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How would you change the Drobo FS?
After years of pleading, the fine folks over at Data Robotics finally gifted you with a Drobo NAS. They called it the Drobo FS, but we all know what the real skinny is. But is the five-bay, Ethernet-friendly storage robot really a dream come true? We've had nothing but success with it in our Time Machine setup, but as with pretty much any networked drive, we've heard reports here and there of frustrations and complications. For those who have sprung for the FS, we're curious to hear what you'd change about the setup. Need more drive bays? Would you prefer a few extra interface options? Would you make the box a little less noisy? Go ahead and get honest down in comments below -- we know you need an avenue to vent after the week you just survived, right?
Pogoplug Biz adds corporate skinning, usage stats and other metrics
Remember that second generation Pogoplug we unboxed last December? Meet its corporate cousin, fresh out of LinkedIn and ready for that 40 hour work week. For all intents and purposes, the Pogoplug Biz is really a Pogoplug with just a few extra features that business owners may appreciate, such as enabling said owners to use their own domain name(s) and customize (or "skin") the user interface and email templates. The device -- which can connect up to four external HDDs to the internet -- also keeps track of how many visits, streams and downloads your files rack up, and you can even claim your own custom email addresses to let clients email files directly to the Pogoplug. The full list of extras awaits you past the break, and you can pre-order one for $299 (with lifetime Pogoplug service) down in the source link. %Gallery-97836%
Seagate's FreeAgent GoFlex Home adds flexibility to your next NAS setup
Looks like Seagate's not content with giving users a choice of connector -- the outfit's latest GoFlex apparatus utilizes a docking system to give users an easier way to upgrade their NAS. 'Course, those that really plan ahead will go ahead and grab a multi-bay device like Data Robotics' Drobo FS, but for the money, it's hard to argue with the FreeAgent GoFlex Home. Designed to work seamlessly with Windows-based PCs and Apple's Time Machine, the 1TB and 2TB devices provide a NAS dock for the drive to sit in, and the dock itself also boasts a USB port for adding external storage to the mix or sharing a printer over the network. Seagate's also tossing in its Share Pro service, which enables families to access content stored on the drive from mobile devices such as an iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry. Best of all, the $159.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB) asking prices won't totally crush the bank, so it seems like you've just about run out of excuses for backing up those childhood memories. %Gallery-97737%
Apple issuing free repairs or replacements of wonky 2008 Time Capsules
It takes quite a lot to get Apple (or any of the other big timers) to swallow its pride and admit a faulty product, but the random deaths of its Time Capsules seem to have fit that bill. Of course, in classic corporate fashion, we're not told that there's a problem at all, but if you bought one of the earliest batches of Time Capsules -- between February and June 2008 -- and it has since suffered a fatal malfunction, you may now be entitled to a free repair or replacement. This new coverage is also being extended to people who've already had to pay to deal with a less than reliable Capsule; they'll get full refunds of their money, but we doubt their hearts will heal that quickly, and let's not even talk about the lost data that was supposed to be getting backed up on the thing.
Netgear's ReadyNAS Ultra 4 and Ultra 6 stream to TiVo, mobile, and DLNA-certified devices
The "Death of Local Media Storage," eh Netgear? The company is certainly proud of its latest unveiling, the ReadyNAS Ultra series, as the aforementioned press release headline exemplifies. In addition to the usual network storage capabilities, the gang can stream media to any TiVo device, DLNA-certified machine (via Skifta), and mobile devices using Orb technologies. All machines feature 1.66GHz Intel Atom CPUs, 1GB RAM, and RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6 data protection. Need a hefty do-it-all box for storage? The Ultra 4 (2 x 2TB, single-core processor) and Ultra 6 (3 x 2TB, dual-core) will start shipping in mid-July, with pre-orders available in the very near future, for a penny under $900 and $1350, respectively. And if you want the capabilities in a lighter form factor, keep an eye out for an Ultra 2 in October. %Gallery-97195%
Plextor gets all zen with PlexMedia: a modular, network-attached Blu-ray player
It's not often we come across an external drive that looks like anything but a brick, so we were pleasantly surprised to see Plextor demoing something a little more svelte at Computex. We can tell the PlexMedia network attached media player (bottom) is a looker right off the bat, but it truly becomes useful when you plug in the PX-B120U (top) designed to go with it. The combination is a fully-functional Blu-ray disc player that apparently outputs to a TV, but the smaller box can also detach, slip into your bookbag and become an external Blu-ray drive for your PC. Since there's no specs or pics of the unit's rear, we honestly have no idea how it accomplishes either, but we imagine the info will spontaneously pop into our being if we stare long enough at those azure ripples, and thus complete our meditation. On the off-chance that doesn't work, we've also dispatched a carrier pigeon to Plextor HQ for the answers; in the meanwhile, you can peruse the presser after the break.
Acer launches clear.fi on Revo family of multimedia devices
Content is king. That's a given in a world now dominated by me-too devices. That's why Acer is launching clear.fi, software meant to ease the process of sharing and playing your media -- be it pictures, recorded TV, eBooks and music -- over a variety of devices including Acer notebooks, desktops and smartphones connected to your home network. Content can be stored centrally and then easily distributed to any compatible device via the clear.fi console. Acer's Revo family sits at the heart of the clear.fi network, a suite of devices that includes the Revo multimedia center, RevoView media player, and RevoCenter home storage appliance. The Revo all-in-one media center (pictured) comes packing a funky RevoPad wireless controller with touch-sensitive backlit QWERTY keyboard that turns into a multi-gesture touchpad with a click. Sorry, no specs yet on that. The RevoView is a set-top media player that plugs into the TV and home theater sound system. It can play content from USB, hard disk, flash cards, optical disk, or UPnP compatible devices. It also features a hard drive that can be swapped with Aspire M Series desktop PCs and the Acer RevoCenter -- a compact NAS supporting UPnP streaming and up to four hot-swappable SATA disks. Check the press release and pics of the RevoPad and RevoView after the break.
Data Robotics gives Drobo FS full Time Machine compatibility
When Data Robotics announced the Drobo FS last month, one common complaint among potential buyers was that it doesn't offer native support for doing networked Time Machine backups. Just connecting a Drobo FS to a network of Macs could cause issues for Time Machine backups, since the built-in backup feature of Mac OS X tends to consume every last morsel of space it can and even the huge capacity of the Drobo FS could be chewed up quickly. Data Robotics announced today that the Drobo FS now supports network-based Time Machine backups. The company shipped a new version of Drobo Dashboard for the FS allowing the creation of shares for Time Machine use. In Dashboard v1.7.2, there's now a control to enable Time Machine support on a Drobo array, then set a maximum size for the share so that the backup files don't take over all of the space on the device. The company has released the code that they wrote to specify volume sizes into the Open Source Community. The Netatalk project, hosted on SourceForge, provides a Unix/Linux daemon that is available to all Linux developers and any other vendors who sell to Mac OS X users.
Drobo FS gains native Time Machine support, we go hands-on
Praise wasn't hard to find when Data Robotics finally caved and crafted a Drobo NAS drive last month, but ever since we've been itching to test one out and see how it actually fared. We've had our fair share of awful NAS experiences, particularly in mixed-platform environments, but we recently had the chance to sit down with a unit to test out the company's latest addition: Time Machine support. We asked the outfit why support for Apple's innate backup service was coming just after the product launch, and it really boils down to decisions based on fiscal calendars, accounting practices and other scenarios that interest you not. Fact is, though, the gratis update is being pushed out today through the Drobo Dashboard, and all Drobo FS users should be able to download the new build and start taking advantage right away. We stuffed our unit with four different sized SATA drives from different manufacturers, and just like the company promised, the Drobo FS took 'em all in as if they were equal. Hop on past the break for more of our setup experience. %Gallery-93324%
LaCie plays media server, NAS cards with Network Space MAX
No monkeys here, but LaCie's latest is still worth toying around with -- particularly if you've been yearning for a way to better serve media around your home and / or backup those all-important Match.com email confirmations. The Network Space MAX (which can also be used as a USB 2.0 drive when away from the CAT5) is predictably designed by Neil Poulton, and while it'll likely attract an unhealthy amount of dust and fingerprints, the internals are what really matters. LaCie's shipping these with at least 2TB of space, but with two 3.5-inch SATA HDD slots, you can easily go the 4TB route with a couple of these. RAID 1 and RAID 0 setups are supported, giving the whimsical among us a pair of opportunities to get our lives backed up in case of disaster. Oh, and there's also inbuilt UPnP / DLNA support, which makes it easy for your PS3, Xbox 360 or Popcorn Hour box to tap into whatever media collection you happen to store here. Check it sooner than you can whisk yourself around and belt out a Lady Gaga lyric for $279.99 and up. %Gallery-93305%
Homemade 16TB NAS dwarfs the competition with insane build quality (video)
From the man that brought you the OS Xbox Pro and the Cinematograph HD comes... a cockpit canopy filled with hard drives? Not quite. Meet the Black Dwarf, a custom network-attached-storage device from the mind of video editor Will Urbina, packing 16TB of RAID 5 magnetic media and a 1.66GHz Atom N270 CPU into a completely hand-built Lexan, aluminum and steel enclosure. Urbina says the Dwarf writes at 88MB per second and reads at a fantastic 266MB per second, making the shuttlecraft-shaped 12.7TB array nearly as speedy as an SSD but with massive capacity and some redundancy to boot. As usual, the DIY guru shot a professional time-lapse video of his entire build process, and this one's not to be missed -- it showcases some pretty spiffy camerawork as well as the man's welding skills. See sparks fly after the break.
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. %Gallery-91537%
TUAW review: Data Robotics Drobo FS NAS
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is gaining in popularity as an alternative to a home or small office server. A few weeks ago, I reviewed LaCie's Network Space 2, which is a non-expandable 1TB storage solution. For those who want a solution that will be expandable in the future, Data Robotics has recently introduced the Drobo FS. Like its predecessors, the Drobo FS has multiple drive bays -- five in this case -- into which you can insert standard SATA hard disk drives. The array can be set up for either single or dual-disk redundancy, meaning that one (single) or two (dual) drives can fail without compromising the integrity of your data. Data Robotics' proprietary BeyondRAID technology makes the array easy to set up and expand. The Drobo FS is easy to set up. The review unit sent to TUAW by Data Robotics was removed from its box, three disk drives were installed by sliding them into available slots on the unit, the power supply was connected, and a gigabit Ethernet cable run from a router to the back of the Drobo. Upon powering up the Drobo FS, the device showed up under the Shared list in the Finder -- so far, so good.
Toshiba's new REGZA record over LAN, convert 2D to 3D quite soon in Japan
Though Toshiba's flagship ZX900 Cell TV has yet to make its feature-packed US debut, the company is already planning fancy new toys for the motherland. This week, Toshiba announced a full fifteen new LCD HDTVs destined to spice up the sweltering Japanese summer -- each of them ready to pull double duty as DVR -- and Nikkei Electronics reports that the company's 3D-converting sets will debut around the same time. Meanwhile, Google Translate tells us a bit about the rest. While the low-end REGZA HE1 series have only a built-in 500GB hard drive and LED-backlit LCDs (as if that weren't enough), the RE1 can send footage to up to four external hard drives over USB in a system that gives each family member their own dedicated hard drive. But the Z1 series takes the cake -- it's got fleshed out DVR functionality that lets users record two programs at once (while watching a third) and jack into a LAN switch with eight drives for a veritable NAS of up to 4TB. It's little things like this that make us wish we lived in Japan.
TUAW review: LaCie Network Space 2 low-cost NAS
Everybody needs storage, and lots of it. The race for space began when we started taking digital pictures, accelerated when we began purchasing music online, and went positively orbital when movies and TV went digital. While big drives in desktop machines are becoming commonplace (1 TB drives are now standard in most iMac configurations), what happens when you have a couple of laptops or older machines that you want to back up, or if you want to share data with others in your office or home? That's when some sort of network-attached storage comes in handy. Network-attached storage is nothing new; you can even consider Apple's US$299 Time Capsule to be a wireless NAS. Now storage manufacturer LaCie has released the US$190 Network Space 2 device, providing 1 TB of storage and speedy connectivity. LaCie provided TUAW with a Network Space 2 for review purposes, so we put it through its paces before sending it back to the company. Read on for a review of this attractive and useful peripheral.
Switched On: MyDitto NAS has some key issues
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. There are many devices that allow one to remotely access your digital content at home when you're on the road. These include low-cost remote access appliances like the PogoPlug, midrange NAS storage devices such as Netgear's Stora, and expensive but powerful solutions that cater to the technically inclined, such as HP's MediaSmart products powered by Windows Home Server. Now, however, Dane Elec -- best-known for selling USB flash drives and memory cards at retailers such as Target -- has jumped into the shared storage space with an offering called MyDitto. The late entrant seeks to overcome some of the setup and access complexities of other products in its class, bringing network storage beyond the early adopters. While MyDitto incorporates a number of good ideas, though, its advantages help only in a limited number of NAS usage scenarios.
Stylish Sony Walkman docks sport WiFi radio, ludicrous sheen
Thermos audio wasn't the only idea Sony Japan introduced this week; there's also the company's glossy new speaker docks, the NAS-V5 and NAS-V7M, whose intense reflection make us remember that time mom told us never to stare at the sun. Unfortunately, NAS doesn't stand for Network Attached Storage here, but the ¥50,000 (about $535) NAS-V7M does have 16GB of internal memory onto which you can rip audio CDs with a single touch, and both it and the ¥40,000 ($428) NAS-V5 have internal WiFi that'll have your Japanese counterparts pumping internet radio jingles from Shoutcast, vTuner, your PC and anything else with a compatible wireless audio stream when they hit Akihabara on June 26. They both feature 32-bit DSPs for what we can only guess will be crisp, clean audio quality, have all the standard AM-FM radio features you've come to expect, and include an AUX jack and a powered USB port. Oh, and lest we forget amidst all the bedside table aural goodness -- they're also Walkman docks. Hear a deep, soothing Japanese voice explain why you need one, after the break. %Gallery-90120%
Data Robotics announces new Drobo FS
Data Robotics has just announced a new member of the Drobo family -- the Drobo FS. The new device is designed to serve as Network Attached Storage with all of the advantages of the Data Robotics BeyondRAID technology, with the added bonus of drop-dead simple setup. In a pre-release interview with Mark Fuccio of Data Robotics last week, he noted that setup on the device is as easy as installing the Drobo Dashboard software on a computer on the network, and then letting it handle all of the setup decisions for you. The device features a dual core processor, with one core running the embedded proprietary OS and the other core running Linux. The processor brings a lot of speed to the Drobo FS -- in testing, the device had about four times the speed of the former Drobo NAS solution, which was a Drobo plus the DroboShare device. Data Robotics noted that using Jumbo Frames, read speeds of up to 50-55MB/sec are possible. The Drobo FS has five storage bays, each of which can hold one standard 3.5" SATA hard drive. At the present time, the largest capacity of these drives is 2 TB, for a total of 9.1 TB of capacity or 5.44 TB with dual-disk redundancy (two drives can fail and the array can still operate flawlessly). As drive capacities grow in the future, the 2 TB drives can be replaced with larger drives, increasing the capacity of the array even more. The FS has a single Gigabit Ethernet port on the back for its connection to the world.
Drobo FS: finally, Data Robotics releases a Drobo NAS drive
Say it with us now: "finally!" We've been yearning for a true Drobo NAS drive ever since Data Robotics first introduced its "intelligent" storage robot back in the heyday that was 2007, and after coming darn close with the DroboShare, the company has finally produced a bona fide networked storage solution. The Drobo FS (for 'File Server') utilizes the same chassis as the Drobo S, and in terms of features, it can do everything that box can, too. What differentiates it, however, is that astoundingly gorgeous gigabit Ethernet jack on the rear, not to mention a new dual-core CPU, increased RAM, a revised Linux kernel and enough overall tweaks to make it perform 4x faster than the DroboShare. We spoke with Mark Fuccio, Senior Director of Products and Markets, who obliged when we dug for even more details. For starters, this device will boast five bays, and users can mix, match, upgrade and swap drives at will, just like any other Drobo. It'll also support network backups of Macs and PCs, and while you won't find a Time Machine stamp, the Time Tamer app available in the DroboApps portal will enable support for Mac loyalists who insist on using that over Data Robotic's (likely superior) solution. It also ships with a BitTorrent client that keeps your transfers humming even when your PC is off, and it'll handle iTunes, UPnP and DLNA streaming to boot. Firmware upgrades will be handled over the network, and users can poke around for even more applications by visiting the company's website. One app that stood out to us, however, was one that'll be thrown in by the recently renamed Oxygen Cloud; in essence, this will allow users to turn their Drobo FS into "the cloud," enabling colleagues or kids to remotely access the Drobo as if it were some faraway, magical data drive connected to a mythical T3. Yeah, this definitely feels more like a corporate thing than anything else, but it's certainly something that you won't find on those "other" NAS drives. It should be noted, however, that the app will only support a single user for free -- if you're buying for a corporation or small business, you'll need to hit up Oxygen Cloud to procure a multi-user license. Aside from nabbing SMB and AFP support, Mark told us that users could reasonably expect to see file transfers between 30MB/sec and 40MB/sec, but that's obviously subject to vary based on strain. As for pricing? Data Robotics told us that the new Drobo FS will be on sale globally today through the typical channels (Amazon, CDW, B&H Photo, Dell and NewEgg), with the empty unit selling for $699. A 4.5TB model (1.5TB x 3) will go for $999, while a 7.5TB version (5 x 1.5TB) lists for $1,149 and a 10TB edition (2TB x 5) for $1,449. Or you could just enter to win one here. Oh, and as for that DroboShare we mentioned earlier? It's being phased out with the introduction of the Drobo FS, so if you're jonesing for one, you might want to get that order placed. %Gallery-89838%
Synology DS410 NAS will back up your files, won't incite a passionate response
The last time we laid eyes on Synology's DiskStation line it was in the form of the DS409Slim -- a diminutive NAS without the 'zazz of lots of your flashier network storage solutions. The newly announced DS410 also keeps it pretty simple: features include four bays of RAID-5 storage, 256-bit encryption, Amazon S3 cloud backup, Apple Time Machine integration, media streaming, print server, and web hosting with PHP/MySQL. Don't worry, you Big Brother-types don't get left out either: the included Surveillance Station 4 software allows the deployment of multiple IP cameras and support for H.264 video. Available now for $500.
