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.

[backwardtoes Posted 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.

[oakie Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:34PM]

free? only if you never bought the "old retired box" in the first place.

that's like saying, "hey look! i bought a refrigerator for $2k and turned it into a toaster oven! check it out! A FREE TOASTER OVEN!"


this is a product with a specific purpose and it fills that small part of the market for a tidy price compared to most alternative solutions, including your toaster oven.

and suddenly i want a grilled cheese sammich.

[TheFlamingoKing Posted Dec 12th 2008 11:03AM]

Also, my time is money. $55 is much less than the opportunity cost involved in the amount of time it would take me to learn linux well enough to get the NAS functionality to work. We're not all native linux experts. I have a FreeNAS box at the house I configured, and even that took a while to get going the way I needed it to.

So, your snarky comment about "What a concept, free." hinges on a lot of variables:

* I have to already have a leftover computer - if I pay for it, then it is no longer free.
* I have to already know linux - if I have to pay to learn it, then it is no longer free.
* I have to have free time - if I could spend the time earning money in another context, then it is no longer free.

Suddenly, a $55 instant gratification starts to sound pretty good, if it gets you what you need.

[ChrisAre Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:36PM]

I know this is off topic a little, but i was wondering if anyone knows of something similar to this I can connect to my printer? It has a LAN connection, but my router is in another room. Anyone know of a wireless dongle or something I can hook up to my printer's LAN connection- or some kind of similar set up?

[neonpolaris Posted Dec 12th 2008 10:43AM]

You want a wireless bridge. Think if it like a reverse wireless access point. It will connect to your wireless network and has a network jack to connect to your printer with a patch cable.

Ever seen the wireless adapter for the Xbox 360? Same exact concept.

[Ed T Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:40PM]

Addonics wants $55 plus another $18 for "tax and shipping" -- WTF?

Who else sells these without the ripoff suffix?

[thazlett144 Posted Dec 11th 2008 1:41PM]

this is what i use my old eeepc for, but not so much for storage, more for a low-power server, xampp, bittorrent downloading, remote desktop from my phone,

but i suppose this is cheaper then being a NAS enclosure.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 2:00PM]

That is pretty awesome! Pity I already bought a Western Digital Mybook World Edition to do everything this does =[

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 2:07PM]

FAT32 only - any other format on your HDD will presumably be incompatible, requiring the drive to be wiped/reformatted.



Specifications

* 1 USB-A connector
* USB 2.0 / 1.1 specification
* USB power up to 1.5A at 5V
* 1 RJ45 socket for 10/100Mbps Ethernet connection
* File system support: FAT32
* Dimensions (L x W x H): (70 x 32 x 24) mm or (2.75 x 1.25 x .94) in.
* Weight: 45g (1.6 Oz)
* Operation Temperature: 0 °C ~ 70 °C
* Operation Humidity: 10 ~ 90 %RH
* Storage Temperature: -20 °C ~ 70 °C
* Storage Humidity: 5~ 95 %RH
* Power consumption: 200mA @ 5V

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 2:24PM]

The weaknesses of mos NAS devices that I've played with was their controllers did a poor job shifting data as fast as they could've. USB bandwidth being fairly anemic as is, I'd really have to see what kind of speed this thing offers for reads and writes before I go declaring it the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[RealHTInfo Posted Dec 11th 2008 3:07PM]

So, would this replace the need for a Drobo Share at 1/4th the price?

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 3:51PM]

Wouldn't this do the same thing: http://a-power.com/product-5515-0-2 ?

[Interpol Posted Dec 11th 2008 3:45PM]

So is this thing compatible with a USB Humping Dog, USB Pole Dancer, or the USB Coffee Mug warmer? Mmmmm....network attached pole dancer.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 3:53PM]

WiFi version, more than one USB port, etc., look here:

http://www.keyspan.com/products/homepage.2.productList.USB.spml

Haven't tried these but they look interesting.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 9:10PM]

I just want to download torrents, and play media on my 360 without an energy draining Dell on all day. If $55 dollars + tax can get me there, I'm all in. I would even consider paying a lot more foreseeing that I could possibly save that amount each month in electricity given that I forgot how to turn my Dell off.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 8:57PM]

Had something very like this from scan.co.uk. Easy to set up, but almost useless in practice.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 11th 2008 11:08PM]

I am tempted but holding up until it has SSH access

[sr1329 Posted Dec 12th 2008 5:01AM]

Make it wireless and support printers. D'Oh. Wireless print servers already exist. Stupid me.


Make it wireless and make it support any USB device.

[Landwomble Posted Dec 12th 2008 5:44AM]

sure, it's not a *great* NAS, but it's a cheap way of reusing existing disks. I'm tempted, because that way I could stick it in the loft and do a regular RSYNC copy of my cellar server data over the network, for redundancy. Doesn't need to be all that fast: can do the main copy using the usb disk attached directly to the server, then just do the deltas to this over the network.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 12th 2008 8:35AM]

YESSS!!!!!!!!!

[the steven Posted Dec 12th 2008 8:57AM]

WANT !

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 16th 2008 4:50AM]

You buy these Addonics NAS Adapter by Webconnexxion.com in the Netherlands. Also all other Addonics products.

Nice Stuff

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 26th 2008 8:51PM]

I bought two, and they just don't work. There is a bug in their implementation that doesn't allow Norton Save and Restore to even begin to write a backup file. The company says they will refund the money, but won't refund the shipping to me or pay for the shipping back, since they don't guarantee that the device works with any software, unless they have previously called out what particular software they work with. In short, they are selling a NAS adapter that is not guaranteed to work with any existing software. I'd stay away from them and from a company that won't take responsibility for its poor implementation and poor quality assurance.

[Spartan2x Posted Jan 2nd 2009 11:04AM]

I am very displeased with this company. I purchased one of these a week and half before Christmas, used UPS 2 day shipping. They shipped the darn thing on the 29th and they shipping it via ground, and now it has a rescheduled date for the 7th an Jan! Their methods are worse then ordering something from Hong Kong! The adapter better be worth it!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 4th 2009 12:14AM]

built in p2p download and it's cheap. But I'm using a wl-500gP v2 with dd-wrt mega firmware, dream rely on your own hand