Addonics' USB-to-NAS adapter: all your external HDDs, now network accessible

Storage junkies, your dreams have just been made into reality. Addonics has just introduced a marvelous new piece of kit, the simple-yet-useful Network Attached Storage Adapter. This little box enables any USB hard drive to be placed onto a network for network access, essentially turning your stale USB HDDs into NAS drives. The device supports both SMB (Server Message Block) and the open source Samba network protocols, which allows for cross-platform access of shared data for most versions of OS X, Windows and Linux. For users not directly connected over the LAN, the adapter provides FTP access for up to eight simultaneous users anywhere in the world, and it can even be used as "a print server or as a BitTorrent file downloading appliance." Best of all? It's available right now for $55. Like we said, dream come true.

[Seth @ Dec 11th 2008 11:50AM]

Boooo on the title - it should have read "all your external hdd are belong to us".

[Shawin @ Dec 11th 2008 1:24PM]

Lolz. That's what I read.

[John @ Dec 11th 2008 11:53AM]

They didn't jump on how it's a "NASA"?

[y3k.nik @ Dec 11th 2008 11:56AM]

Technically, its U-NASA, same as the same old NASA, but with the added benefit of U

[Joshua Ochs @ Dec 11th 2008 11:53AM]

Way to miss the most important "feature":

"Ethernet 10/100Mbps connection"

Without gigabit ethernet, this is complete crap.

[pball_inuyaha @ Dec 11th 2008 12:04PM]

I can't quote the average transfer speed of a usb hard drive but I doubt it'd need anything more then 100 mbit lan

[Carpet @ Dec 11th 2008 12:10PM]

Well I think this is a great idea. I have an external HD sitting in my loft (along with my printer) holding backedup media.

If you're just going to be using it for occasionally moving files I thin for the price this is spot on. If you want hardcore use or streaming, spend the money and buy a NAS.

My only disappointment with this is the single USB connection. If they're going to offer printer serving functions they should at leat off two.

Now I want to see this typ of thing incorporated with a WIFI modem/router.

[Mike @ Dec 11th 2008 12:35PM]

@ pball_inuyaha

The limitations of USB mean it'll only *sustain* a transfer speed of around 30-35MB/s, so Gigabit would still offer a speed improvement over 100MBit. Now if only it supported eSATA...

[Jay @ Dec 11th 2008 12:49PM]

@pball_inuyaha
The usb 2 is limited to 480Mbits/s. So 100 Mbits/s is actually quite a bottleneck.
As an example you can get usb keys that have read speeds around 30 MByte/s, which is 8*30=240 Mbits/s. Using this it would max out at around 10MByte/s(80Mbits/s).

I'm not even sure this is usb 2.0, in which case the usb port would be the bottleneck.

[AVG @ Dec 11th 2008 12:57PM]

I stream 7GB+ uncompressed DVD rips from my Buffalo NAS and that is running through a 10/100 switch. So unless you are streaming uncompressed Blu-ray rips, I doubt you will ever have need for a gigabit port on this thing.

[Troy Powers @ Dec 11th 2008 12:59PM]

@Carpet

Try the Linksys WRT600N Dual-Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router with Storage Link (http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1175237911752&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper&lid=1175239789B01). Just picked up a refurb for 100 bucks. Has a USB port on it to connect an external hard drive and gives you access over the network as well as FTP and media streaming.

[Alex Oram @ Dec 11th 2008 1:14PM]

dude, I need gigabit for this thing to work, have just over 3tb spanned across 4 500gig and 1 1tb drive
but using a laptop with 4 usb ports, all full, with another 2 8 port usb hubs almost full

I need the bandwidth

hope they relese one with gigabit

[chefgon_ign @ Dec 11th 2008 2:02PM]

@Alex Oram

I think it's safe to say that you are not the average user. You definitely need something significantly more powerful than this, but does that mean that most other people do? You could add up everyone in my entire neighborhood and they probably wouldn't have that much storage kicking around.

[EricC @ Dec 11th 2008 2:05PM]

@ Mike & Jay: You can talk numbers on paper until the cows come home. Come back to us when you have some real-world numbers.

[Boyo @ Dec 11th 2008 3:53PM]

And yet it sold out

[No1 @ Dec 12th 2008 6:37AM]

@ EricC Re: Mike & Jay:
Based on my own network and USB Drives, 100 mbit network maxes out at around 8MB/s and an IDE (PATA) HDD at 30MB/s and a SATA HDD over eSATA at 50MB/s, so gigabit would be nice.

And, yes, you can stream uncompressed DVDs over 100 mbit lan, but if you want to rip to the network drive, gigabit lan sure does come in handy, so you don't have to listen to the DVD drive stuttering all the time :-)

[fh @ Dec 12th 2008 6:54PM]

Most people are forgetting that even with a 480mbit limit, low-quality USB2 controllers drop the ceiling. Poor 10/100 controllers drop the ceiling further. And most importantly, the SMB protocol is the slowest chain in the link, usually to the tune of ~10MB/s throughput.

You can throw all the bandwidth you want at it, but as long as your file transfers/access is using SMB, you're going to take a huge speed penalty.

And IMO I don't think this device has a particularly stellar SMB controller.

[EricC @ Dec 12th 2008 7:32PM]

@ fh: Exactly the point I was getting at, just not in so many words. These guys can fling around all the specs they want, but at the end of the day, real-world performance is not even going to come close.

[Noodles2k @ Dec 11th 2008 11:55AM]

er Scan.co.uk has been selling a Newlink rebrand of this for quite a while. But well done Engadget for bringing us your own brand of "news" as usual.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Newlink-HD-USB01-USB-to-RJ45-NAS-dongle-device-(Convert-your-USB-hard-disk-into-NAS-Box)

[Kris120890 @ Dec 11th 2008 11:59AM]

Link doesn't work. Not that I will buy one anyway.

[Noodles2k @ Dec 11th 2008 12:01PM]

it's because blogsmith is crap and missed the ) off the end, so this should work,

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Newlink-HD-USB01-USB-to-RJ45-NAS-dongle-device-(Convert-your-USB-hard-disk-into-NAS-Box))

[Kris120890 @ Dec 11th 2008 12:02PM]

No it still doesn't work

[Noodles2k @ Dec 11th 2008 12:10PM]

told you so! :P

[Mark @ Dec 11th 2008 1:41PM]

If you geniuses look at the link the last ) is cut off no matter how many times you add it to the post. Just copy and paste the link to the address bar (unless you're trying to access it on the iphone, if so then suck it biaches)

[Warll @ Dec 11th 2008 1:33PM]

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001181.html

[kjb434 @ Dec 11th 2008 11:57AM]

This is a great product.

Typical NAS drives are much more expensive than the USB variants. The $55 price tag plus a USB storage drive is still cheaper.

[Mr.Kitty @ Dec 11th 2008 11:59AM]

What? No AFP? No HTTP?

[Scythe @ Dec 11th 2008 12:06PM]

Apparently this product isn't very good. You can only use one computer at a time to access files (from what the Amazon comments state).

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/NEWLink-Single-Port-NAS-Donlge/dp/B001FB6WPA/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1223378631&sr=1-12

[Thunderbuck @ Dec 11th 2008 12:10PM]

My server lives in the basement, where it houses all my media files (among other things). Using this device, I can move my backups upstairs (where I can grab them quickly in a disaster, for instance).

Only one computer NEEDS access to this device for it to be useful to me.

[protozoider @ Dec 11th 2008 12:07PM]

Or you could just buy a gigabit router that already does this. Is it that common for people to have only one computer on a network? It doesn't seem like that difficult of a thing to plug a drive into your computer and then share it. It takes like 5 seconds. I just really don't see an occasion where this is necessary except for maybe a network admin.

[Joe @ Dec 11th 2008 12:27PM]

I doubt this dongle takes as much power as a full computer - nor does it make as much noise.

[Apreche @ Dec 11th 2008 12:08PM]

So this pretty much just proves what I've always been saying. Drobo share is an overpriced scam. I really want a drobo for it's easy RAID-ness, but until it has built-in ethernet, at no extra cost, they won't get a penny from me.

[musback @ Dec 11th 2008 12:28PM]

I f*ing LOVE your avatar man! Ice hockey on NES ruled!
on-topic, as soon as it supports multiple users at once, i'll buy one. I need this badly!

[Matthew Flint @ Dec 11th 2008 12:09PM]

> The device supports both SMB (Server Message Block) and the open source Samba network protocols
SMB and Samba - one and the same.

[EricC @ Dec 11th 2008 2:10PM]

SMB is a protocol. Samba is software that uses that protocol.

That's like saying that HTTP and Firefox are one and the same.

[hyperspaced @ Dec 14th 2008 11:00AM]

Actually, SMB is a propriatary protocol from microsoft and Samba is the free implementation of the SMB protocol.

[Godfail @ Dec 11th 2008 3:51PM]

Samba is not a protocol - that's the point he's making, the article is wrong no matter how you look at this...the article is calling Samba a protocol, get it?

[EricC @ Dec 12th 2008 7:33PM]

No, that's not the point he was trying to make. He said SMB and Samba are "one and the same," which means pretty much what it looks like it means: they're the same thing. This is obviously not correct (which you were kind enough to corroborate), so my point stands.

[StalematE @ Dec 11th 2008 12:12PM]

"Addonics has just introduced a marvelous new piece of (shit), the simple-yet-use(less) Network Attached Storage Adapter."

[Kevin @ Dec 11th 2008 12:13PM]

10/100... where's my 10/100/1000?
Pretty sweet little device though!

[Aeon @ Dec 11th 2008 12:19PM]

FANTASTIC.

[Dillon @ Dec 11th 2008 12:21PM]

Where's the wireless version? :)

[mcwiggin @ Dec 11th 2008 12:24PM]

This device looks as though its not that different from the Linksys NSLU2 of yesteryear. While really handy, my bet is that this thing is SLOW. The NSLU2 could only do 3 megabytes a second of transfer on a good day. The 10/100 ethernet and 64 client max are dead giveaways that this device is likely very slow. I wouldn't expect to be able to stream HD or anything fancy off this kind of device.

[grabbydad @ Dec 11th 2008 12:26PM]

I would be nice if this thing had multiple USB ports on it for multiple devices. I have several USB drives and would like to have them all on 1 device. Then put RAID capabilities on this and I'm sold.

[Scotjo @ Dec 11th 2008 3:25PM]

Not for $55

[eno2001 @ Dec 11th 2008 12:30PM]

Hmmm... SMB and Samba are the same thing. SMB has been replaced by CIFS (both Microsoft Windows and Samba). Still, interesting but would be much nicer if it offered NFS as well.

[dsevil @ Dec 11th 2008 12:59PM]

You took the words right out of my mouth. I don't run Windows, and have no need for the bug-for-bug Windows compatibility that any implementation of CIFS would provide.

[KazO @ Dec 11th 2008 12:30PM]

erm, what are products like the NSLU and USBStation that have been around for years? Chopped liver? And why do I get the feeling that this product is going to be SLOOOOW? The first cheap NAS I owned was barely fast enough to keep up with 802.11b, let alone fast ethernet.

[wickedpheonix @ Dec 11th 2008 1:02PM]

Put Gigabit, eSATA, and a keychain loop and I'm sold :)

[JP @ Dec 11th 2008 1:10PM]

Ummm, great? Yeah right.

Take that old retired box you have sitting in your closet. Put linux on it, and you can do all that and more for free. Probably better throughput, and way more flexibility. What a concept, free.