files such as pictures, the Vox is not far behind its competitors. However, when many files of different sizes are copied to and from the NAS device, performance drops considerably—especially in the secure RAID 1 mode.

Vox Blackbox

The Vox BlackBox NAS housing is solid, and the unit does a satisfying and reliable job of providing data to a Windows network. The data transfer rates range from unsatisfactory to good, depending on the application, so to avoid unwanted surprises you should think about how you’re planning to use the device before buying it.

  • Advantages
  • Disadvantages
  • Solid lookHot-Swap capabilitySupport of the Protocols SMB, FTP and NFS
  • Confusing Web interfaceProblems when using FirefoxData Transfer Rates are not always great
Marcel Binder
Marcel Binder
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • DFGum
    I swear i saw another company selling the same thing for 80 dollars or so recently.
    Reply
  • Did you use a gigabit ethernet ?
    Reply
  • dblizzard
    I just had a struggle installing two different NAS devices in the home office. The D-Link device DNS-323 has firmware problems and can't finish formatting 1tb Seagate drives. Swapped out the D-Link for a Cisco Linksys NAS200 and it works well but if a drive fails in raid-1, both drives need to be reformatted when a replacement drive is added. Beware...
    Reply
  • smelly_feet
    I really wish THG would also plot power draws at the wall idle/full use for all "always on" devices in general in all their articles. It would be nice to compare the power draw of all these nas devices, including a watt/performance charts. The VOX box may score less on the performance charts but maybe it draws much less power too. On the otherhand, if it draws the same or more power and also performs worse than its a complete waste of money unless it has some other unique usefull features.
    Reply
  • michaelahess
    I bought this device for a bit under $200. Cheapest I could find it. Sold as the Raidon/Stardom SL3620-2S-LB2.

    I had to reflash the bios with the newest firmware twice to get it to detect my two 1TB drives properly. Once that was resolved it worked great. Interface is very easy (I'm biased as RAID and Security are two of my daily tasks) and works well. It is simple looking though, but I prefer that to flashy interfaces like D-Link. I don't have the bittorrent feature even though it says I should. Also, they are NOT hot swappable drives. The box says they are, the manual says in no uncertain terms not to do it or you risk loosing your data.

    From what I can tell, it's based on a SIL4726 controller which is about middle of the road for consumer devices.

    I can only write to it at about 7-8MB. Reads are a little faster (RAID-1). I can safely stream 720p content, haven't tried 1080i yet.

    Overall, compared to other NAS devices, I'm pleased with it. It cost considerably less than most comprable devices and seems to run very stable and cool.

    I just with the designers would get the firmware right. Or that someone would come out with a better os to flash onto it!

    On a side note, the AMS Venus T5 has the same chipset, it's esata and works like crap. I've sent it back for repair as it keeps dropping my array. Unless it comes back working, avoid that product. It does support upto 5 true hotswap devices, but only if you're lucky and get a working one.
    Reply
  • michaelahess
    smelly_feet, I'll throw my power meeter on it tonight and see what I get.
    Reply
  • "I swear i saw another company selling the same thing for 80 dollars or so recently." You did its a Sans Digital brand. I have the Sans Digital one. I have had it for about a year. I think these guys ripped off Sans Digital.
    Reply
  • tvoice
    I think the Sans Digital is a JBOD, not a real RAID.
    Reply
  • One thing I wish more NAS reviews included is information similar to what the cisco nas users mentions, how do these units handle drive failures or going from one drive to a second drive.

    With more small businesses unfortunately starting to use these devices, it would be useful info to include.
    Reply
  • michaelahess
    The Sans Digital are just esata, firewire, and usb devices, not NAS devices, that I can tell. They do use the same enclosure though.
    Reply