The Gadgeteer was asked by the team at Buffalo Technology, makers of wireless networking, NAS, and all around good gadgets for the hi-tech home and business, to review one of their latest NAS products, the Buffalo TeraStation Pro Quad – TS-QVH8.0TL/R6.   The Buffalo TeraStation Pro Quad is positioned for storing and protecting the small and medium business market’s (SMB) most important asset – its data.  While not specifically designed for the home market, and with a price tag of $1,200, I can understand why it is positioned as such.  From my perspective, the home technology consumer market is quickly evolving and on the edge of that market are consumers looking for a way to quickly and easily share their media, documents, and other content and may look at these NAS offerings shortly.  Having reviewed several other NAS products for The Gadgeteer, I was excited to review one of the larger and more performance-oriented NAS products on the market.I received the Buffalo TeraStation Pro Quad and opened the box to find a well packaged NAS unit complete with power cord, CAT-6 Ethernet Cable and a package with a CD and setup instructions.  From a physical perspective, the Buffalo TeraStation measures in at 6.7″ wide x 8.5″ deep x 9.1 ” high.  It is a small form factor when you consider that it holds four standard 3.5″ hard disk drives in hot-swappable bays.  Many of the NAS units in the market have a similar small form factor.

Weighing the unit I came up with 17.2lbs without the power cable.  From a power perspective, the Buffalo TeraStation is worldwide-capable, supporting 110-240v power through an integrated power supply, which adds to the weight of the unit.  The Buffalo TeraStation is finished in a flat black textured plastic and will fit in well within a network or server environment  While the product packaging does not exude quality – as it feels a bit cheaper then it should for the price – I have seen a lot worse and a lot better.  The Buffalo TeraStation could do with a makeover to bring it up to the  higher build quality and more modern look and feel of  the NetGear ReadyNAS family of NAS products.  From my perspective, The NetGear ReadyNAS family of NAS products are more stylized as they use polished metals and more attractive and tactile smooth finishes.  Look and feel is subjective and I can understand why Buffalo selected the black matte finished texture, as it neither adds nor detracts the look and feel of a data center; it just sits there and does its job – storing and ensuring that data is available when and how it is requested.On the front of the unit are the following:

• Power Button that lights up when the system is active
• Two-Line Backlit LCD Message Panel – making for easy reading in the dark
• Lights for Error, Information, LAN 1, and LAN 2
• Display Button
• Function Button
• Keyed Locking Mechanism
• VGA Port for connecting an external display, but the disk door must remain open

On the back of the Buffalo TeraStation are every network and storage port that one could think of, save for an eSATA connection, which some consumers may be looking for given the eSATA devices on the market.  The fit and feel of the back of the unit is anything but simple, reminding me of my first DELL Servers, simple metal with etched port names and a removable fan that requires a Phillips screwdriver for removal. One nice thing about the design of the back of the Buffalo TeraStation is that it includes a power connector stabilizer that will keep the power plugged into the unit.  It is the little black piece of plastic that is directly below the power connector in the above picture – a nice addition that keeps the power flowing and the connection secure.   The Buffalo TeraStation has the following ports on the back of the unit:

• Two USB 3.0 ports – that are color coded in the standard USB 3.0 blue color
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• Two 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports
• UPS Serial port
• Power Connector
• USB-Internal HDD Boot Selector Switch
• Fan Outlet – I strongly recommend placing the unit so there is adequate ventilation of six inches behind the unit
• Kensington Security Connector

The unit came with a Quick Setup Guide that informed me that there were five steps to setup the software.  The instructions were simple to follow and also included the most important information, the default userid and password to get into the NAS Management Console – TeraStation Navigator.

Within a few minutes of running through the five steps on the setup program that came on the CD, I was able to access the Buffalo TeraStation.  All and all the setup was very simple and straightforward, and I could see any user that had a basic knowledge of their network setup the Buffalo Terastation with ease.  Once up and running, I saw that the Buffalo Terastation had an easy to read LCD front panel that displays the status of the NAS device along with information on the IP address on the network and a host of other useful information.  I logged into the TeraStation Navigator, the web based management interface, and started to explore the management console and the features of the Buffalo TeraStation.  The Buffalo TeraStation was very quiet and did not run hot during my testing.  There was a good deal of airflow on the front and the back of the unit drawing cool air across the hard disk drives.  I could barely hear it running in my wiring closet in my home.  Most small businesses or home users will be installing the unit in wiring closet or cabinet next to other equipment, such as a server, that will, most likely, be louder than the Buffalo TeraStation.

To log into the TeraStation Navigator, one needs to supply a username and password, which can be setup in the setup.

The web-based management interface is fairly intuitive given my experience with other NAS systems.  For those that have not setup a NAS system, the management interface is reminiscent of the 802.11G and 802.11N wireless routers that many have learned to manage.  One of the instructions is to set the local time zone in the web management interface, which I did and the clock automatically set itself as the Buffalo TeraStation is set to a Network Time Protocol Server.  The web-based management interface is setup around a two-tier navigation framework with major tasks at the the top level and secondary tasks within the selected section available once the top level is selected.  An example is under the System top level category are functions grouped into that area, including; settings, storage, LVM, LVM Volume, Backup, Failover, Maintenance, Power Management, and Restore/Erase.

From the time zone setup, I explored a bit further and found the storage tab, where I saw that the Buffalo TeraStation ships in a RAID 5 configuration by default.  For those unfamiliar with RAID, it stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives.  There are a number of RAID configurations that meet the performance and data availability requirements.  For each configuration there is a certain amount of overhead in terms of stripping the data across the drives.  The base system includes 8TB of RAW storage capacity in four (4) 2TB SATA drives.  In a RAID 5 configuration, data is stripped across the drives and the fourth drive is where all of the parity data is written.  In other words, performance is increased as the four drives are combined in a single logical volume and each write takes advantage of the four drives together while the parity stripe protects the drives in case a single data drive is lost.

From a NAS protocol support perspective the Buffalo TeraStation offers every protocol one could want, including:

• NFS – Network File System support for Linux
• CIFS (SMB) – for Microsoft Windows and Mac
• HTTP – for serving web pages directly from the Buffalo TeraStation
• FTP – File Transfer Protocol
• BitTorrent
• iTunes
• DLNA
• AFS
• Time Machine

What makes the Buffalo TeraStation good for small and medium sized business?

Performance

To test the performance of the Buffalo TeraStation, I created two file sets; a small file set with thousands of ~1MB files, and a second large file set with 20 100MB+ files.  I tested the file copy from a standard Mac and PC setup, both with SSDs, and found that for small files, the performance delivered an impressive 38Mb/s thanks to the read-write performance of the processor, RAM cache, and multiple drives.  Single drive systems can turn in 4-8Mb/s performance, while a multiple drive NAS system can easily double, or in this case quadruple the performance.  For the larger files the performance increased to 42.6Mb/s.  Larger files usually deliver more impressive results in testing for these systems as the file size makes a single file movement simple.  I will add that I did not turn on Jumbo Frames on the devices as it would have increased the performance a bit more as the MTU size goes from 1500 to 9000 or six times the amount of data in each packet on the wire.

Hardware and Operating System

From a hardware perspective the Buffalo TeraStation has a 1.6Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM and runs Buffalo’s own NAS operating system.  I am assuming that Buffalo selected an open source version of Linux and then added in the packages that they needed to meet the needs of the market.   In the end, the operating system and feature set is extremely well done and complete, making for a seamless experience.

Availability and Replication Built-In

With RAID protection built-in and the processor and RAM to keep your files moving, the Buffalo TeraStation will keep up with the demands of many small and medium businesses as well as many home users looking to beef up their media collections.  I was able to test the Buffalo TeraStation replication using a secondary Buffalo TeraStation on my network.  I was excited to see my files replicate the two systems and failover occur seamlessly when I cut the power to the primary system.  The Buffalo TeraStation takes advantage of a Distributed File System (DFS) to resolve network aliases to allow easy access to files.  Within the web-based management console, there is a setting that enables the Buffalo TeraStation to failover and take ownership of the files that have been replicated.  The Buffalo TeraStation automatically recognized the backup Buffalo TeraStation and configured itself for failover once the device was set as the target device.  After the failover, the devices synchronized themselves once the primary device came back online.  This feature was impressive as all of my changes to the files replicated back to the restored system as though nothing changed.  One thing to realize is that the replicated target must be the same size as the primary storage.  In other words, there is no free lunch. One other thing to realize is the network segment that the replication is on will get a bit hot during replications, and I would strongly suggest looking at setting up a separate VLAN to keep the devices on their own segment if you plan on using this feature.  You will give up some of the redundancy of trunking two paths together, but you will gain a much faster replication.  With that said, replication will take away from the overall performance of the device itself.  I did not test the performance during replication and suggest that this is again a no free lunch concern of having a device that can do so much in a single package.

Backup support

The Buffalo TeraStation comes with a 10 pack of backup software supporting backup of all of the major operating systems.  Additionally, the Buffalo TeraStation supports Apple’s Time Machine for Mac so no additional software is needed to backup your Windows, Linux, or Mac clients.  This is a major plus for those in the IT market looking to deploy a centralized backup target for all of their critical servers and users that would not backup without a central storage device.  Many IT shops distribute USB devices to backup their critical servers and workstations.  While effective, centralizing backup to a NAS system enables a better level of control.  Further, one can add a USB backup hard disk drive device to the Buffalo TeraStation and back it up for a third level of support, or leverage the included integration with Amazon S3 Cloud Storage Service to automatically backup important data to the cloud.

Security

With support for 128bit AES encryption the Buffalo TeraStation ensures that even if someone has physical access to the device it will be very hard, but not impossible, for the thief to access the files contained within the system.  By default the encryption is disabled and one will need to enable it.   Encryption will slow device writes and reads and is a necessary trade-off in some security-conscious organizations.

Virus Checking Built-In

The Buffalo TeraStation includes built-in virus protection which keeps your files free from viruses.  The team at Buffalo strongly suggests creating a secondary file share to quarantine suspected infected files.

Three year warranty

Buffalo backs their Buffalo TeraStation with an industry-leading three-year warranty.

Industry leading support

I looked at the Buffalo Technology website and reached out to the technical support team via contacting their support center and found the staff knowledgeable and supportive for even the simplest question.  Also, the Buffalo TeraStation is capable of checking and updating the operating system on its own.  I did not get a chance to test this feature out as there was no new upgrades available.  I suspect the upgrade will require an outage in serving files as the system will surely have to reboot.  Additionally, the Buffalo TeraStation supports a UPS.  In the case of a power failure, the UPS will gracefully shut down the Buffalo TeraStation, avoiding a time consuming replay of the log and checking the RAID layout for errors.

Support for Active Directory with up to 5,000 users

By integrating with Active Directory or other directory services, the Buffalo TeraStation makes it easy to integrate into an organization.  The team at Buffalo Technology wisely suggests to stay away from directory services with over 5,000 users as synchronizing the account list can take away from file serving performance, which is the primary task of the device.

Ability to block certain file types

Blocking certain file types within an organization is important as there are some file types that may be restricted, such as game files, pictures, music, and video.  These file types can consume costly storage space and take away from the goals of the IT organization in providing a shared service, let alone violating copyright issues.

Power Management

The Buffalo TeraStation includes a powerful power management feature set that enables the IT organization to set three power schedules for spinning down the drives and putting the system into a standby mode.  I did not test the power consumption of the device and did not ask Buffalo for the power requirements, but I assume that it consumes about the same amount of power as a 60W light bulb even under load.

Conclusion

Overall, the Buffalo TeraStation is an impressive solution for small and medium businesses to share their files between the users within the organization.  The Buffalo TeraStation can share files with all of the operating systems within the organization while ensuring that they are highly available and replicated to a secondary system.  Additionally, the Buffalo TeraStation has the performance and scalability while sharing media files and web pages that enables the organization to consolidate their servers, thereby justifying some of the increased cost.

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Laptops and Gear, Reviews

Tagged: External hard drive, NAS

Buffalo TeraStation Pro Quad TS-QVH8.0TL/R6 Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 21, 2011 at 11:00 am.

Having reviewed Network Storage Devices for the home and small office I was asked by Cirago, a relatively unknown designer and manufacturer of storage and network storage devices to review their Network USB Storage Link+, 2000, or NUS2000.  This is an updated version of the same product that was released a few years ago aptly named the Cirago Network USB Storage Link, 1000.  The purpose of the product is two-fold:

1. Create a shared storage device on your network from any standard USB storage device, and
2. Make your USB printer shareable by all of the computers on your network

The Cirago Network USB Storage Link+ 2000 is available on Amazon.com for $79.99

For more information from Cirago on the The CiragoLink+ NUS2000 please visit their product page.

I opened the box, which is tiny, at just over the size of two play cards stacked side by side, to find a nicely laid out package including the NUS2000 product, 5V AC Adapter, Ethernet Network Patch Cable, and an instruction manual.  The NUS2000 is small, and lite, just a bit bigger than a pack of cards, measuring 4.4″ W x 3.5″ L x 1.0″ H and weighs in at under a pound.

The front of the NUS2000 has a pin hole to rest the product, an eject button, and set of six (6) activity lights, including the following:

• Power
• LAN Activity
• USB 1-4

On the back of the NUS2000 is the following:

• Power Connector (5V DC)
• 1000/100/10Mbps Ethernet Connector
• four (4) USB 2.0 ports

I quickly read through the six page instruction pamphlet and found the setup to be very simple.  I think Cirago could save a few trees and pennies by dropping the pamphlet style instruction manual and going with a single short index card that has three pictures on it showing the connection of power, network, and USB device, followed by a Web Browser with the URL for the device to access the management console.

By default the NUS2000 registers with DHCP and gets an IP address as well as registering the NUS2000 host name, which is the out of the box default host name.  You can easily change the host name from within the management console. Once connected, I logged into the NUS2000 and got to work setting up a new share for my trusty 500GB portable USB 2.0 Hard Disk Drive from Toshiba.  My 500GB disk drive is my travel drive that I keep a copy of all of my important data on and I have always wanted to be able to share it with all of the computers in my house.   I usually get back home from a trip and copy any new files that I have created while on the road to my NetGear ReadyNAS+ that I wrote about in the 13 Things to Consider Before Buying a Digital Media Storage System blog post earlier this year.

The NUS2000 supports a variety of protocols, including:

• CIFS/SMB – for connecting Microsoft Windows and MAC computers to the shared storage
• NFS – for connecting Linux and UNIX computers to the shared storage
• iTunes Server – for sharing your music and videos with iTunes connected systems
• BitTorrent, and – for receiving BitTorrent Content
• UPnP – for sharing media to UPnP compliant devices such as game consoles and Blu Ray players

Additionally, the NUS2000 has a Cloud Storage offering, CiragoLink, that is very similar to the PogoPlug cloud offering that I reviewed as part of the Buffalo CloudStor offering.  CiragoLink creates a virtual private cloud by opening your network up through a secure connection to access your content on the NUS2000 remotely.  In my testing I would not recommend the CiragoLink+ as it was painfully slow to copy files or view media.  If you are looking to share files with friends I would strongly suggest looking at an online file sharing site that has agents for working with your local files.

The NUS2000 can support 32 user accounts, which is a good deal more than competing products in this space, each with its own unique userid and password.  Once a user is setup you can easily define a share from your USB connected storage devices.  I tried both a USB 2.0 Hard Disk Drive and a USB 2.0 8GB Memory Key and they both worked flawlessly, albeit a bit slow.  These kind of devices will never offer the performance or response times of devices that have more processing power, memory, and multiple disk drives combined together, but they do offer a quick and easy way to share content from USB storage devices.  I couldn’t get an accurate speed test as I ran several copy jobs only to find some real inconsistencies with the performance of the NUS2000.  Not sure if it was my testing routine, or the hardware in the device.  I will need to get in touch with Cirago and ask some questions about the hardware and software platform embedded in the NUS2000 to find out more, but I expect that it is a Linux base with Open Source components for iTunes, BitTorrent, and UPnP support.

Streaming media to iTunes and my LG player with UPnP support worked well, but not great for High Definition content as the NUS2000 simply can’t keep up with the demands of a 10-12Mb/s stream of data coming off a single USB 2.0 drive.  Even when I tried to put the video file on a USB memory key it still struggled with the HD content.  This kind of device is best used to share documents, such as those created in Microsoft Office or your other favorite desktop productivity tool.

The web based management console of the Cirago is an exercise is simplicity with it’s streamlined approach to major configuration and management tasks.  The management console takes a page from Microsoft Explorer by providing expanding and collapsing icons that have common tasks grouped intelligently.  Also, there is context sensitive help at each step that is simple to understand.  Even with all of this help, the user still needs to understand how to create a share for remote network users to connect to the USB storage.  This is a bit of a challenge as the paradigm of creating shares is one known only to NAS proficient users and the regular population would much rather have a default set to share the entire drive when inserted as they will be controlling access at the physical network layer.  This additional feature would speed up the setup and avoid some missteps, but sacrifice some security.

Each USB port on the NUS2000 is treated as a separate entity so one can not stripe across them to increase performance and one needs to “eject” the USB device through the management console when finished using it.  In my experience with the device this is a simple and straightforward process and the LEDs on the front of the device are very helpful in avoiding any missteps.

I did not test the printer sharing capabilities of the NUS2000 as all of my printers are network shared already, but I would expect the NUS2000 to provide a good solution here as well as the print server functionality of the Linux stack is a proven solution that has been in the Open Source community for several years.

I did have an opportunity to call Cirago Technical Support on a Saturday only to have the phone unanswered and be told by an answering machine to send an email to a support site that was unrelated, by name, to Cirago.  For most home users, weekend support is a requirement because it is when they will be home and working on their content.  While I did not have any issues during my review, I would expect the Cirago team to provide RMAs versus trying to repair the issue remotely, it is where the world is going – disposable technology.  Regardless, I still would like to reach a human being and get assistance.  Finally, the website is void of support information and there are no user forums to share information.  The warranty for the device is one year, manufacturer’s replacement by mail.

While I would not recommend the NUS2000 for anything but the most basic of content sharing tasks, it does make sharing your current USB storage devices simple and easy.  Unfortunately, where it misses is the performance and capabilities of some of the more well known products in the market, as well as the price.

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Reviews

Tagged: NAS

Cirago Network USB Storage Link+ Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 7, 2011 at 4:56 pm.

In today’s connected home we take pictures digitally, listen to digital audio on our MP3 players, and download and watch digital movies on our HD TV’s.  All of these digital media files take up a copious amount of space and the growth of these files is outpacing our ability to store and protect them.  Thankfully, storage has become relatively inexpensive – a 1TB hard disk drive can be purchased for well under $100 and the pricing on 2TB hard disk drives is starting to move in that direction as well.  Not that I can tell the future, but I expect to look back on this article in a year or two and see a 3TB or a 4TB hard disk drive priced at the levels of a 2TB hard disk drive today.

Within the digital home you may want to share your media with others inside and outside of our homes.  To make this possible many vendors are offering home storage systems to store and protect your digital media lifestyle.  These devices connect to your home network and enable you to store and share your media with your family through PC’s and connected devices, such as home theatre systems, digital media extenders, xBox 360, PS3, the Apple TV, and even with friends and family outside of our homes through cloud based services.  Also, with several of the products you can backup your data to cloud based backup services so if there was to be a fire in your home, or a virus outbreak your precious data would be protected.   These services aren’t free, but when you think about your important family albums that are all digital what are they worth to you?  It is a small cost in those terms.

Another other use that I have found for these systems is sharing files between my various home PCs and Macs – instead of dumping files to a USB Memory Stick and Sneakernetting them from place to place I can copy files to my home digital media storage system (NAS Device) and share files among all of my computers.

Having used a number of these digital media storage systems over the past several years I have had to go through the buying process; working through my own requirements, researching and evaluating the options in the market, and finally selecting the right system for my usage.   In an attempt to make your purchase decision easier I wanted to share some thoughts on how to select the right product for your environment.  I am not going to attempt to recommend a specific product because your requirements will likely differ from mine, rather I am going to encourage you to explore many of them by taking a moment to think about what you want to be able to do today and in the future with your digital media.  From my perspective, the worst thing that you can do is buy a product that doesn’t fit your needs and then return it or use it only to have buyer’s remorse.  So, take the extra time and do the research;  laying out your requirements clearly and then buy what best meets your needs – take the time to read reviews online and download and read the product manuals – there are some real gems to be found within the product manuals as well as in the online communities and forums for these products. Unless you live alone you should also talk with your family members to understand how they intend to use the product.  For example, if I was buying something for my mother, it would have to be super-simple and seamlessly integrated with her computing experience as she is not a techie, not even close.  She would need the system to automatically backup her Mac using Time Machine and that would be all that she uses the system for – she rents her digital media through DVDs at RedBox and Blockbuster.

There are several considerations to think about when looking at digital media storage systems, including:

1. Who is going to, and how are they going to use the system?

If you are only storing pictures then you need one type of digital media storage product, like adding a USB connected hard disk drive to your wireless router, which is an option on many of the wireless routers on the market today.  If you are going to be streaming digital media as well accessing your pictures then you may need a totally different system.  Finally, if you are going to stream media throughout your house then you need to think about getting a system with multiple drives, a good bit of memory, and a fast connection to your network.  Now, you are going to ask why?   There are a few reasons why, including:  streaming media requires a good bit of consistent performance, more than you are going to get from a single drive system with a slow connection to your network.  A single hard disk drive can generate between 4-6Mb/s of consistent performance – that is from a SATA-2 drive.  While the vendors of the hard disk drives will claim higher levels of performance, these are usually burst modes and are not consistent, which is what you need to stream media.  Imagine you are watching a HD movie or streaming high quality audio, how much performance do you think that you need?   If you encode your video at 480p, standard DVD, then you are going to need approximately 3 Mb/s of consistent performance to replay the video.  Also, you need to make sure that your home network can support the performance of the streaming media.  Don’t rely on Wi-Fi alone, you may need to physically wire your components together with Gigabit Ethernet to get the best consistent performance.  And, if you are looking at streaming 1080P video then you need to look at 50 Mb/s of consistent performance, which means that you will need to look at striping across several hard disk drives in a RAID configuration.  This is what you need to stream HD quality video from your HD Video Camera or Blu-Ray quality video.

What is RAID?  RAID is an acronym that means Redundant Array of Independent Drives, in other words data is stripped across a number of drives and the performance of the drives is combined, thereby increasing the performance as well as providing resilience and reliability in the case of a single drive failure, using a parity drive.  This article is not about RAID, nor am I going to go into detail on parity configurations, but suffice it to say that many of the vendors that provide these systems have created their own RAID configurations that maximize the available amount of storage from the stripped drives as well as protect your data in case one of the drives fails.  Also, many of the systems offer hot-swap drives enabling you to replace a failed drive on the fly without shutting the system down and they will automatically restore the protection of the system while restriping the data onto the new drive.  While the restriping process is occurring the performance of the system will be degraded because the resources of the system are being used to restore the resilience of your data.  For larger hard drives this can take a day or more depending on how much data is stored on the system.  If you want to read all about RAID I would suggest visiting Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

2. Price

There are products available for under $100 to several thousand $ and everything in between.  And, what you spend depends on what you want the system to do.  Some of the sub $100 systems only use one hard disk drive which can be problematic if the drive dies and you haven’t backed it up.  Many of the systems will come with a single drive and several empty drive bays so you can customize your system based on capacity by adding drives.  Before adding drives to a system make sure that you check the vendor’s website to ensure that you are using tested and supported drives – don’t want to compromise your warranty, or more importantly your data.  Vendors test the drives to ensure that they are compatible and work with their suppliers to work out issues with the drives by upgrading drive firmware, or in some cases disqualifying a drive all together.

3. Physical size of system

Single drive systems are the size of a textbook from college.  You remember textbooks, right?  The larger systems with multiple drives will take up the size of a breadbox.  I always wondered how big a breadbox was and the answer is, approximately 12 inches by 6 inches high and deep – a bit bigger than a large loaf of bread (According to Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadbox).  The size of the system from a physical perspective does not take into account the airflow that these systems need to ensure they stay cool, so make sure you read the manual and place the system in a location where it gets the proper airflow.  I put my system in my home office closet next to my network printer where it has a good deal of airflow and central access to power and networking connections.  Many of the systems have an information panel on the front of the system that will show you the status of the system as well as used and available capacity.  One other important feature on many of the digital media systems is physical security and many include a standard Kensington style locking slot.

4. Look and Feel

Now, I am all for aesthetics and I want my system to look “cool” , but that is something that is very personal and I am going to leave to each of you to determine what you think “cool” is.
The vendors have designed the systems to look like they would fit into any home technology environment – some of them even look like books on a bookshelf, while others look like small versions of servers.  Most of systems have access lights to show drive access as well as management displays on the front of the main unit so you can see what is going on in real-time.

5. Environmentals (Airflow, thermals, sound, and more)

This is an important part of selecting a system and I was surprised when I purchased my first system to find that the fan in the system made so much noise that I had to place it out of the way behind a door to ensure that I would not hear the sound of the fan.  Further, the system got hot, we are talking hotter than I thought it should and it would burn my fingers if I left them on the system for too long, so I had to put some insulation under it to keep it from burning the shelf that it was on.  I read online that these were known issues with the system, and I should have done more research before buying the system.  My second system was not only quiet, because I checked, it ran cool, and it used 1/10^ththe amount of power that the first system used.  So, in upgrading I not only got a better system in every way, I got a system that delivered on the environmentals.  Finally, one feature that I really liked on the new system was that it automatically shut down the power based on a user selectable calendar for each day of the week and weekend day, meaning it turns off automatically and drops from full power utilization to only a trickle when it is powered off, only to restart early in the day and be ready for my usage when I need it.   Also, the current system that I am using has the ability to remotely monitor a connected UPS.  What does this mean?  If the power to the system is interrupted and the UPS kicks in the system will monitor the UPS and before it gets powered down inadvertently the system will shut itself down cleanly.  By cleanly shutting down the system you avoid having to clean the file system, and no, I am not talking about taking about a toothbrush and some cleaner and physically cleaning the system, I am talking about the RAID program replaying a log to ensure no data was lost when the power was interrupted and market the file system super-bit clean.  Did I use enough techno-babble in the last sentence for you?  If you want to know more about this process you can look it up on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journaling_file_system

6. Capacity and Expandability

Most of the systems on the market today start with a single 1 or 2TB hard disk drive and can easily be expanded by adding multiple hard disk drives.  Adding drives is a simple operation of removing a drive carrier and installing a new hard disk drive per the vendor’s instructions and installing the drive back into the system.  The system will automatically recognize the drive and stripe the data across it, or you may have to configure the system based on the performance and capacity options that you want to have for your specific environment.  Usually, drives need to be added one at a time and the process of getting to the maximum capacity may take time and some of the systems on the market will right-size the drive based on the capacity of the first drive installed, so if you install a 1TB drive and then want to add 2TB drives, the capacity of the 2TB drives will only be seen as 1TB.  To fix this one would need to backup all of your data and then start with all of the same capacity hard disk drives.  Other systems on the market will take whatever hard disk drive capacity you throw at it and build a RAID configuration delivering the maximum capacity to you.

7. Integration-Interconnection

Most of the systems on the market today offer both Wi-Fi and Wired connections.  While Wi-Fi offers a simple connection without wires it sacrifices performance for that simplicity.  We have all read the performance claims of 110Mb/s for 802.11n Wi-Fi networks, but realistically the theory and reality are quite separate.  To really deliver the performance there is no way around a physical wired connection.  Sorry, you are going to have to deal with the harsh reality that technology companies don’t always tell the truth and that streaming media will take every Mb/s that you can throw at it to ensure that you get an entertainment quality experience in your home.  Also, you need to think about how many people are going to be accessing the system at the same time.  In my house we have three “Power Users” that all access streaming media at the same time.  My oldest son will be streaming media from Netflix on his Wii while my youngest is looking at pictures on my home media storage device and I am streaming home movies to my Mac.  I checked the network and we were pumping some serious I/O to the tune of 80 Mb/s.  Now, I wouldn’t say that every user in the house needed to be streaming media, but the idea is that I want them to have that capability and utilize the media when and where they want to.

The Netgear ReadyNAS also supports connecting an external UPS and monitoring it for a change in the status of the power coming into the system and will gracefully shut the system down if the power fails.  I have not hooked a UPS up yet, but am planning to do so shortly.

8. Backup – what is all of this I hear about backup?

In the 70’s and 80’s the number one concern that I heard from my parents related to their media was that they were afraid that their physical, analog home movies and pictures would get burned up in a house fire, or lost.  Thankfully, it never happened, but they made copies and stored them at another family member’s house just in case.

Today, all of those physical memories have been replaced by digital files that live on spinning media that is going to crash at some point and you will need to have a backup to ensure that you can still access your digital memories.  What are your digital photos worth to you?  Your memories?  So, why don’t you back them up?  There are many answers to that question it is too complex, or simply too costly, or I never thought about it, to name a few.  With many of the digital media storage systems on the market today they offer the ability to automatically backup the system to a cloud based backup service on the Internet.  This service is available for a fee and you can access your files securely from any other system that can connect to the Internet.  The fee is modest, under $100 per year for the average user and the pricing is based on capacity.  The system can be configured to only backup certain files or directories (folders) so you only pay for what you think is important, for example children’s pictures.  A word of caution, if you have a lot data, say 1,024GB, a full TB be prepared for a rather lengthy upload process.  You can do a quick calculation to figure out how long your upload will take by measuring the speed of your upload and then dividing your total amount of data to be backed up by the upload speed.  In most cases you are probably looking at least a week to backup a TB of data.  On some of the systems available on the market there is a USB port on the back of the system that enables you to connect a USB hard drive and backup the system.  This is a simple and inexpensive way to backup the system, but it requires you to manually backup the system and will not protect your system should you have a fire or a virus.

9. Sharing your media

Many of the products on the market today enable you to share your media, specifically your pictures, through a publishing mechanism.   By sharing a published link with those that you want to see the media they can easily and securely access the media on the Internet.  My current media storage system lets me share my pictures on the web to my family members who live in other states.   While the capability sounds great, the implementation is less than what it should be.  Picture sharing sites offer a rich experience and enable those who view shared media to order pictures and access the media in a simple and visually rich environment.  The implementations of the current media storage systems seems a bit archaic in comparison to the current set of web based photo sharing sites and I think it is a case of trying to be all things to all people instead of focusing on what they are good at and leaving the photo sharing to the photo sharing experts by creating a digital upload service where photos are automatically uploaded to the photo sharing site by the media storage system.

10. Protocol Support

For every type of media and streaming there is a protocol that you need to support it.  For iTunes, the media server needs to be able to act like an iTunes Server so iTunes clients, such as Macs and PCs can see and share all of the stored digital media.  Most of the media servers on the market today leverage open source technology to deliver many of the major protocols on the market, including those listed below:

• Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA): enables a DLNA certified device to access media on a DLNA certified server.  For more information on this process please visit http://www.dlna.org/digital_living/how_it_works/
• Time Machine:  In every apple Max with Snow Leopard there is a built in backup solution that enables you to roll back and find files in a simple to use interface and digital media systems that support the Time Machine protocol can backup Mac clients remotely and automatically on the network.  For more information on Apple’s Time Machine please visit http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
• iTunes Server:  Instead of having to have all of your music on every system in your house you can use a digital media storage system with an embedded iTunes Server to share your music with all of the systems in your home.
• Windows Media Server:  With an embedded Windows Media Server you can stream Windows Media Files and MP3 files to any connected system.
• CIFS (SMB):  Allows you to share files between Windows and Mac systems on the network.
• AFS:  Allows you to share files between Mac clients on the network
• NFS:  Allows you to share files between Linux and UNIX clients on the network.

NOTE:  Files shared between CIFS and NFS can be seen by both systems at the same time and may leverage Samba file sharing technologies and include a locking mechanism so file ownership is kept intact and keeps you from overwriting one another’s changes to the file.

• BitTorrent:  For file sharing over the Internet a BitTorrent client is standard equipment on many PC’s – with a BitTorrent client embedded in the digital media storage system so you can offload the task of getting files off the Internet from your PC.

11. Support & Warranty

When buying anything in the technology market it is important to check out the support and warranty offerings from the vendor.  I checked through the knowledge base of the vendors that I have purchased from and found them to be chuck full of good information.  I did have a hard drive fail in one of my units and I called the vendor and they processed a RMA and cross-shipped a new drive.  Many of the systems offer three year warranties today and that is a good option to have, but you need to check on the specifics of the warranty and find out what is covered in terms of parts and shipping charges.  Also, I played “dumb customer” and called their technical support center to find out what kind of help I can expect when I have an issue and all of the vendors that I called were very supportive and knowledgeable.  As you know, calling support is the luck of the draw based on who is on the other side of the phone line, sometimes it is a great person, other times it is a newbie who is green behind the ears.  You may also want to check on how frequently the vendor updates their product’s firmware (OS platform) and how their product quality has been received by trolling through their knowledge base.  Most of the products on the market will support an auto-upgrade feature by downloading the latest revisions and installing them directly from the vendor’s website.  This is a good feature and keeps you from making a costly mistake by downloading firmware and then not upgrading the system correctly.

12. Hackability

For “Power-Users” that may read this and wonder if they can hack their systems and improve the performance, change a parameter, or add a new protocol?  The answer is most likely “Yes!”  Communities have sprung up around these media servers and offer the know-how and instructions to hack the systems, but be aware that doing so may void the warranty, or require you to reset the system to get support in case of an issue, which means that you may lose your data when you perform a system reset.  Again, read the directions on the system to know what you can and cannot do before you buy the system.

13. Simplicity-Complexity

All of the systems that I have used are relatively straightforward to setup and manage requiring a minimal amount of tech savvy.  When installed all of the ones that I have used automatically register with the DHCP Server and get an IP address.  From there, you configure the system on a management console that is usually web based.  In the case of my current system there is an application that when launched will find the media storage system and allow you to manage it securely.  All of the systems that I have used allow you to set an administrator userid and password to ensure that only you have access to manage the system.

Other Considerations: A word about copyrights; for those of you that copy music or videos that is the property of others please be aware that you are breaking the law and while I cannot condone your actions, you need to understand that your media is also property, your property, and should only be used by those that you want to have access to it or have copies of it.

So, What Were My Requirements and What Solution Did I Select?

NetGear ReadyNAS NV+ with four drives.

http://www.netgear.com/readynasvault

Other systems that I evaluated included the following:

• Buffalo Terastation
• Drobo – I could not purchase the Drobo due to budget concerns and the Drobo required an external box to connect to the network.  The initial design point for the Drobo was a better USB Storage System for Mac users doing animation and digital video.
  
• Iomega StorCenter – The Iomega seemed a bit clunky and inefficient, but did provide the best performance based on comments on the Internet.
  
• HP MediaSmart Server – This system is based on Windows Server – Home Edition and has a good deal of performance, but I wanted an open source solution so I could hack it.
  

Who is going to, and how are they going to use the system?

In my environment I have myself, a power-user who will stream media of all types, my oldest son who is getting into web development, and my youngest son who is mostly interested in streaming music.  Also, I have my parents and friends that want to see pictures of my family and significant events.    We needed a system that has multiple hard disk drives to support higher performance and delivery of media on the network and Gigabit Ethernet is a must have.  For streaming media alone we needed at least two drives to generate the performance that was required and having four drives gives me a bit of headroom when I go to a higher resolution video – not that I am going to be distributing 1080P video anytime soon – just too costly in terms of capacity and bandwidth at the moment.

Price

In 2009, when I decided to purchase a Digital Media Storage Server I had a budget of $500 for the system with all of the drives and I wanted about 4TBs of overall storage for my current and future digital media storage requirements.  This budget was based on buying a second hand system on eBay or Craiglist. If I was looking to buy a new system I would need to raise my budget a bit too around $750.  I have seen new systems that fit my needs on eBay for less that $500 and I bought my system on Craigslist with 2x500GB drives for $200.  That left me $300 to buy drives and I replaced the two 500GB drives that came with the system with 1TB drives and still have some change left over.  I bought the 1TB drives at TigerDirect, after checking the vendor’s website for supported drives.  The drives cost me $59 each and I needed four (4) of them.  So, I spent about $240 for the drives and had about $60 left, which I quickly spent to upgrade the system memory to 512MB, from the standard 128MB which resulted in an increase in performance of ~20%.  Today, you can buy 2TB drives for $69 each and double your capacity, provided they are supported in your system, which my system supports.

Physical Size of the System

This is an area where I am constrained as I needed to put the system in a closet in my office next to my laser printer.   So, the size is critically important to me as is accessibility to the hard disk drives and other parts of the system.

Look and Feel

This is an area where, admittedly, I have less of a concern as the system is going to be in the closet, but the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ is a winner in my book as it has an industrial chrome-silver look that fits in well in my clost.  The current revision of the ReadyNas product has followed the pendulum swing back to black.  Thru the years I have found that the market moves from a gloss black outer to a more industrial look depending on what is hot in the Home Theatre market and today black is back.   The ReadyNAS has a great LCD display and four disk access lights on the front of the system that make understanding the status of the system as simple as looking at it.    The disk status lights also help identify failed drives, should a drive fail.  I would highly recommend looking at systems that show you the status of the drives and location so you don’t remove a good drive by accident and lose your entire data set.

Environmentals

I had owned a Western Digital MyBook World – 1TB NAS in the past and the single fan on the system was so loud that I had to keep the door closed on the closet that contained the system and I could still hear it.  I put some foam insulation around the WD product to help quiet it and it was still loud.  Several websites suggested replacing the main fan to quiet it down.  Instead, I sold the WD system and bought the ReadNAS NV+ which is very quiet.  With the door open I can barely hear the fans or the drives spinning.

The ReadyNAS NV+ also supports the automatic power down – power savings feature.  The system starts at 6:00am and shutdowns at 11:00pm every day.  Below is a picture of the web management tool that is supplied with the system showing the configuration screen for the automatic power down feature.

ReadyNAS Management Console – showing the Power Time for Automated Shutdown and Startup

Capacity and Expandability

I needed ~3TBs of storage for my needs today and for the next few years.  I should give you some background on my media needs.  I have about 25,000 songs, each ~1MB in size, a few hundred home videos consume between 100MB-1GB each.  Additionally, I create backups each few months of my personal and work data that comes ~80GBs for each backup.  So, today, I am consuming 1.3TBs of storage and expect to consume 750GB per year of capacity.  So, with four 1TB drives, I have ~3.4TBs of usable capacity of the system.  The 600GBs of capacity is used for RAID overhead and protects me in case a drive fails, which has happened in the past and I was protected and did not lose any data and when I installed a new drive the system immediately recovered and rebuilt the data from the bad drive. The ReadyNAS system uses a Netgear version of RAID called X-RAID that creates a balance between reliability and capacity which also supports automatic expansion of the system as one adds additional drives.  X-RAID is Netgear’s proprietary “patent-pending”  solution where the “X” stands for “eXpandable” as most traditional RAID environments can only extended by relaying out the data (restriping) requiring one to delete all of the data, while the X-RAID system automatically extends the volume when a new drive is added and restripes the data to take advantage of the additional capacity.  For more information on X-RAID please visit http://www.readynas.com/?cat=54

Integration-Interconnection

The ReadyNAS NV+ is well integrated into my environment as I needed to support streaming media to a variety of platforms including:

• Apple TV with Boxee
• LG LHB-975 supporting DLNA
• Apple Mac
• Windows PCs
• iTunes

Backup – what is all of this I hear about backup?

I use the ReadyNAS NV+ as a backup target for my system and I have yet to do a full backup of the ReadyNAS, other than my main files, which I backup to another USB Hard Disk Drive, so in theory, I am protected in case I lose one set by two backups.  Netgear offers a ReadyNAS Vault Cloud Based Backup Service, but, in my opinion, the pricing is off a bit from where I expect it to be, so I am not using a cloud based service.  Also, I would like to see Netgear, or the Netgear community, which I will discuss later, offer integration with other 3^rdparty cloud based backup services like Mozy, so I can affordably backup my data to a cloud based service.  This would need to be an unlimited capacity option for me as I have a lot of data and I put value on all of it, plus I really don’t want to go through all of my data and categorize what needs to be backed up and what does not need to be, much easier to backup my entire data set.   I expect to see the major cloud based backup services offer this kind of service and integration in the near future as the home market moves from dedicated PC’s to these shared digital media devices.  One solution is leaving a computer on and using it as a shim to move the data from my ReadyNAS to the online backup service, but this could prove to be problematic as the ReadyNAS will automatically power down in the middle of the backup operation and would need to be restarted the next day, over and over again.  With a 500Kb/s upload speed I am looking at a couple of weeks to completely backup my digitial media library.  All of a sudden the upload speed is critically important and the Internet Providers caring for download speeds becomes an out of focus discussion – I need a 10Mb/s asymmetrical Internet connection at the same price I am paying now for my 9Mb/s download with 500Kb/s upload speed.  This would cut down my upload by a factor of 20X – significant.  Integration would put the control of the entire operation in my hands and support the automated power-down and power-up and remember where the job left off so it can restart without having to do so from the beginning of the data set.

I thought of buying a 2TB hard drive in an enclosure for $100+ and use it as a backup target as the ReadyNAS has a one touch backup that works with USB hard disk drives and will backup the entire system to the USB connected drive.  A nice option, but doesn’t really work when you get over 2TB of stored media/data on the system.

Also, the system included backup software for your PC’s and Mac’s on the network that simply backups your data on a schedule to the ReadyNAS system.  I tried the software for a few months and then realized that I didn’t need it as I was backing up the same directory on my PC once a month and could manually handle the task with a quick automation setup in Windows.    For my Mac’s on the network I have Time Machine setup to automatically save their data to the Time Machine on the ReadyNAS – and it is super simple to setup  and I was able to re-purpose my USB Hard Disk Drive for temp space while I edit digital video.  For instructions on setting up Mac Time Machine with a ReadyNAS check out http://www.readynas.com/?p=253

Support & Warranty

The ReadyNAS system that I purchased had a three year warranty and the latest systems from Netgear and others come with a five year warranty.  I used the warranty once and found the support team at Netgear to be very knowledgeable and fixed my problem on the first call.  Also, the Netgear online knowledge base is very good and well categorized.  I was able to resolve several of my questions without having to call Netgear using their online knowledge base.

I would not say the same for the WD MyBook World that I purchased before the Netgear – their support site was very poorly categorized and their search engine was ineffective.  When I had a drive fail in my WD product it took over a week to get a replacement and the instructions for replacement were very poor.  Thankfully, the owners of the WD MyBook World came to the rescue as they had posted copious amounts of information on the procedure and what pitfalls to avoid when attempting the operation at home – as a note, some operations that you may want to do void the warranty, so check out what you are doing before you void your warranty.  Also, understands your level of technical expertise and don’t go in over your head as you can irrevocably destroy your data.  An example of an operation that I was concerned with was when I upgraded the firmware (Operating System) for the ReadyNas from a 3.x to a 4.x revision and the main password changed and I needed to reset it to get into the system.  The operation requires rebooting the system and holding the Power button down until one of the LED flashes and the Power button is released and the system re-installs the firmware thereby resetting the password and your data is kept.  If the LED flashes twice your data is deleted and the system is reset back to the way it came from the factory – suffice it to say that I was very patient when performing this operation as I did not want to reload 1.5TBs of data from my backup on a USB Drive.  The operation went smoothly and I was able to

Hackability

The Netgear ReadyNAS has an online community of users that support each other and share knowledge as well as a group of developers whom have built 3^rdparty applications that seamlessly integrate with the ReadyNAS platform.  This one of the main  reasons that I selected the Netgear ReadyNAS product.  The ReadyNAS Community is at http://www.readynas.com/and there are applications to manage and augment the ReadyNAS product, including iPhone Apps, Picture Sharing Apps, Management Apps, and much more – some 300 Apps in total.  Some of the Apps are from Netgear while the majority come from developers in the community.  One of the more interesting Apps available for the ReadyNAS is a TIVO App that enables you to store your TIVO recordings directly to your ReadyNAS, thereby saving precious space on your TIVO.  Check it out at http://www.readynas.com/?p=4324

Simplicity-Complexity

Setup and configuration of the ReadyNAS was another reason that I selected the product for my environment – it was a simple as plugging it into Power and the Ethernet and it automatically acquired an address from my DHCP Server and I ran the RADAR application on my Mac and it found the ReadyNAS and I was able to access it, setup my network shares for my PC’s and my Mac and I was off to the races;  adding digital media and accessing it from my media streamers and on my wireless network.

The web management utility that comes with the ReadyNAS is supported on all of the major Internet Browsers on the PC, Mac, and Linux, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari, which makes it perfect for mixed environments.

There are some setup options, which you need to read the manual for, but once the system is setup it is very simple to manage the system.  Also, the system automatically checks for upgrades and will download them and install them bringing your system to a current version – a nice feature for those that like to stay current – I must admit that I am more of a get it working and stable and leave it alone kind of guy – as long as it is doing what I expect it to do why change it, or as the old adage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

Filed in categories: Articles, Audio, Video, TV Gear, Desktop Computer Gear, Home Tech

Tagged: Entertainment, media, MP3, NAS, Storage, Utility

13 Things to Consider Before Buying a Digital Media Storage System originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on February 16, 2011 at 11:00 am.

I saw over on Engadget that Seagate released a new BackArmor NAS 440… That has 12TB of storage in a 4-drive NAS for $1899.99 . No, that’s not a type-o : 12TB of storage in a 4-drive array. Somehow the BlackArmor team has snagged the 3TB drives that us regular people can’t buy at the store yet, and stuffed four of them into the 12TB NAS 440. And it’s available now, for shipping to you. For the raid-ologists, this equals around 9TB of usable space in a RAID5 array, but then your collection of legally ripped DVD’s will be protected against a drive failure. And there’s more…

Seagate’s created a little monster here: they designed this NAS with a 1.2GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, two gigabit ethernet ports, and four USB ports. This is basically a server-lite: It does SMB, FTP, HTTP, supports Bonjour, hooks into Active Directory, and even does encryption on drives! It support iTunes steaming, you can hook external drives into the 4 USB ports to add storage or backup the main array, and it even includes 10 backup software licenses for Windows clients. Maybe it’s just sticker shock ( in a good way ), but this NAS 440 12TB is an incredibly capable network storage device with an insane amount of storage for an amazing price. You can also start your storage empire with the entry model 440: The NAS 440 starts around $850 with 4TB  and goes up to 12TB at $1899.99. Check them out at Seagate’s site: BlackArmor 440

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, News

Tagged: NAS, Network Storage, Seagate

12TB NAS for $1899.99? originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 3, 2010 at 3:19 pm.

My backup strategy is quite a mish-mash of USB hard drives and an Apple Time Capsule. I have been intrigued by Drobo’s various offerings in the past, but leaned more to a NAS (Network-Attached Storage) solution. The only Drobo option was to purchase a network add-on to an existing box. Today, they announced the Drobo FS. This new box is 100% NAS.

The Drobo FS can hold up to 5 drives an connects with a gigabit ethernet jack:

The Drobo FS starts at $699 with no drives, and costs $1,499 with 5 2TB WD20EARS drives. Here are the key bullet points from their press release:

Drobo FS Features and Benefits

• Plug-In and Share – The Drobo FS connects directly to any Gigabit Ethernet network for a true plug in and share set-up experience. Supports standard data transfer protocols including Apple File Protocol (AFP) and Microsoft Common Internet File System (CIFS).
• 5-Drive Capacity and Instant Expansion to 10TB and Beyond – Customers with growing storage requirements can easily add data capacity by simply inserting a new hard drive or replacing the smallest drive with a larger one, even when all five drive bays are full. With Drobo FS, expansion is automatic, instantaneous, and access to data is always maintained.
• Single- and Dual-Drive Redundancy – The Drobo FS dual drive redundancy option protects against the simultaneous failure of up to two hard drives. Customers can engage this option with a single click without ever losing access to their data.
• Self-Healing Technology – With BeyondRAID, the Drobo FS continually examines data blocks and sectors on each drive to flag potential issues. The preemptive “scrubbing” helps ensure data is being written only to healthy drive areas and automatically keeps data in the safest state possible – even when a drive fails.
• Customizable Storage – Utilizing the growing library of DroboApps, including media and web applications, users can customize the Drobo FS to further enhance their sharing experience.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: drobo, NAS, Storage

Data Robotics Announces Drobo FS originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on April 6, 2010 at 12:45 pm.

The Seagate FreeAgent DockStar is small network adapter made especially for Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drives. It’s compatible with both PCs and Macs and is a simple way to connect up to four external USB 2.0 storage devices (hard drives and/or flash drives) including a FreeAgent Go to the Internet so that you can easily share and access your photos, videos, music and other files from anywhere in the world via a web browser.

What’s in the box

FreeAgent DockStar Network Adapter
AC adapter
Ethernet cable
Quick start guide

The DockStar looks very similar to the dock that I have for the Mac version of the FreeAgent Go drive that I reviewed a year ago.

You have to supply your own FreeAgent Go drive with the DockStar. It fits perfectly in the specially designed mini USB slot.

Don’t have a FreeAgent Go drive and don’t feel like buying one? No problem. The DockStar includes 3 additional full sized USB ports that you can use to plug-in USB flash drives, and other external drives. There is one USB port on the right side of the dock and…

… two more on the back. There’s also an Ethernet jack and the power connector located on the rear of the adapter. Drives formatted with NTFS, FAT32, Mac OS Extended Journaled and non-Journaled (HFS+), and EXT-2/EXT-3 are fully supported.

Setting up the DockStar is very easy. Just connect the included AC adapter, connect the supplied Ethernet cable to the dock and to a free port on your router, plug in a FreeAgent Go drive or other USB storage device into one of the open USB ports and activate the adapter on the web. The whole setup takes less than 5 minutes.

The FreeAgent DockStar uses a service from Pogoplug to activate the adapter and access your files. Pogoplug makes and sells their own USB network adapter for $129. It has three USB ports, unlike the DockStar which has 4 including the dock for a FreeAgent Go drive. When you buy a Pogoplug, you receive their web based access service for free. With the DockStar, you use the same service, but you only get it free for 1 year. However, there’s no mention on the Pogoplug site or Seagate’s site about how much the service will cost you after the 1 year is up. That’s a bit disconcerting to me.

Once you’ve activated the adapter, you’ll see all the attached drives on your Pogoplug page.

Files on those drives can be viewed as thumbnails or lists. You can also filter the view by Movies, Music and Photos. When you do this, you’ll see all those types of files on one screen regardless to where the actual files are stored on the attached devices.

Photos can be viewed by clicking on their thumbnail. You can even view a slide show. Music files can also be played directly through the web interface. Clicking on a video file will show a short preview of the movie in thumbnail mode. A background process will transcode the videos so that you can watch the whole movie in your browser. I tested .MP4, .M4V, .MOV, .AVI and .WMV video files. The transcode process seemed a little glitchy as it slowed down the access and did not display a status to let you know what it was doing.

Unfortunately, the interface won’t display TXT files or PDF files. You have to download those files to view them.

To put new files on the connected drives, you can either upload them through the Pogoplug web interface, or you can download a small application that allows you to mount the drives as local drives on your computer. Although the local mounting app seemed to worked fine, I did notice one problem with it. If you eject the drives and then try to re-run the app to remount the drives, nothing happens. You have to reboot the machine before the app will mount the drives again. Grrrrr…

Sharing files with friends is very easy. Simply click on a file, folder, or album, and then enter the email address(es) of whomever you want to share with. They will receive an email with a link that allows them access. They don’t even have to sign up for a Pogoplug account. If you add new files to a shared folder, anyone that you’ve granted access to, will receive an email telling them that there is new content in that folder. You can also publish to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and an RSS feed.

The Seagate FreeAgent DockStar Network Adapter is certainly easy to setup and use. That said, there are a few kinks to work out in the web interface and local drive interface that will help make the product more reliable. The main thing that worries me about this product is the Pogoplug subscription service because it’s not disclosed what the price will be after the initial free year of service expires. Adding yet another monthly and /or yearly bill to my existing collection isn’t something I look forward to doing. If that isn’t an issue for you and you want a super easy way to access and share files to anyone anywhere, then this is a viable solution.

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Reviews

Tagged: NAS, USB Drive

Seagate FreeAgent DockStar Network Adapter Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on December 30, 2009 at 4:02 pm.

The SimpleNET from SimpleTech is a super simple (sorry, couldn’t resist) way to turn a USB hard drive into a NAS device (network attached storage). Just plug this small module into your wireless router and then plug one or two USB hard drives into the USB ports in the module and you’re done. It’s compatible with Linux, Windows and OS X and supports FAT32, NTFS, HFS+ and EXT3 files systems. The price is $79.99 and is available now from various online stores like Best Buy and Amazon.

Filed in categories: Desktop Computer Gear, Wireless

Tagged: NAS, Networking, Storage, USB

Turn an external USB hard drive into a NAS device originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on July 14, 2009 at 5:46 pm.