LG N4B2ND4

LG N4B2ND4

Integrating a Blu-ray drive into a NAS box chassis is akin to mounting a rocket engine to the bed of a pickup truck: It looks impressive, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. So it is with LG’s N4B2ND4 NAS box (or the model N4B2N, if you don’t want the four 1TB Hitachi hard drives). The Blu-ray drive—and the drop-dead gorgeous enclosure—set the product apart from the competition, but neither feature adds sufficient value to justify the lofty price tag. A dual-layer disc with 50GB of free space for the burnin’ is a great accessory—but not when it’s attached to a network-attached storage device. Is it an issue of backing up critical files? Well, the N4B2ND4 supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 1+0, or JBOD, which should give you plenty of options to balance your speed and data-redundancy needs. And while it’s true that a dual-layer Blu-ray disc delivers 50GB of storage capacity per disc, it would cost a small fortune to back up terabytes of data onto media that costs $35 a piece. Is it a question of not owning a burner? Okay, but this is network-attached storage; most people will hide this 7.5-by-11.6-by-10.6-inch beast in a corner of their office or in a closet and forget about it.