DC-MCNAS1 Movie Cowboy NAS will wrangle your torrents, herd your HDDs

Having a box sitting on your network and offering up terabytes of storage is a lovely thing, but it's even lovelier when that box can kind of take care of a variety of other problems as well. Such is Digital Cowboy's DC-MCNAS1, a case with dual 3.5-inch SATA bays into which you can slot whatever volume of storage your budget allows. Once connected to your network (over gigabit Ethernet) it can serve up MySQL instances, accept files over FTP/SSH, manage your printers, and of course handle however many torrents you can throw at it. The box ships to Japanese buckaroos next week and, while there's no price set on this one yet, hopefully it won't break the bank.

DC-MCNAS1 Movie Cowboy NAS

[Smart People Play Tuba Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:28AM]

YEEEEEEEEE-HA

[abedinthehouse Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:33AM]

@Smart People Play Tuba
Sounds great, But does it support DLNA?
and outside of that, all wed need is benchmark tests and a price.

[credo Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:28PM]

@abedinthehouse
yeah well, Infrant (now netgear owned) has been doing this for years... If it has a built in media browser and hdmi/dvi out, then I will be impressed.

[darkforcesjedi Posted Apr 23rd 2010 6:14PM]

@abedinthehouse http://www.xtreamer.net/etrayz/features.aspx (Exact same product, only cheaper.)

[Dan Chilton Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:41AM]

This is cool.

[Jagannaathan Posted Apr 23rd 2010 1:10PM]

looks like eTrayz NAS !!!

[Tes Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:27PM]

Engadget, when you say it can handle torrents, do you mean it has an inbuilt client?

[absurdio Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:51AM]

@Tes

I'd sorta like the answer to this, too. If my laptop (read: "only computer") is with me, and ol' DC-MCNAS is at home, it'll keep the torrents flowin', will it?

[TimStevens Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:29PM]

@Tes Yes, the details aren't exactly clear of what the client looks like, but it indicates that you can "Search" and "download" torrents, which sounds pretty inclusive.

[Tes Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:36PM]

@TimStevens

Cheers...sounds ultra useful...for my...erm...totally legal files...er...Linux distros...and such like...etc....

[TimStevens Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:36PM]

@Tes Riiiiight....

[milov Posted Apr 23rd 2010 3:12PM]

@Tes

Or redundancy.

My 1Tb hard drive (a Seagate Barracuda, I'm done with Seagate forever!) just died last week, along with 0.6TB data within it. So I'm looking for RAID-alike in my next storage.

[bebop Posted Apr 23rd 2010 7:07PM]

@milov

I can recommend a WD Caviar Black 1TB Raid 1 Array. Peace of mind, without having to make so many backups of your data.

[Slappy Wag Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:44AM]

Will it take you on a horse ride and ask if you want to eat pudding?

[Bosco Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:46AM]

People call me the Movie Cowboy,
Some call me the Gangsta of NAS.
But don't worry about your porn collection, baby.
Cuz I can store 300 hours of your ass.

You bring the biggest NAS that I ever did see
Really like that SATA and your USB.

[FrankieV Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:52AM]

@Bosco HAHAHAHA
Great job man!

[mojo817 Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:26PM]

@Bosco Best. Comment. Ever.

[stridermt2k Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:27AM]

@Bosco

I would have accepted that or a "Buckaroo Banzai" reference.

+3 points awarded

RESUME PLAY

[absurdio Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:47AM]

@Bosco

I propose you adopt the stage name, "D.C. McNas 1."

[Bosco Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:54AM]

@absurdio And I only spin vinyl. -- Hey guys, THANKS!!

[chefp Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:01AM]

Gigabit Ethernet doesn't mean squat on consumer NAS devices. What is the transfer rate capability? The D-Link DNS-321 has GigE but can only eek out a sustained ~128 Mbps. Benchmarks, give us benchmarks!

[ytilanigiroon Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:09AM]

@chefp

How does Gigabit ethernet mean squat? Last I checked, 128Mbps is still faster than 100Mbps.

[DeFlanko Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:15AM]

@chefp

My Cisco gear gives me gigabit throughput =)

[chefp Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:03PM]

@ytilanigiroon
I suppose, but it's only 28Mbps more than Fast Ethernet. And the DNS-321 isn't always to achieve that, often dropping below 100Mbps.

And last I checked, 128Mbps is far, far lower than 1000 Mbps. It's not even close to half that, 500Mbps. My point is, GigE in home NAS has so far just been a marketing bullet and not worth any price premium.

[pavlindrom Posted Apr 23rd 2010 2:59PM]

@chefp
But since it can serve as a MySQL server, I think the gigabit is important for (I'm thinking) a small to average business. I have no idea if this would hold in an enterprise traffic.

[pballinuyasha Posted Apr 23rd 2010 8:27PM]

You guys are messing up your units. 1 gigabit is only 128 megabytes a second. 100 megabit is only 12.5 megabytes a second.

So three of you are just completely wrong

[chefp Posted Apr 23rd 2010 10:43PM]

@pballinuyasha
Nice try pballin but we're using Mbps (Mega-bits per sec). Pay attention to uppercase B vs lowercase b. Our numbers are right :D

[Laura June Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:06AM]

HEY. THIS IS COOL.

[Nilay Patel Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:07AM]

@Laura June NICE MUSTACHE.

[mclin Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:07AM]

Dammit! That's the hostname I use for *my* NAS! It does not stand for Movie Cowboy! Speaking of which I got my QNAP TS-219P NAS almost a year ago and it does everything they said this one does.

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=40342&vpn=TS-219P&manufacture=QNAP%20Systems%20Inc.

[DeFlanko Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:19AM]

@mclin

But yours has caddys... "some tools required"

this one is like slide out slide in close cover done.

I think this might be better for inexpensive backup services- if of course its possible.

[KAL326 Posted Apr 23rd 2010 1:39PM]

@DeFlanko
I don't see caddies and some tools required as a bad thing for a box that will sit unattended some where. Its not a hd dock where caddy-less operation would be a neccesity.

In other news Space Cowboy> Movie Cowboy.

[ModernTenshi04 Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:12AM]

This is the most brilliant product name ever.

Prove me wrong.

[darkforcesjedi Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:19AM]

Oh look, an Xtreamer e-TRAYz.

[legacy Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:29AM]

Just got a Qnap TS-459 for work, and it does everything this does and more. Right now it has two 2TB drives in it, but it has 4 slots for drives. Really nice hardware from a well known manufacturer.

[ircmaxell Posted Apr 23rd 2010 11:43AM]

@legacy I was going to ask the same thing (What's the difference between this and a Qnap)... I have a TS-409Pro at home, and it's awesome! I've only got 1.5TB in it now (4x500gb), but I may upgrade that to 4x2TB drives once they get cheap enough (for a total of 6TB of usable storage)... I like the live migration that they are capable of (select "swap harddrive 1", remove harddrive, insert new one, and wait for it to rebuild. The repeat for hdd 2 - 4). Sure, it was $600 without drives when I purchased it, but I think that's well worth it for something that's capable of managing several TB with ease...

[LiveFromThe215 Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:08PM]

It ain't hard to tell, this NAS would prevail, then excel - it can do F-T-P and S-Q-L!!

[hey buddy Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:33PM]

@LiveFromThe215 "Never put me in your box if your *isht* eat tapes"

[THJ Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:50PM]

@hey buddy I'm addict to sneakers, 20's of buddha and bitches with beepers.

[hey buddy Posted Apr 23rd 2010 12:35PM]

"I wish I knew how to unmount you, Movie Cowboy"

Whoa... What?

[Mrwirez Posted Apr 23rd 2010 1:12PM]

Oh man.. I would love this.. Swap out TONS of stuff and stream to flat screen.. YES

[chford Posted Apr 23rd 2010 3:24PM]

It's 16,900 yen...equal to about 180 bones.
http://tinyurl.com/2ex77ld

[bonedog73 Posted Apr 23rd 2010 5:23PM]

How can something be called Digital Cowboy and NOT be shipping to the US?? Sounds kick ass but the price will be too stiff I'd imagine.

[pretol Posted Apr 23rd 2010 7:49PM]

Discussion in the marketing room:
guy#1: "should we call it 'movie pirate', since that's our target audience for this product"
guy#2: "let's not piss off the studios, let's call it 'movie fairies'"
guy#1: "well, that's just plain gay, we need something a little more 'rebellious'"
guy#2: "ok, ok... 'movie cowboys', with a catchy name like that, nobody will suspect a thing"

[fbradley8 Posted Apr 24th 2010 9:16PM]

I love how engadget describes things. "wrangle your torrents, herd your HDDs". Sometimes i read the news just for the humor

[Sable Drakon Posted Apr 25th 2010 2:51AM]

This thing reeks of a child's toy though. If I wanted a real NAS, sign me up for one of these http://www.drobo.com/products/drobopro/index.php. Don't need a NAS to handle torrenting when a 5 year old laptop on the network does the same job with the ability to remote administrate it.

[ChamPro Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:19AM]

Seems very similar to the construction and functionality the D-Link DNS-323.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509

It will probably be the same cost, which makes the 2 D-Link NAS boxes the cheapest RAID capable NAS out there.

[melissadi Posted Apr 30th 2010 11:59AM]

"should we call it 'movie pirate', since that's our target audience for this product" hahahaha
That's probably the majority but it's not only that. I've been downloading so many free movies legally from http://www.bnwmovies.com - only public domain movies