Claiming a worlds-first product, LG has out a Blu-ray burner into a new NAS machine.
Excerpt from:
CES 2010: LG Stuffs Blu-ray in NAS
Compared to the Thecus N2200 or QNAP's TS-109 Pro, Patriot's new Valkyrie NAS device wins on name alone. But even though we're willing to award geek points for a name that doesn't suck, it's the hardware that ultimately matters.
Patriot's Valkyrie is a two-bay NAS box targeted for SOHO and prosumer users. It supports up to 4TB and comes configured with a 500MHz embedded processor and 128MB of RAM. Some of the features include RAID 0, 1, and JPBD support; FTP; UPnP and DLNA; iTunes server, user, and group management; One Touch Backup (OTB); PC-less download via BitTorrent; Active Director Services (ADS); and Dynamic DNS.
"The addition of Valkyrie to our NAS solutions, with its enhanced functionality and ease of use gives consumers a power solution at an affordable price," says Jack Chen, Patriots' Peripheral Product Manager. "Our goal is to bring products to the market that provide versatility, scalability, and functionality at a price that consumers feel offer comparable product features to the high end devices, yet are affordable to the everyday user."
The Valkyrie is available for preorder for $165.
Image Credit: Patriot
Network attached storage (NAS) is a great idea. Once set-up the contents of the NAS are available from almost anywhere you can plug into the network. That’s theory anyway. Reality is getting into a NAS, especially from a remote location, can be a daunting task, even for the NAS-initiated. Dane-Elec has a solution, myDitto, that promises to make the task easier.
Step one, like for NAS everywhere, is set-up. Nothing different here. The myDitto has two bays for 3.5-inch SATA drives, and is RAID 0 or 1 capable. It can handle up to 4 TB of storage. It has a pair of USB 2.0 port and gigabit ethernet. And it supports DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) and iTunes media.
Step two, getting access, is a simple matter--just plug in the myDitto USB key to a computer and the data on your NAS becomes available. Dane-Elec says it doesn’t matter where that computer is, so long as it is Internet or network attached. Nothing to configure. Nothing to remember (except where you last put that lousy USB key).
This ease-of-use doesn’t come cheap. The 1 TB model, which is to be released in March, is priced at $249.
Image Credit: Dane-Elec
Promise has just unveiled a new NAS box the company claims is ideal for "non-techie consumers" because of its combination of a low price tag with a no fuss setup. It's called the SmartStor ZERO NS2600, and it also supports DLNA standards.
"The introduction of the SmartStor ZERO is an example of how Promise is redefining and raising the technology bar within the storage landscape," said Chi Chen Wu, CTO, Promise Technology. "Today's consumer does not want to be concerned with complicated setup procedures, media compatibility, or dealing with the process of accessibility. The consumer wants a one, two, three approach to store, share, and play music, movies, and photos without the hassle of integration."
The ZERO comes with two drive bays supporting up to 4TB of storage.Other features include the ability to upload digital content from a mobile device to the ZERO, view video streams (including protected content) purchased from iTunes Store, display music Album Art in content lists using Windows 7, and Facebook integration.
Look for the ZERO to be available sometime this quarter starting at $280.
Synology has a history of making excellent NAS boxes, and the new four bay DS410j is no exception. Front and center on the spec sheet is support for Apple’s Time Machine backup system, a rarity on third-party NAS units.
The unit is designed for home and entry-level business use. The four drive bays can take up to 2TB 3.5 inch drives. The DS410j also supports multiple RAID configurations when loaded with multiple compatible drives. Automated backup and DNLA support come standard as well. The DS410j can be purchased with or without hard drives preinstalled, but either way it’s going to be pricey. If you look around, the driveless version can be had for a bit under $400.
When you got to back-up, you gotta back-up. And ASUS has just trotted out a product to help do just that: the TS Mini Network Attached Server (NAS).
Set-up in a tower profile, the TS Mini is chocked-full of back-up goodies any home owner might need (and perhaps a few more). It is powered by an Intel Atom N280 processor running at 1.66 Ghz. Can handle up to 2Gb of DDR2 800 memory. Has 2 3.5-inch drive bays, and comes configured with 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB of hard drive storage. Gigabyte ethernet, naturally. Six USB 2.0 ports. Two eSATA ports. And a bag of screws.
The TS Mini is capable of handling back-up chores for ten computers. It also can serve as a streaming media platform, sending content to multiple attached devices, including receiver boxes and game consoles.
Pre-orders are being taken, with prices starting at $349. And, like early Model T Fords, you can have any color you want so long as it is black.
Image Credit: ASUS
When it comes to mechanical hard drive performance, 7,200 RPM drives are considered the fastest. But does that convention apply in a NAS environment as well?
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Picking A Hard Drive For Your NAS: New Green Beats Old Speed
D-Link’s DIR-685 Wi-Fi router generated a lot of buzz at CES this past January. And when we took a gander at its spec sheet, we thought it a contender for Best of the Best in the router category; something that would finally displace the Linksys WRT600N, which is becoming hard to find. Alas, ’twas not to be.
The problem certainly isn’t with the DIR-685’s feature set: This router is absolutely loaded with goodies. The 3.2-inch color LCD can inform you of the router’s status and configuration; present digital photos from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook; display RSS feeds, such as sports scores, weather reports, and stock quotes; and a lot more (this is one router your significant other won’t insist be hidden in a closet).
Next up, there’s a 2.5-inch internal SATA hard drive bay, which can turn the router into a NAS box (complemented by a built-in FTP server and BitTorrent software). There are two USB ports featuring D-Link’s SharePort technology, which allows you to plug in both an external hard drive and a printer and share these devices with any computer on the network. The router’s four-port gigabit switch automatically powers down any ports not in use to save a modest amount of energy.
The rest of the features are just as valuable, if not as unusual. You can set up a password-protected guest zone, for instance, with the option of limiting access to a set schedule. And there’s both a UPnP server and an iTunes server. Lastly, there’s a Quality of Service engine to help eliminate lag for VoIP and media-streaming applications.
But our enthusiasm over all those whiz-bang features is tempered by the DIR-685’s slug-slow wireless throughput and NAS performance. We’ve been using the aforementioned Linksys WRT600N for comparison for more than a year, but we always retest its performance within a few hours of benchmarking a new contender, just to make sure both products are tested under the same environmental conditions.
The DIR-685 lagged far behind the Linksys in our Kitchen test, where the client is 20 feet away from the router and separated by an insulated wall and a set of plywood cabinets: It delivered TCP/IP throughput of just 45.4Mb/s compared to the Linksys WRT600N’s 98.9Mb/s. The D-Link turned in a particularly poor performance in our Media Room test, where the client is located in a double-insulated room-within-a-room 35 feet from the router, managing TCP/IP throughput of just 4.54Mb/s.
The 2.5-inch drive bay limits your choice of hard drives to notebook models, and D-Link provided us with an 80GB Seagate Momentus 5400.5 hard drive for this evaluation. But we find the router’s lethargic NAS performance more troubling than this physical limitation: The DIR-685 took a full 8:53 (min:sec) to copy a single 3GB file from a PC. Compare that to the Qnap TS-209 Pro II—our Best of the Best NAS pick—which copied the same file in just 2:27.
We won’t complain about a high price tag if a product’s features and performance justify it, but the DIR-685’s $300 price tag—which doesn’t include a hard drive—just rubs us the wrong way.
Iomega today announced the next generation of its double-drive desktop NAS box, the StorCenter ix2-200. The box comes available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, each with a four-step setup process, and sports a few noteworthy tricks, such as built-in torrent support.
It also touts multiple IP security camera support, RAID 1 configurations, device-to-device replication, VMWare certification, Time Machine support for Apple computer backups, Bluetooth, remote access, and a bunch more marketing bullets.
"The new StorCenter ix2-200 is definitely the easiest to use small office and consumer network storage appliance in the marketplace today," said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC.
Both the 1TB and 2TB models are available now for $270 and $370, respectively. The 4TB NAS box will debut later this month for $700.
Image Credit: Iomega
Thecus is first company to offer an attractive little 2.5” NAS solution that works well in your living room, while Western Digital’s dual-drive NAS delivers up to 4TB of capacity with RAID 0 and 1. Today’s we’re testing the two very-different devices.
The rest is here:
NAS Attack: Network Storage From Thecus And Western Digital
