Patriot Javelin S4 Network Attached Storage

Analysis of Features:

One Touch Backup: The feature works exactly like it sounds. You insert either a flash drive or eSATA cable into the back of the Javelin, hit the button on the front and then sit back and relax. The button flashes blue while it’s going and then stops after it’s finished. It would be nice if there was a spot in the admin interface that told you the status of the backup, instead you just have to rely on the visual cue.

Bit Torrent Downloader: Patriot is careful about the way that they worded this feature. It is exactly what it states, a downloader. It doesn’t allow you seed torrents once you download them. I would like to see either an updated version of this plugin, or maybe an rtorrent plugin with rutorrent as the web interface now that root access is a possibility.

Emule File Downloader: The file downloader allows you to search the emule peer to peer network for files. You can add your own .met servers to the list. This is a neat feature, but with torrents being more prevalent in the file sharing communities these days, it feels a bit antiquated.

DLNA Media Streamer: I found this feature to work exceptionally well. It doesn’t support every format, but when it has one that it can read it will stream it to any DLNA compatible receiver. I was able to stream videos from the Javelin to my PS3 with no trouble. I have it on good authority that Patriot is working on a media transcoder dongle that will plug into the back of the Javelin and allow it to transcode otherwise un-streamable media into something that can be streamed to a DLNA receiver. This will add a lot of value to the Javelin, and put it in competition with devices like the Popcorn Hour or Western Digital Live Hub.

Acronis Backup: The Javelin comes with a copy of Acronis Backup & Recovery Server. Before you get any ideas about copying it and sharing with all your friends, this version will only work if you have a Javelin on your network. It uses a OEM license to make it all kosher, but it only allows you to back up to the NAS. Once you make the backup, you can move it anywhere though.

Web Server and MySQL: It just seems like this little device can do it all. By uploading webpages to the WWW share, you can host your own websites from the Javelin. It already has MySQL installed, which it uses for some of its plugins and other admin stuff. You can access the database through the main portal which brings up a phpMyAdmin window. The default username and password is “root” and “password” respectively.

Analysis of Interface:

The main portal page on the Javelin is simple and nicely laid out. The admin page is similarly user friendly.

On the admin page we can see the current status of the Javelin. It lists the uptime (a good thing for any Sys Admin to know), the current CPU and memory load, the current network throughput and the temperature of the enclosure.

There is a desktop admin program that can be installed, but the amount of features that it has is less than that of the web interface. Because the application tries to launch on startup, it gives a UAC warning every time you start your machine. I found this rather annoying and just ended up uninstalling the program. Honestly, anything you can do in the desktop program, you can do from the web interface and then some.

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