 Today I've got a pretty cool product from Patreon to show you guys. This is the Javelin S4 Media Server and what this does is pretty much everything that I can think of in terms of a stand-alone NAS box and some things that I actually didn't even think of. So why don't we start with what's on the packaging on the outside and then we'll go from there. So Patriot figures these are the main talking points. I have my own notes on what I think are the main talking points so we'll compare them later on. First of all, it is an iTunes server so you can use a single iTunes account for all computers in your network. That's handy. It is a Logitech Squeezebox server so you can stream to Logitech enabled devices. That's also handy. You can do NAS to NAS backup so you can actually image with another Javelin unit within your network or outside your network. So that means you can do off-site backups using a couple of Javelin units. That's very cool and that's actually not something that was on my list so I'm glad they brought it up. It is Time Machine compatible so this is another Apple thing. Please don't hit the dislike button. Time Machine compatible is a handy feature. It has a BitTorrent client so you can download and manage all of your favorite Torrent files remotely. Note media playback so you can stream your media through a web browser or iPhone slash Android mobile app. That one's really cool. That one, in my eyes, should be up at the top. UPnP and DLNA certified so you can seamlessly connect to other home media devices and finally you can share. You can show off your media with friends and family anywhere so you can share files over the entire webs. Alright, here we go. Product highlights. This is all pretty similar stuff. Oh no, actually there's more here. Okay, so data storage over the network and internet with mobile media center and dashboard, access photo albums, documents and more. So that's that internet sharing bit. Okay, you've got the DLNA digital media server so that gives you instant access to your music pictures, videos via digital media players on the home network such as the Patreon box office. Alright, one touch backup of an external hard drive or digital camera via USB. That's actually a really cool feature. That's something that's a software thing they've enabled that a lot of NASs do not support with their USB ports. Alright, NAS to NAS replication. We already covered that. Snapshot for instant backup and restoration. Backing up your home PCs is something that is critical for any NAS to do. Now the software solutions are either very elegant or very terrible in my experience so that's something that I'm glad that Patriot has worked into the javelin because backing up your PC is the only real solution. Adding something like a RAID 1 in a home computer is not a real solution because if you get a virus you still get wiped out. So doing nightly backups is something that I would definitely recommend to everybody. Smart sync backup for automatic client backup. Okay, good, good, good. Jumbo frame support. So this is a 1 gigabit NAS so you do have fast transfer support and it supports network print server via USB connected printers. You can access and attach and access USB and ESATA external hard drives as a folder share on the javelin S4 so you can actually expand the storage beyond the 4 drive bays that are included with the javelin S4. It has a 2 year warranty and here is a little network map which I'll show you more of in a minute which has a bunch of different ways that you can use the javelin. So flexible RAID configurations. I mentioned it supports 4 drives. It supports a RAID 0 in a stripe. I mean, okay, please, please never set up 4 drives in a RAID 0 in a backup device that completely defeats the purpose. Don't do it wrong. RAID 1 mirror. This is a good way to set it up so you can actually take 2 drives or 4 drives and you can set them up to mirror each other so even if any 1 drive fails, you're going to have all of your data replicated somewhere else on a completely data identical drive. RAID 10 is mirror and stripe, performance and backup. I still don't really recommend it because you're going to be limited by gigabit ethernet anyway. You might as well just stick with your RAID 1s or your RAID 5s. So RAID 5 is 3 drives or more and it allows you to have any 1 drive fail and then you can put in another drive and rebuild the array as if it was never gone. So it supports the capacity of 2 drives with 3 drives. So it's quite a bit more efficient than RAID 1 where you need 2 drives to support the capacity of 1 drive but you have the disadvantage of rebuild time if a drive does go down in the array. Now RAID 5 is cool, with a spare disk is cool because you can throw 4 drives in your Davelin S4 and one of them is sitting there idling doing nothing. If any 1 drive fails, that idling doing nothing drive will automatically build itself into the array to replace it and then you can at your leisure take out the dead drive and put in a new one. The Davelin S4 does support 3TB drives so you can throw up to 12TB of storage into this tiny little box. It comes very well packed as you guys just saw. It's got a big old thick layer of foam on all sides of it. This is up to about an inch thick on all sides so I really wouldn't worry about there being any damage to your drives or your Davelin in transit. Alright let's put that box back together. I wanted to show you guys that network map later so I'll show that. And here I'm just going to move back a little bit so you don't see my notes. Alright in terms of accessories we don't have too much. We've got what feels like a very solid, very heavy duty ethernet cable with gold plated connectors. Looks like a 6 volt cable. And then we have a power adapter. Looks like it has a built in power supply so no external power brick. Pretty nice. Okay we've got drivers and manuals. The fan contains hazardous moving parts. Don't put your fingers or other objects in it. You've got a quick start guide which is in a lot of different languages and stuff so you're covered pretty much no matter how things go. And this looks like some kind of a key. My guess is that it's to keep other people from just walking up to your Davelin and pulling all of your drives out of it. I mean it's so small I'm guessing they could just grab the Davelin unless it has a Kensington lock which I can't tell yet if it does. This is actually kind of a slick looking little unit. That's another thing that a lot of NASs don't really have going for them is they tend to look kind of dumb. And since it's something that you have to have either on or near your desk it is nice when it looks good. Alright so there's the Davelin itself. And you know what give me a second to get things organized here. Alright so we finally got the unit itself out. All I have to do is push there. The door opens at the front and I can see all four SATA interfaces at the back of the unit. It comes with four of these drive sledges which you use to put the drive on and slide it into the unit itself. This did end up being a key so you can actually lock this front door no problem. But as I mentioned before if I was going to steal something from a Davelin I would probably just take the whole Davelin itself. It's fairly small, fairly light although once you load it up with drives it could be a little bit on the heavy side and you don't want to move it around to avoid any damage to the drives. You've got compatible with Windows 7 stickers as well as a DLNA certified sticker, Patriot logo and then you've got your power button with a built in LED at the front. And that pretty much does it for the front. You've got activity LEDs for the hard drives as well as a network LED here. On the back we have a gigabit ethernet port. We have a hard reset switch. I love seeing hard reset switches because even the best software crashes sometimes. I actually had a tablet crash on me a little while back and it was very difficult to figure out how to reset it because it had no hard reset switch. Ok sorry, sorry I'll put on a tangent here. Gigabit ethernet port, eSATA interface, two USB interfaces so that means you can have one of them permanently attached to a printer for example and you can have the other one available for USB storage whatever the case may be. And I'm sorry this one on the back is actually the power button and the one on the front is not a power button. So what is the one on the front? I don't know. Ok well I'll figure that out later. Alright finally we've got an 80mm cooling fan. We have our power in here and then I just want to take a look at the overall construction of the unit. So you can see here we've got access via the bottom panel to nothing, that's screwed shut. But we do have four rubber feet here on the bottom so that's going to keep the Javelin S4 from moving around when you put it down on the table. It's also raised a little bit so I don't know. Here yeah there's a good way to see it. So you can see that it's going to get some convection cooling coming up through the bottom and that's where the fan is going to take in some of its air. That's at least based on my observation. And then the rest is going to come through these vents in the front which have a fine mesh over them so it should be just a matter of going like this to clean the dust off them once in a while. And then there's also ventilation around the outside edge where air should be able to pass quite freely into the inside around the outsides of the door. So that pretty much takes care of ventilation. And it appears that this is not ventilation at all because you can see that once I open it up there's actually no access to the bottom compartment from the top. So it looks like that's purely a power supply component. RTM folks, RTM. Read the manual. This is the one touch backup button so you'll use that every time you want to do a one touch backup which basically just means it's triggering a software event to run a pre-scheduled backup that you have configured already. So yeah, that's pretty much it. Alright next, a couple more things. So Patriot recommends using Enterprise or Raid Edition class hard drives for maximum reliability when using Raid 0 or Raid 5 configurations. Good reason for that. Raid 0 as I mentioned before is for speed. It's not for reliability. You lose one drive out of a four drive Raid 0, all the data is gone. So just don't use that at all. And then for Raid 5, the array is quite vulnerable if a drive fails during that period where you haven't put in a new drive and let it rebuild itself. While it's rebuilding if another drive fails it will all be gone. So it is best to use Enterprise class drives. Now finally let's have a look at Patriot's network map here where you have the javelin as the center of the house right there and then you have a UPS being managed by it. You have external hard drives, a printer. You can back up the javelin itself to another javelin over the internet. That's a really cool feature. I love that. Okay, you've got portable devices like phones that you can stream media to. You've got a network media player like a box office hooked up to your TV. Xbox 360. You've got it connected via wire to a wireless router switch which you can stream media to your laptop or to your computers including Windows and Macintosh computers and finally any UPnP and DLNA devices and even Linux computers themselves. So there's going to be a full Tech Tips episode coming on the javelin where we show some of these features but for now that is my unboxing. Thank you for checking it out and I'll turn this around the right way. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips.