Iomega StorCenter px2-300d 2TB review

Iomega’s StorCenter px2-300d Pro 2TB is a solidly built two-bay NAS device, available with 2TB, 4TB or 6TB of storage. A lockable plastic flap covers a pair of 3.5in hot-swappable drive bays at the front of the chassis. Above it, a screen provides basic information about the NAS’s status, system time and IP address.

The first time you connect to the NAS device’s web interface, it’ll prompt you to set your time zone, set up an Iomega Personal Cloud and give the NAS access to your SMTP server so it can send email notifications to a designated address. The Iomega Personal Cloud lets you make your NAS available to anyone with an internet connection and the right access privileges, making it easy to share documents and directories with staff who work remotely.

The Iomega Cloud website lets you choose a name for your device and configures Dynamic DNS services for you, so that you can access your NAS remotely, although you’ll probably have to open ports on your router to make it accessible to remote users. Personal Cloud apps are available for iOS and Android, as well as Windows, Mac OS and Linux PCs, so you’ll be able to access your storage on the move.

Features similar to Iomega’s Personal Cloud are becoming more popular with NAS makers and software module developers, so it isn’t a unique feature, but it’s fairly easy to configure. You can even use it to link a second Iomega NAS in another location to perform convenient off-site backups, assuming your broadband connection is up to it. There’s also support for several online backup services, too, such as Amazon S3, EMC Atmos Backup, Axis Video Hosting and Mozy Backup can all be linked simply by filling in your account details.

Unlike NAS devices from Synology, Thecus and QNAP, Iomega doesn’t have an online centre where you can download extra software modules, but there are a couple of optional components you can install. These include SecureMind Surveillance Manager, which includes a licence for one IP camera and makes it easy to monitor, control and record security footage. You can also install a virus scanning module from McAfee, which could offer some peace of mind if you have a lot of people uploading content to the NAS, but this isn’t a substitute for proper anti-virus software on your local network.

You don’t need to download any extra components to enable most of the NAS’s features, which include UPnP and iTunes media sharing, copying images from your digital camera automatically when you connect it via USB, sharing USB printers with the rest of your network and setting up automatic copy jobs to replicate data from the px2 to another network share or an external USB drive.

The px2 has a USB3 port at the front and a pair of USB2 connections at the rear. The back of the NAS also has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and it supports NIC bonding and multiple VLANS. There’s also a VGA output, but this only provides external monitoring for the SecureMind video surveillance module and doesn’t allow the NAS to be controlled independently using a display, keyboard and mouse.

Inside, the px2 has a dual-core Intel Atom D525 CPU running at 1.8GHz and 2GB of DDR3 RAM, allowing fast transfer speeds. In our large-file transfer tests, the px2’s speeds rivalled those of Synology’s outstanding DS713+ enclosure, although performance in our small-file test was disappointing. We tested the NAS configured as a RAID1 array, and with its storage set up as both an SMB share and as an iSCSI target. The latter lets you donate part of the NAS’s storage capacity to the sole use of a specific PC. The PC can format and mount the space as though it were a local drive, which results in faster transfer speeds.

When testing the I/O performance of the SMB share, the px2-300d averaged 69.2MB/s for large files, with a write speed of 80.3MB/s and a read speed of 58MB/s. We saw a write speed of 11.2MB/s, a read speed of 14.5MB/s and an average of 12.9MB/s in our small-file test. If need a NAS to back up large numbers of small files, this px2-300d isn’t your best bet.

Many NAS devices show significantly faster throughput when configured as iSCSI targets, as this offloads most of the processing to the PC that’s mounting the target. In our large-file tests, we got a write speed of 135.7MB/s, which is one of the fastest we’ve ever seen, and a read speed of 80.1MB/s, producing a 107.9MB/s average. Small file transfer speeds were a little disappointing compared to similarly priced business NAS devices, but were a significant improvement on those of the SMB tests. Small-file throughput averaged 37.6MB/s based on a write speed of 49.2MB/s and a read speed of 26MB/s.

The Iomega StorCenter px2-300d Pro 2TB costs a similar amount to the Synology DS713+ enclosure with no drives. It’s easy to set up and is a good option for users who just want to carry out the bare minimum of configuration before they’re up and running. The Iomega Personal Cloud, although it has its limitations, is great if you want to make your storage accessible to users off-site without having to set lots of options. However, rather slow small-file transfer speeds and a limited range of features mean that the px2-300d isn’t ideal for power users, who’d be better off spending a bit more to buy a Synology DS713+ and separate hard disks.