Western Digital NetCenter Network Drive

Western Digital's NetCenter is a basic workhorse NAS device and was fast and easy to set up and gets the job done. It also comes with capable backup software. It comes in capacities ranging from 160GB to 500GB and is SATA with 3Gbit/sec throughput. A 250GB model sells for US$249.99 but I opted for the larger, 500GB unit, which has a list price of US$399.99. Unlike the Iomega model I tested, the 500GB NetCenter uses a single drive and so it cannot be mirrored. Western Digital does not offer a mirroring option in the NetCenter line.

The units are Mac and PC compatible and -- like the Iomega unit -- includes EMC Retrospect Express 7.5 backup software. Like the other units, the NetCenter includes two USB ports for attaching extra storage. It also supports network printer sharing by attaching your printer to one of the USB ports.

It does not offer FTP or media streaming, and it was the only unit I tested that does not support Gigabit Ethernet network speeds. I didn't notice much of a performance difference in my testing, however. Practically speaking, I doubt that network speed will make a noticeable difference to most home office or small office users, unless you're streaming multimedia content or transferring large volumes of files on a regular basis.

NetCenter comes with EasyLink discovery program, which locates the shared disk, maps shared folders that you select, and lets you place shortcuts to them on the desktop. The NetCenter Manager software allows the user to configure the device settings and set up printer sharing.

Disk security was simple and therefore easy to set up. After password protecting the NetCenter console, I used a file-sharing wizard that walked me through creating shared folders, which can be made public or private by assigning a password to each. After you're done you'll probably want to map each user's workstation to the new folder.

Printer sharing involved connecting the printer, clicking on the "Printers and Faxes" icon on the NetCenter hard drive and following the directions.

As with the Iomega StorCenter, my work laptop had difficulty recognizing and therefore mapping to shared folders on the NetCenter device. I was not able to determine the exact source of the problem, but I was able to resolve the problem by using the same method described in the Iomega section above.

Maxtor Shared Storage II

Seagate aptly describes the Maxstor Shared Storage II line as "simple shared storage, automatic backup and media serving for small networks." It offers the 320GB unit that I tested, as well as a 500GB and 1TB model. All support Gigabit Ethernet and use 7200 rpm disks with a 3Gbit/sec SATA interface. The product line does not support disk mirroring. It does support UPnP audio visual media streaming.

Unlike other units I tested, when you plug in the Shared Storage II it doesn't automatically appear on your network as a shared resource. You must run the installation utility, reboot, and then run the Maxtor EasyManage utility and set up a user account. The Shared Storage II then creates a public folder and a personal folder space and a drive mapping to it.

EasyManage creates a new personal folder for each user. This administrative tool does not let you configure all user accounts from a single computer, however. You must install the software and configure each new user machine by machine.

The Shared Storage II doesn't just set up shared folders; it creates a hierarchy of subfolders within each that include My Documents, My Backup, My Library, My Movies, My Music, My Photos, My Sites and My Software, as well as a shortcut to the Public folder (which contains a similarly named set of subfolders). Users can turn on a feature that lets you drag and drop files on the shared drive and have them automatically sorted into the correct folder based file type.

EasyManage includes a rudimentary backup feature that backs up data from workstations to the My Backups subfolder on the shared disk. The user can select which files and folders to back up, can opt to save up to 10 "historical versions" of each file, and can schedule the time of day and days of the week for backups to take place. EasyManage can't back up data from the shared disk to a local disk, although it can be configured to back up to a USB-attached hard disk drive.

There are no options to use compression or to encrypt backup files. On the plus side, the backup software can be used on more than one Mac or PC client without paying additional license fees.