I will now go over all the reasons why you should buy the NS312. First of all, it’s attractive. The NS312 is made by SilverStone, a company known for amazing aluminum computer cases. Enclosures are their forté, so it’s no wonder that they can make a good looking, stylish hard drive enclosure/NAS. The size of the NS312 is also nice, because it’s not too much bigger than the hard drive enclosed within it, at only about the size of four stacked DVD cases. It uses less energy than a conventional file server, and is obviously way smaller. This NAS comes with a neat silver-painted plastic stand, even though it’s not necessarily needed, thanks to its block shape. The enclosure is extremely well made, and very durable. The metal they used in construction of the NS312 is thick, and therefore awesome. Installation of the hard drive into the enclosure is extremely easy with its screw-off side, which is way better than a slide-out tray. The thing I like most about the NS312 is its looks, especially since it’s black and silver - a color combination that’ll never stop looking tizzight.

Installation of the NS312 onto the network is fairly easy and straightforward, too. They give you lots of options in the administration interface such as the very handy FTP access, easy-to-use user controls, and simple disk formatting. If you don’t want to use the network to connect to the NAS, you can use the included USB cable to connect up to it and use the NS312 as a portable USB hard drive. The LEDs on the front of the enclosure are bright and well-labeled, and the power button gives off a satisfying click when pushed.

As far as heat-dissipation goes, all I can say is, “Hey, it’s aluminum.” The hard drive I used, a Seagate Ultra ATA/100 7200RPM 250GB, never got more than a couple degrees hotter than the ambient temperature, even during heavy use. I’m not sure if it’s just the hard drive running cool, or if it’s the NS312 doing a good job of keeping things cool, but it does get slightly warm to the touch, so it’s doing something. There’s no fan in it, though, so you might get bad results if you use a super-hot running drive in it, but I wouldn’t be too worried. The plus side to having no fan is, of course, less noise.

Now, I’m going to go ahead and talk about what I either didn’t like about NS312, or just think should be improved upon. First of all, what’s up with only accepting IDE/PATA drives? Come on! They’re so last week. Yeah, I know, a lot of people have them laying around because of computer upgrades, but it’s coming to a point where Serial ATA drives are getting cheaper than comparatively-sized PATA drives. Still, this isn’t too big of a deal, ’cause there’s so way you’re going to need faster transfer speeds than an ATA/100 can provide. Secondly, more software would’ve been cool. A piece of software to perhaps assign a drive letter to the network drive would be pretty sweet. I can only think of one more minor improvement to be made, and that is with the LEDs. There’s a little piece of something (paper, plastic, I don’t know) that lies between the glass on the bezel and the LEDs themselves. Its holes are a little off-center. I don’t know if that was just a problem with mine, but in case it’s a common problem, I thought I’d point it out. And since we’re on the subject of the lights, the green power light never goes off. I’m not sure if that light is there simply to show that it’s plugged it, but I feel like it should turn off when the hard drive’s off.

Alright, let’s recap. The NS312 is easy to install a hard drive into, and it’s easy to setup on your network. There are plenty of options in the interface for tweaking, and the instructions included on the CD in PDF form are comprehensive and straight-forward. The device itself looks cool, and is well-made. It doesn’t accept SATA drives, and the ethernet is limited to 100Mbps speeds, due to the lack of a gigabit controller. The USB connection isn’t amazingly fast at around 25MB/s, but that’s only about 5MB/s slower than USB 2.0’s practical limitation, which is arguably not too big of a deal, especially since the NS312 isn’t really made for USB use, but rather through ethernet. Overall, it’s easy to use, and it does what it says it’ll do, and it does it well. It’s nice not to have to leave a big, power-hungry file server computer on 24/7 in order to access files on the network, and that’s what the NS312 is all about. It’s a small, easy to use network file server, and it’s fast enough through ethernet to steam just about anything you could want - and it can do this for up to 30 people simultaneously. The price of this unit isn’t even all that bad at about $100 from Case-Mod.com, which had it for the lowest price I could find at the time of writing this article. The cheapest NAS I can find is about $60, which is for one that’s made out of plastic, and doesn’t look all that hot. Overall, I would suggest this product to someone that has a need for network-attached storage because: 1) it looks good, 2) it’s easy to use, and 3) it gets the job done, quickly. I can’t think of anything better out there in its price range.

Overall Score: 8.3/10 — It’s a good product for a reasonable price.