NAS

Sick of living in the cloud?

The new Pogoplug Series 4 is a device that looks to take the best of cloud computing and home network-attached storage and combine the two into a seamless experience. Available today, it certainly seems like a perfectly timed idea in the wake of seemingly daily frustrations with services like Apple's own iCloud and iTunes Match.

Maybe the fourth time's a charm: I've reviewed multiple Pogoplugs before, but none of them came close to what this new version offers. The Pogoplug is a NAS drive without the complications, and it's finally hit a sweet spot for price, size, and feature set. The newly released Pogoplug Series 4 is a latecomer to the holiday shopping season, but if you're getting fed up with iCloud and what other cloud services have to offer, then this $99 device might be what you're looking for.… Read more

If you're in the market for a dual-bay network storage device, Synology's DiskStation DS712+ server will make the best investment.

Priced at around $500 with no storage included, the server is not cheap, but it's definitely worth every penny for those who want (and are able) to get the most out of home or small-business networking.

Like other NAS servers from Synology, the DS712+ runs a Linux-based operating system, called DiskStation Manager, and offers an incredible number of features for both home and business use.… Read more

For virtually anything to happen as expected in our daily life, computer storage is needed. If you think that's a grand statement, you, like most of us, have been taking storage for granted.

Despite the massive recent flood in Thailand that affected many storage vendors, hard drives, the most common form of computer storage, are still generally affordable (and abundant in terms of capacities). However, not all other forms of storage applications share the similar pricing as hard drives. And they can get progressively pricier the faster and the cooler they get.

Here's a list of storage devices … Read more

Western Digital announced today the WD Sentinel DX4000 NAS server for business environments.

The new four-bay server runs the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system on an Intel D525 Dual Core Atom processor.

Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 is superior to the current version of Windows Home Server and offers support for RAID configurations and iSCSI, which allows a portion of the network storage to be used by a computer as if it were a local drive. Because of this, the WD Sentinel DX400 supports RAID 1 and 5.… Read more

Netgear today announced new NAS servers designed for "economical pro" users. Apart from the amount of drive bays (and hence the types of RAID support), the two-bay ReadyNAS Duo and the four-bay ReadyNAS NV+ V2 are essentially the same.

Besides RAID 0, 1, and 5 (available with the NV+ V2 only), both servers support Netgear's XRAID 2 configuration, which is a proprietary flexible RAID that allows you to use hard drives of different capacities and upgrade the RAID without having to build it from scratch. XRAID 2 automatically manages hard drives based on the amount of drives used with a balance between performance and data integrity, with one drive always being used for data redundancy. XRAID 2 has been available in other servers from Netgear, such as the higher-end ReadyNAS Ultra4. … Read more

Akitio announced today the availability of the MyCloud Duo, its second-generation personal cloud NAS server.

The company says the new server features a Web-based file browser and media player to offer over-the-Internet file management and media playback, via a convenient portal. For the local network, the server features a one Gigabit Ethernet port and has a built-in UPnP AV media server, allowing users to stream content to any UPnP-AV- and DLNA- compatible devices.

As a storage device, the MyCloud Duo supports the SMB standard and can be automatically detected by other computers. The server can house two SATA hard drives … Read more

I'm usually pretty good at making decisions. Chocolate or vanilla? Easy: chocolate. Red wine or white? Easy: red. Coach or first class? Hey, this is the Cheapskate you're talking to, remember?

Today, however, I simply couldn't make up my mind. So many good deals, so little time. In no particular order:

1. Mwave has the Zonet ZNS8030 for $25.99 shipped. This little gizmo lets you attach a USB hard drive to your router, effectively turning it into network-attached storage. It's kind of like the Pogoplug, only smaller and cheaper.

2. Speaking of Pogoplug, last week … Read more

If you want a network storage device that you can leave in the living room to wow your guests, the LaCie 5big Network 2 would be it. From the front it doesn't look much like a storage device; it looks more like a mysterious item pulled straight out of a sci-fi movie or a piece of art that you're not really supposed to understand.

From the back, however, it's a dead-serious storage device with five hard-drive bays, a bunch of peripheral ports, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The 5big Network 2 is LaCie's high-end NAS server that can house up to five SATA hard drives of any capacity. In fact, it's the first from the company that can host hard drives of different capacities, thanks to its new Auto RAID configuration that was introduced a while back via the NAS OS 2.0.… Read more

You remember the Pogoplug, right? It's the gizmo that turns one or more USB hard drives into network-attached and Web-accessible storage.

The Cloud Engines Pogoplug Pro is the third-generation version of the device, notable mostly for the addition of built-in Wi-Fi. That means it doesn't have to sit right next to your router, but can instead reside just about anywhere in your home, office, or home office.

From now through August 26, or until supplies run out, my very own CNET overlords (in partnership with Cloud Engines) are offering the Pogoplug Pro for just $29.99, plus $10 $… Read more