Aiming solidly towards those looking for their first network attached storage drive, or perhaps even towards small businesses hunting for some easy-to-configure shared storage, Plextor goes out of its way to make things easy to get going with its StorX PX-NAS1000L drive.

The friendliness kicks off with the hardware itself, which is a breeze to get plugged in and going. Everything is clearly marked, the instructions that Plextor includes are straightforward and you should be up and running in little time.

There's a pair of USB ports in the back, and thus you can easily add another hard drive to it should 1TB prove not to be enough. The supplied software is solid and our trio of testbed PCs all managed to see the drive quickly too; we soon had it mapped and ready to go.

To aid with the user-friendliness, the front of the hardware itself is dominated by a series of lights that tells you what's connected, and there's a one-touch backup option too, which clearly has its uses.

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Backed up with a promise of high reliability - one we couldn't refute during the month we had the drive on test - it seems like quite a tidy package and, in NAS drive circles, £200 for 1TB isn't a terrible deal. If you're so inclined it can also act as a BitTorrent server, although we didn't put that to the test.

But the good news, sadly, comes to an end right about now. Because the StorX has a flaw that inevitably is going to be a deal breaker for some, and certainly was for us. So keen is Plextor to keep its drive reliable and cool that it's equipped it with the noisiest fan we've ever heard on a network attached storage device. It's loud to the point of being offputting, and reminded us of the performance PCs of a decade ago at their worst.

We tried it in a home environment, too, and placed it on the bare floorboards of a loft to keep it out of the way. This was a bad plan, as the vibrations it sent through the ceiling led to a continual low hum! We got around this by mounting it on a wooden shelf in the end, but noise is a major factor with the StorX, however reliable it may be. You won't want to be in the same room as it for long.

Noise is, crucially, not much of a factor for much of the drive's competition, and that's why Plextor has taken such a mis-step here. There are umpteen companies who continually prove that you can put so much storage in such a small box and who don't need a tractor sound replicator to keep it cool. Sadly, Plextor failed at that hurdle, when it had got so much correct beforehand. And that's enough to ensure that we can't, in all conscience, recommend the product.

A tidy network attached storage drive, but it's the loudest we've heard to date. If you have somewhere sound-proofed to keep it then it's worth a look, but otherwise there are quieter solutions available.