All of the previous comments aside, home and office users should find at least one thing that interests them. For the home user, the addition of media refinements, including a handful of newly supported media file types has to be a welcome upgrade. The device now supports *.m4b, *.rmvb, *.rm, *.m4v, *.divx, *.xvid, *.mkv, *.mts, and *.flv - many of which are quite popular formats for use with media players. Personally, I have a Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ that is used quite often to stream video files from the FreeAgent BlackArmor NAS 440, so improving the compatibility is a definite plus.



Home and office users alike may be interested in more secure file sharing, and one portion of this new firmware improves things in that department. The BlackArmor NAS now supports FTP over SSL/TLS, and the screenshot below shows the "Network - Services" tab where one can configure HTTP and FTP sharing, as well as the related security options.



On the practical side of things, applying the firmware is very easy. Under the "System" heading in the NAS web-based interface there is a tab titled "Firmware Update". You can choose to have updates applied manually or automatically, and the whole process involves just a few clicks as it will access the firmware update file from the Seagate server. The screenshot below shows the "Auto Update" tab which identifies that the latest firmware has been applied. What it will also do is alert you when a new firmware update is available, and in this case we see that "No update is available".



A great thing about applying this firmware update is that there is no need for a reboot. Once the firmware was applied the device didn't miss a beat, and there was no downtime. I applied this new firmware on November 22, 2010, and the screenshot below shows that as of December 02, 2010 (10 days later) that the NAS had been "up" for 15 days plus. And while the firmware was released on November 16, 2010, the screenshot below also details that the build date of this firmware was October 01, 2010 - so it obviously wasn't rushed out the door.



Overall, this firmware update isn't earth shaking, but does offer a few nice refinements and is definitely worth applying. Once applied, many users might not even notice that anything has changed, but the few bug fixes and handful of new features will no doubt appeal to a good number of people. For the Russian speaking Mac owners looking to use secure FTP to share the .divx files stored on 3TB USB drives attached to their BlackArmor NAS - this release has to be a dream come true! I have a wishlist of features I would like to see available on the BlackArmor NAS, and I hope this firmware update is just one of many refinements to become available in the near future.

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