Seagate Central

Pros Easy setup and configuration. Excellent Read/Write performance. Great remote-access service. Integrates with Facebook; other media devices

Cons Runs a little warm. Highest storage capacity capped at 4TB. No granular user control over Facebook integration. Some performance lag within the interface. Bottom Line Seagate Central is a near-perfect NAS for home users: It's easy to set up and delivers business-class performance, but its storage is capped at 4TB.

By Samara Lynn

The Seagate Central is an impressive NAS device (Network Attached Storage) targeted at home users. This attractive, yet simply-designed piece of hardware provides easy sharing of photos, videos, music, and documents between multiple users within a home network or even outside of the home—whether on a PC, Mac, or smartphone. A bonus is that it's designed to work as a whole-home central media library for sharing and accessing data from game consoles, Smart TVs, and Blu-ray discs.

A true multimedia device, the Seagate Central is perfect for the starring role at the center of a home network. Not only is this NAS easy for home users to set up and manage, but it also offers business-class performance. My only real disappointment is that the highest capacity available for it is only 4TB. Today's home users amass such huge amounts of data; some will undoubtedly be left wanting more capacity—especially given how much they will enjoy using the Seagate Central. 

Specs and Design
Central resembles a set-top box or a flat speaker. Its footprint is small enough to easily fit into a home entertainment/media center—though it only operates as a horizontal desktop device. The Central ships in 2TB ($159.99 street) 3TB ($179.99, street), and 4TB ($219, street) models. It supports Windows XP and later and Mac OS X 10.4.9 and later. 

Seagate kept the Central's design simple. There is a lone LED on top to show when the device is active and ready to go. The rear panel has an Ethernet port for connecting to a router, as well as a USB 2.0 port for connecting USB external hard drives and printers.
I did notice during testing that the device runs a bit warm. Although it has airflow vents and sits on rubber feet so that it's not flush against a surface, you might want to place it in a location that gets decent ventilation.

Setup
A Quick Start guide is included in the packaging. The guide is sparse but gets you up and running quickly. Illustrations show users how to connect Central to a router. Once the NAS is powered up, it's ready for configuration and access when the LED turns solid green.

To configure it, fire up a browser to Seagate.com/central/setup. A webpage on Seagate's site has two clickable "Start Here" buttons—one for Mac users and the other for Windows users. 

When I clicked the Windows button, I was immediately notified on-screen that a firmware update was available. Graphical, easy-to-follow instructions are displayed on how to download and apply the update.  Next, my Central was discovered on my network. The web site will do this as long as the computer you're using and the Central are on the same network. Once located, an automatic drive mapping to the pre-created Public folder on the NAS takes place. You can see the folder by browsing in Windows Explorer.

After this quick setup, the browser redirects to the local management interface of the Central.  This interface is where you customize the device.

View the original article here