Promise SmartStor NS4300N is my alternative to Apple Time Capsule. It’s bigger faster, and more robust. Plus it is pretty much indestructible. (I need that in a storage system). I run in Raid 5, cause I’m cool like that.
The NS4300N is constructed fairly well. It has a sturdy plastic casing with a push-latch door on the front. The Promise SmartStor is a pretty easy install there are one or more SATA drives in the system and you can log into the device via a web page and configure drives, shares and permissions to share the data to other computers on the network. There is a plug in that allows the unit to do other things- such as act as a DLNA media server (which a PS3 and other devices can connect to).
The inside of the NS4300N has a metal cage with four SATA ports on the rear of the cabinet. Drives are held in place via plastic ‘trays’- and these are the cheapest feeling feature of the system. The trays are like guides to insert the drives and as handles to remove the drives.
The system features a gigabit Ethernet connection but it seems to be wasted on the performance of the system. Average upload speed is about 35Mbps and download speeds averaged about 75Mbps.