Storage

Cracking open the SMC NAS TigerStore storage device

By · July 19, 2007, 4:32 AM PST · markwkaelin

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  • SMC TigerStore NAS teardown

    NAS storage is quickly becoming a common component of small business networks as well as the home office. Not too far behind will come the day where many home networks will have a NAS device for serving media files.

    It is with this prospect in mind that manufacturers like SMC are marketing what can be considered consumer-friendly NAS devices. To understand what goes into such a device, TechRepublic has cracked open the SMC NAS TigerStore and is sharing what was found with you in this gallery.

  • Just four screws (or so it appears)

    Opening the SMC TigerStore seemed to be easy enough; four screws (Red arrows) held the case cover in place. However, the screws proved to be particularly difficult to loosen. The robotic machine that tightened these screws was wound a little tight it appears.

    I eventually had to resort to pliers to get one screw removed, but I did get it opened.

    They yellow arrow points to the ominous warning about voiding the warranty. And the magenta arrows point to the power switch and the warning to confirm voltage. Normally, you would assume that the switch is set to the right spot, but this device was not.

  • The first look at the inside

    Once the case cover was removed, a circuit board was revealed.

  • Move in closer

    The circuit board inside the device (motherboard?) obviously has the serial device controllers and several other more mysterious pieces.

  • Remote management control

    The remote management control chips (RMC) are what allow you to control the NAS device remotely with a PC and a browser via the Gigabit Ethernet ports.

  • Linux and Samba

    Behind the serial hard drive cables is an ARM chip form Agere.

  • A closer look at the ARM chip

    The Agere ARM chip contains the UNIX and Samba software the device uses for serving files.

    Agere recently merged with LSI and these chips are likely to take their logo in the future.

  • Memory

    These two chips from Qimonda are the memory chips. If I read the numbers correctly, we are looking at two 512MB chips.

  • USB control

    Behind the red cables is the SMCS chip that controls the USB ports on the NAS device.

  • RAID control

    The chip residing behind the red cables here would appear to be the RAID controllers.

  • A closer look at the USB controller and the RAID controller.

    With the red cables pulled back you can get a good look at the USB and RAID controller.

  • Behind the controller board

    Behind the controller board there is not much to see. This circuit board manages the hot-swappable hard drive connections.

  • Power supply

    The power supply is relatively standard, although it is rated for a maximum of 128 watts.

  • Board identification

    The serial and identification numbers for this particular board.

    The SMC TigerStore NAS device seems to be very well made and solid. I wouldn't mind having one on my home network. TechRepublic is going to put this device to work in our test lab we like it so much.

SMC TigerStore NAS teardown

NAS storage is quickly becoming a common component of small business networks as well as the home office. Not too far behind will come the day where many home networks will have a NAS device for serving media files.

It is with this prospect in mind that manufacturers like SMC are marketing what can be considered consumer-friendly NAS devices. To understand what goes into such a device, TechRepublic has cracked open the SMC NAS TigerStore and is sharing what was found with you in this gallery.

Related Topics:
Storage Hardware Data Centers Networking Innovation Big Data Analytics Security

By Mark Kaelin

Mark W. Kaelin has been writing and editing stories about the IT industry, gadgets, finance, accounting, and tech-life for more than 25 years. Most recently, he has been a regular contributor to BreakingModern.com, aNewDomain.net, and TechRepublic.

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