It's been a hot minute since we've seen any fresh new kit from Plextor, but the firm has just rolled out a new pair of NAS drives for those on the hunt for -- what else? -- networked storage. The StorX PX-NAS500L / PX-NAS1000L drives offer up 500GB and 1TB of capacity, respectively, and each unit includes a gigabit Ethernet port, one-touch USB back-up button and the ability to grow thanks to a pair of USB 2.0 sockets. Beyond that, you won't find much else special about the new duo, and your guess is as good as ours on pricing / availability.

[Via BIOS]

Four months is just too long to go without an all new ReadyNAS, so we suppose that's why Netgear is kicking out an all new 6-bay unit (6TB RNDP6610; 3TB RNDP6310; 1.5TB RNDP6350) for those obsessed with storage. The box can handle up to 6TB of HDD space and features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM (up to 4GB supported), 128MB of embedded flash for the OS, a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports, three USB 2.0 sockets and support for RAID 0/1/5/6 and Auto-Expandable X-RAID2. As expected, Windows / Mac / Linux clients can all tap in, and the unit streams all sorts of media on the side. Of course, acquiring the industry's first 6-bay small-form-factor NAS drive won't come cheap, with the ReadyNAS Pro starting at around two large.

Here it is copyright bandits, the single biggest reason (besides silicone) to make a Hollywood studio notice you: the MZK-NAS02SG1T network attached storage device from Planex. The main selling point behind the ¥54,799 (about $524) 1TB Gigabit Ethernet block is the claim to "universal access" for all your devices. That little trick comes courtesy of its DigiJuke browser for searching and tagging the BitTorrent and YouTube content you want downloaded in the appropriate PSP and iPod (MPEG-4), Wii (FLV), or TV (MPEG-2) format for in-home or on-the-go viewing. The NAS also streams audio and video to your iTunes laptops or desktops, DLNA TV, Xbox 360, or other compliant device in the home. A front-facing USB 2.0 jack offers one-touch dubbing of USB sticks while a second around back offers ready storage expansion. It ships with a pair of 3.5-inch 500GB drive which you can swap out for higher capacity spinners at a later date. That is if the studios don't shut you down first.

[Via Impress]

QNAP's TS-109 / TS-209 NAS drives weren't anything to sneeze at, but the company's looking to improve overall responsiveness and speed up BitTorrent download performance with a pair of successors. The one-bay TS-109 Pro II and two-bay TS-209 Pro II both include a potent 500MHz Marvell processor and 256MB of DDR2 RAM, which is double the memory stuffed within the prior iterations. You'll also find a new and improved BT engine that promises "the [same] level of P2P download speed as PC-based BT downloads," built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1, scheduled backup / logging applications, DivX-friendly TwonkyMedia v4.4.4 and support for DLNA / NFS / SMB multimedia sharing. Sorry, no pricing deets to share at the moment.

IO Data took the wraps off of a new HDD unit made specifically to attach to those new Regza ZH500s, the DiXim HVL4-G2.0 is compliant with the latest DLNA / DTCP-IP standards to easily record TV shows via the network. It's got space for four drives up to a maximum capacity of 2 TB in a RAID 5 array, limiting recording space to a max of 1.5 TB. Because of copy protection, it only records from Toshiba's TVs right now, and can be controlled completely via remote. Doubt we'll be seeing this here anytime soon, but it'll be on store shelves in Japan later this month for 111,615 ($1,090 US).

[Via AV Watch]

Though it's not the first box we've seen built to take your local backups elsewhere, the Datto Backup NAS drive could certainly fill a gaping security hole at many small / medium-sized businesses that are currently operating without any kind of off-site storage. Said devices come in 100GB and 500GB versions, play nice with Windows, Mac or Linux setups and pipe your data to secure external servers (using AES+ SSL key-based encryption, too) in order to keep the process load off of your machine(s). Granted, the annual service fee is $99 for 100GB and $249 for 500GB (monthly plans available), but that does include free support, 24 / 7 backup monitoring and the promise of bringing you back up to speed in under 24 hours should disaster strike. Both drives are available now for $399 and $599, respectively. [Warning: PDF read link]

Now that Time Machine's all buddy-buddy with AirPort Extreme's AirDisk feature, we can see the demand for Time Capsule sinking considerably. Still, Apple's own NAS drive / WLAN router combo has likely found its way into quite a few households, and now that you've had a chance to back up your life a couple times over, we're interested to see how you'd tweak things. Are you really pleased with the interface? Are transfers snappy enough? Want a little more freedom with how you're able to configure things? Would you rather it not function as a substitute for a portable stove? Let's be honest -- Time Capsule's a pricey piece of kit for what you get, so feel free to let Cupertino know exactly what's keeping you from being absolutely satisfied in every respect.

If you've grown tired of the cold corporate design sensibilities of most NAS products (uh hem, Buffalo), then check the Wizplat NAS-20 from Sarotech. This 2-bay NAS box supports a pair of SATA disks for what should top-out at 2TB of roll-your-own storage on your gigabit Ethernet network. It features a pair of USB jacks, built-in iTunes and print servers, and even a BitTorrent server which should allow your home PC to take a rest from your 7 x 24 downloading scheme. Color us impressed while we wait for the price and ship date to be announced.

[Via Akihabara News]

This has got to stop, people. We just can't stand to think of all these bits and bytes -- not to mention their offspring -- crammed into something like this Buffalo LinkStation Mini NAS. Dual 500GB 2.5-inch hard drives were just never meant to be in this close of proximity. Oh, it has RAID 0 / RAID 1? We suppose those 1's and 0's will just have to suffer. The LinkStation Mini LS-WS includes an FTP server, DLNA and iTunes capability, can share a printer of USB and reads memory cards and other mass storage devices. Buffalo plans to ship it in March for 85,000 yen (about $824 US).

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Gigantic, festering CD collection got you down? Need some solution to get all of that music onto a hard drive, but simply don't have the patience or skill to use iTunes and an external hard drive? Well you're in luck, because the Ripserver is here. Acting as a completely stand-alone solution, this handsome black or white box lets you rip and store your music without any additional hardware or software. The RAID 1 device comes in 500GB or 1TB configurations, rips as FLAC files or MP3s (with adjustable bit rates), functions as a NAS device with UPnP support, supports connectivity with additional USB drives, and is DNLA compliant. The Ripserver runs a Linux build atop an Epia 1GHZ CPU, with 512MB of RAM, and boasts VGA, USB, and PS2 ports. The 500GB will run you £599 (or around $1,189), and the 1TB £699 ($1,388) -- both are shipping now.

Acer's been pretty low-key with its SOHO-targeted Altos easyStore NAS offerings, but it's not just letting it wither away either, upping the capacity today to a max of 3TB. The black four-drive tower features a web interface to disk options like RAID levels and automatic backup schedules, and Acer bundles in a bootable CD that allows you to restore from catastrophic system failures. It's not clear when the 3TB easyStore is going to make it out, but the 2TB version has been available for large discounts and garnering decent reviews since August, so you may want to start poking around if you're looking to jump aboard the NAS train.

Okay, so we've got our Time Capsule up and running here -- we'll be back with a full review once our full 516GB backup is completed, but here are some quick first impressions:

• You can definitely hear the disks spin up and access. It also sounds like there's a fan in there, but there are no obvious vents for one and we can't feel any air coming out, so the drives might just be that loud.
  
• The top is getting quite warm during the backup -- we'll see if it cools down once we stop hitting the drive this hard, but if there really isn't a fan we're a little concerned. Hope those server-grade hard drives like being cooked.
  
• You can't transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule. Sure, it's easy enough to switch back and get at your old data, but it's still a pain -- and now we have a 1TB drive sitting here with months of backups on it that we can't erase and reuse.
• Time Machine doesn't prioritize network activity on your machine, so it's slamming our network connection right now as it backs up. That's not a huge problem since we're backing up over Ethernet, but we'll see what happens when we try this over WiFi later.
• We tried to back up a second machine while the first was in progress, and not much happened -- it created the disk image and got to "Preparing..." and then did nothing. We're assuming these can only happen one at a time.
  
• The wireless side of things is basically the same as the Airport Extreme, nothing shocking there, although the setup assistant has been substantially revised to make things easier.
  
• The setup assistant now asks if you already have a 2.4GHz network and offers to create a 5GHz secondary network, which is interesting.

That's about it for now -- there's not much we can try out while this backup is in progress. Anything else you guys want to know?

Right at the buzzer, Apple shipped us a Time Capsule -- and just like we remember, it's a bit bigger than you'd expect. We're about to set it up in our WiFi torture chamber of an apartment building, we'll let you know how it goes -- unboxing in the gallery below.

Believe us, we know just how foggy things get when trying to remember back to the 13th day of December 2007, but sure enough, it was on that fateful Thursday that we received our first sneak peek at QNAP's (then) forthcoming TS-409. Today, however, we're looking at the official product: a 4-bay, hot-swappable NAS that supports such beautiful features as online RAID capacity expansion and RAID level migration. Reportedly filled with "disaster-proof enhancements," this unit also includes an HDD S.M.A.R.T. function that provides complete hard drive information including temperature and overall "health." No concrete word on price, but a quick scan of the intarweb pegs it right around $600.

So we snagged a DroboShare to hook our lonesome, directly-attached Drobo into. At $200 for what's essentially a USB network adapter we had some pretty high expectations, but thankfully we've been pretty impressed so far. Setup simply entails upgrading your Drobo hardware and Dashboard software to the latest versions (v1.1), restarting the box, and then plugging into the DroboShare. That's it. Detection, configuration, everything else is entirely automatic. Within a few moments it auto-mounts as a shared network drive via SMB, regardless of what file system the Drobo itself is running, or whether you're running Windows or Mac. (For those running on Linux or other operating systems, the DS is still accessible over your network via standard SMB share just like any other server.)

Click on for more on network auto-mounting and a couple speed tests.