Your Data from Any PC
Network attached storage (NAS) is huge in corporate IT functions, but NAS hasnt been on the radar for many home users. Weve touched on home network storage here at ET, including our reviews of the D-Link Central Home Drive and Ximetas NetDisk. And weve also discussed network storage in the context of building your own home servers, such as our Mini-ITX home server using Windows XP and our budget-focused Linux home server. And other devices, like the Mirra Personal Server fills roles as network-attached backup devices.
But now were starting to see the first of what will probably be a flood of small devices targeted at homes and small businesses. The D-Link and Ximeta drives were leading indicators, but now companies are coming out with devices that offer more sophisticated features and better performance. Lets take a look at a couple of new entries in the home network storage arena. Each is quite different from the other and fulfills somewhat different needs and budgets.
We used an Athlon 64 system running an nForce4 Ultra chipset, a Netgear gigabit Ethernet hub and CAT6 cabling to test connectivity and performance of these two very different network storage appliances.