Is the cloud’s work done? This NAS only takes 10 minutes to set up – and it’s the easiest network storage I’ve tried

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Network Attached Storage (NAS) refers to a device deployed on your home or office network that makes storing and sharing files much easier. These tools are generally built for speed, reliability, security, and simplicity. Not all NAS devices achieve all of those goals, but the ones I’ve tested certainly do.

The NAS in question is Zetlab D4 AI NAS,

With four drive bays offering up to 100 TB of storage, you can easily transfer everything you have in your Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, or other cloud storage to the security and privacy of your home network.

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I’ve tested many NAS appliances over the years and deployed my own appliances using platforms like Open Media Vault, Rockstore, and TrueNAS Scale. Although these distributions make NAS deployment very economical, if you want ease of use, you should opt for D4.

In fact, I was surprised at how easily this NAS device got up and running. In about 10 minutes, I had the D4 deployed and ready to go. It required very little effort or knowledge of NAS devices to get it ready for use.

Let’s dig in.

my experience

The most important aspect most users will appreciate about the Zetlab D4 AI NAS is the ease of setup. I’ve never experienced a NAS that was so easy to get up and running.

Here is the process:

1. Insert your drive into the bay.
2. plug it in.
3. Connect the included Cat5 networking cable to the NAS and your router.
4. Turn it on.
5. Point your web browser to the IP address shown on the LCD screen.
6. Walk through the simple setup wizard.

It took me less than 10 minutes to accomplish all this (including initializing the two 4 TB drives I had installed). During setup, you create a local account (no information is shared) that you’ll use to log into the web-based UI.

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speaking of which…

The ZettOS UI is very well designed. Thanks to this user-friendly GUI, anyone can have accessible folders to hold files from any device on their network. From the ZettOS UI, you get access to the App Store, ZettAI, Files, Settings, Search, Photos, and more. Everything is laid out in a way that makes it easy to understand how the UI works.

It’s all about storage

OK, I realize the D4 includes AI and many other features (especially when you install apps like NextCloud from the App Store), but the primary feature of the NAS is storage. If such a device performs poorly with storage, it is essentially useless.

I’m happy to report that the Zetlab D4 AI makes it incredibly easy to set up NAS storage. It even avoids one of my biggest hassles with other NAS devices.

Typically, NAS devices use SMB/CIFS for network access and folder/file sharing. On some devices, you need some Linux skills to implement Samba. For example, after creating your user account through the NAS GUI, to access the folders associated with the user account over the network, you must add and enable the user for Samba, which includes the following commands:

smbpasswd -a username
smbpasswd -e username

Not everyone has those skills.

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Luckily, ZettOS handles all of this for you, making it incredibly simple to share folders and files. A few clicks of the mouse and you are ready to go.

This proves to me that the Zetlab D4 is an ideal storage solution for people who don’t have a lot of technical skills. If you can use a website, you can use D4. Considering that NAS devices can sometimes be a bit complicated, this is a huge relief. I’ve worked with some that require you to manually format disks, create pools, set up RAID, create file systems, etc. Those who do not have administrator-level technical skills have no business attempting to deploy such a device.

file transfer speed

One of the first things I did was copy several video clips from a project I’m currently working on. I copied 34GB of files (which included eight video clips), and the transfer time was about 15 minutes. I’ve done the same with other NAS devices and found transfer times to be almost double that of the D4 for similar file sizes.

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Of course, your mileage may vary depending on your home network speed. Because the machine I use for video editing is connected to my LAN via Wi-Fi, the transfer speed is significantly slower than connecting the computer via a Cat5 cable. Given my setup, I’ll take those transfer times.

Apps

I installed Nextcloud because I wanted to see how easy it would be to create a Google Workspace replacement on my LAN. With the combination of D4 NAS and the NextCloud app, I can imagine that the transition from Google to ZetLab will be very simple.

Installing NextCloud was a simple matter of opening the ZetLab App Store, locating NextCloud, and clicking Install. Once the installation is complete, you can open the NextCloud app, click Open and a new tab will appear, allowing you to complete the installation.

I set up Nextcloud for testing purposes, so I used a SQLite database. If I decided to keep Nextcloud, I would remove that installation and deploy both Nextcloud and MariaDB via Docker. When using SQLite databases, Nextcloud is relatively slow, so MariaDB is a better choice.

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Ultimately, I found the combination of the Zetlab D4 AI NAS and NextCloud to be a worthy successor to Google Workspace.

As for ZettAI, it is designed to help you search your data. You can’t ask questions about it without first uploading the files. If you need AI to help you summarize uploaded files, ZettAI is an easy and convenient way to do it.

ZDNET’s shopping advice

The Zetlab D4 AI NAS gets two big thumbs up from me. When a NAS device makes it easy to set up and use, you know it’s an excellent solution for those who need local storage or want to migrate from a third-party cloud option.

One thing to keep in mind is that the D4 does not ship with a drive. You will need to purchase drives that are rated for NAS, such as Synology HAT3300 4TB Plus Series SATA HDD 3.5

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Specifications

• Model: Zetlab D4
• Type: Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
• Operating System: ZettOS (custom Linux-based)
• Storage Capacity: Up to 100 TB
• Drive Bays: 4
• M.2 SSD Slot: 1 (Supports up to 4TB SSD)
• HDD Capacity per Bay: Up to 24 TB per HDD
• RAM: 16 GB (expandable)
• AI Features: On-device AI search, media classification, transcription
• Ethernet Port: 1 x 1GbE, 1 x 2.5GbE
• SD Card Slot: 1 x SD 4.0
• Built-in Display: Yes (LCD for system metrics)
• UPS Support: Yes
• Docker support: yes