SEAGATE’S NEW CENTRAL AXIS NETWORK STORAGE
MAKES BACK UP AND ACCESS TO FILES EASIER THAN EVER

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — June 25, 2008 — To address the growing consumer need for storage in the home, Seagate (NYSE: STX) today announced the Maxtor® Central Axis™ network drive, a network storage drive that can be used by the whole family. This latest drive from Seagate provides a terabyte of storage that every computer in the home can back up to. In addition to media streaming capabilities for video, photos and music, the new Maxtor Central Axis network drive also includes an easy-to-use remote accessservice that allows people to easily and securely retrieve content stored on their network drive through any Internet browser.

A concept once only reserved for the small business and enterprise space, networked storage
is increasingly becoming a viable option for multiple-computer homes. According to Yankee
Group’s 2008 Device Survey, of those who purchased network routers for the home, 75.9%
did so with the intent of providing multiple computers with access to the Internet. The
challenge of these multi-computer households is the ability to share and back up files from
each computer. Maxtor Central Axis network drive allows for each computer in the home to
be automatically backed up, so important files and precious memories are sheltered from
virus infections or disc drive failures. Sharing files from computer to computer is easy when
there is one repository for any file that you would like to share. Additionally, since the storage device
is connected to the router and not formatted for an individual computer, files can be accessed and stored from both Mac OS X and Windows operated PCs.

“The days of external storage simply serving as an extension to a full hard drive are over – the era of personal digital content has seen to that,” said Josh Martin, senior analyst of Yankee Group’s Media and Entertainment devices.

“Survey data indicates that over 41% of recent external storage buyers did so to back up their data not because they ran out of room on the primary computer. With the emotional connection people have to their photos and videos, I believe the trend will only continue.”

The Maxtor Central Axis network drive liberates content that was once trapped on individual computers. This easy to use solution enables multimedia file sharing from every computer in the home as well as from common entertainment devices, which are DLNA compliant, such as Microsoft® Xbox® 360 and Sony® PlayStation® 3™. Watching home movies, viewing pictures of the last family vacation and listening to music can now all be enjoyed in the living room through networked console players instead of having guests crowd around a computer monitor in the den or a small laptop computer screen. This storage device helps put your digital entertainment back in a room where the whole family can enjoy it.

“Our Central Axis solution is a snap to set up and use for nearly every member of the family. Any household with a network would benefit from having a way to back up every PC in the home and share files between them,” said BenHur Castor, director of product line management for Seagate’s Consumer Solution Division. “Back up is essential to make certain photos, videos and other important files live beyond the life of an individual computer. The Central Axis network drive provides a complete solution for back up storage as well as file sharing in the home and from the road.”

In addition to providing networked access to important files, Maxtor Central Axis network drive provides a way to easily share and access files when you are not on the network. With the ever-growing dependence on access to information and digital content, whether that be multimedia content, spreadsheets or business-related documents, you’ll find there are times when you’ll need to access these files remotely. Retrieving content that is saved to a network drive when you are not local to the network has always raised concerns about security and complexity. Most applications involve installing software on the computer accessing the drive. Many remote access applications also require a breach in a firewall, leaving the network and your data open and vulnerable to attack.

With Maxtor Central Axis, you can easily log into the remote access service from an Internet browser to securely access and share the files stored on the networked storage drive. There are no applications to download or plug-ins required. Central Axis establishes a secure connection to the service without the need to disable firewalls. All that is needed to access the drive from any Web browser is a username and password.

Central Axis Network Drive
Designed as a home network storage drive, the Maxtor Central Axis 1TB capacity drive is expected to be available in the US in July from major retailers, distributors and online stores, as well as at www.maxstore.com, for a suggested retail price of $329.99. Availability in Europe and Asia will come later this year. Please visit www.maxtorsolutions.com for more information, including local distribution channels and retail outlets.

The Price: $599 for 500GB, $399 for 100GB. Monthly service is $24.95, $249 for 1 year, $499 for 2 years, and $998 for 5 years.

The Verdict: It works. The network interface is only a 10/100, not Gigabit, so transferring stuff to the drive isn't all that fast. However, that's not the point of the Datto. You're not using this as an extra storage drive that you move stuff onto or off of every day, you're using this as a backup for your more important documents and files. Storing your home business docs, tax records, or whatever irreplaceable (vacation pics?) files you've got lying around so that you can get it back in case your kid sets fire to your house.

The only possible problem with this is that uploading 500GB of data takes a long time on a standard cable or DSL connection. It's not an issue when all your data's already on their servers and you're just updating a file or two here or there, but the first upload can take days, if not weeks, depending on your internet speed. You can have them do a roundtrip shipment of the device, manually doing a dump of your drive into their servers and sending your unit back.

If your device fails, Datto will ship your data back to you in under 24 hours. It may not be for everyone, but if you've got some important data or you're running a business at home, you should definitely consider it as an easy offsite backup solution. [Datto]

The RS408RP is the same, but has backup power supply in case of power outage. Users supply their own drives. All have 49MB/second read, 30MB+/sec write speeds and have 8W CPU power consumption, making them much more eco-friendly than similar systems which draw up to 80W.

While they're aimed at small businesses, the fast speeds mean they may well appeal to gamers with powerful setups. The desktop DS508 is available in June for $1,029.95, the rack versions for $1,499.95 and $1,799.95 from July. [Synology]

Other features include support for DLNA, NFS and SMB multimedia sharing and a 1TB single SATA hard drive on the TS-109 (2TB with an external eSATA or USB drive) or 2TB for the TS-209. Unfortunately, No pricing or release date information has been announced.

From the press release:

QNAP Announces Next Generation 500MHz CPU+256MB DDRII TS-109 Pro/TS-209 Pro II Turbo NAS Series

Taipei, Taiwan, April 2008 - The leading network-attached storage (NAS) provider QNAP Systems, Inc. today unveils the next generation Linux-embedded one-bay and two-bay NAS: TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II for power users, SOHO, and business users. The TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series adopts high performance Marvell 500MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII large memory, which is a double of the memory size of the previous generation (TS-109/209 series) and becomes the best hardware specifications in the present SOHO NAS market. The Turbo NAS maintains superior system performance even if there are multiple accesses to various network services of the server concurrently. The new models are equipped with enhanced software functions, including the new BitTorrent download engine, built-in Joomla! CMS 1.5.1 for ease of PHP/MySQL-based web server hosting and upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4 for DLNA compliant media playing. Other professional features such as HDD S.M.A.R.T., complete log system, schedule backup from NAS to external storage device, etc. are also available. TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series is the ideal choice of high performance and energy-saving NAS for modern business and home users.

Upgraded BT engine for high-speed download
Besides the outstanding hardware specifications, the BitTorrent download performance of TS-109 Pro II and TS-209 Pro II series is largely enhanced. The high-speed DHT mode and TCP/UDP tracker protocols are supported to overcome the drawbacks of slow download of general embedded systems. You can now enjoy the level of P2P download speed as PC-based BT download. The optional firmware with encrypted BT is also provided on QNAP website for users who are suffered from traffic shaping by ISP to increase the download speed! QNAP also provides the remote management software-QGet to allow you to manage the download tasks of multiple NAS servers remotely over the local network or the Internet. According to Mr. Laurent Cheng, Product Manager from QNAP, "Most power users are used to using PC for BT download. However, PC-based BT download is energy-consuming and the fan is always noisy. As the performance of embedded system improves and evolves, we strongly believe that QNAP's energy-saving Linux embedded NAS will become an alternative solution to replace PC as a download server."

Supports DLNA, NFS, SMB multimedia sharing to set up the home multimedia centre
QNAP NAS is the NAS device with the highest compatibility with tens of different DLNA media players, Sony PS3, and Microsoft Xbox360 gaming consoles. With the upgraded TwonkyMedia version 4.4.4, the popular DivX video can be streamed to Sony PS3 from NAS. Users can enjoy more of the music, photos, and video sharing function in the home network. Moreover, the Turbo NAS Pro series works well with NFS supported High-Definition (HD) DMA for HD video streaming. They can also be connected to XBMC (modded from Xbox gaming console) via SMB for media playing. The high compatibility, energy-saving and reliable features have made QNAP NAS the first choice for setting up the digital home multimedia centre.

Feature-rich NAS for modern business
The advanced functions which are only available in enterprise-level NAS models are now supported in QNAP Turbo NAS series. The HDD S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) is supported for users to monitor the status of hard disk drive and check the potential problems. The comprehensive log system allows administrator to track the file-level connection logs and the status of all online users. The Turbo NAS provides numerous built-in functions which can be easily managed via the web interface, e.g. network storage, file server, encrypted FTP server, encrypted remote replication, printer server, etc. The intelligent backup software NetBak Replicator is also offered for users to back up data from multiple Windows PCs to the NAS. Also, Windows AD authentication is supported for efficient user account management and reduced maintenance cost.

About QNAP TS-109 and TS-209 Turbo NAS
QNAP TS-109 series supports up to 1TB single SATA hard drive. The total storage capacity can be expanded to 2TB with an external eSATA or USB drive. With the unique fanless design and aluminum alloy case, the noiseless TS-109 is suitable for operation in digital home environment. Moreover, the power consumption rate of TS-109 is less than 14.4W under normal operation. This energy-saving design enables the server to run 24x7 non stop. TS-109 series supports 12-in-1 complete functions and high transfer performance. TS-109 Pro was honored the "The Best NAS Box" from MAXIMUMPC (US), "Lord of NAS" from Hexus (UK), and "Golden Bear Award" from Bjorn3D (US) etc.

QNAP TS-209 series is the only 2-bay, RAID 1, hot-swappable NAS model in the current SOHO NAS market. With 12-in-1 functions, the maximum storage capacity supported is 2TB. TS-209 is a perfect large-storage and high security solution for home, SOHO, and SMB users. TS-209 Pro was honored "Gold Medal Award" from ComputerGEIL.dk (Denmark), Golden Award from InfoMods (France), and "Product of the Year 2007" from Hardware-TEST.dk (Denmark) etc.

PlayStation 3 owners who want to shove a bunch of DivX/XviD movies onto a server to stream to their consoles for HD movie action will be thrilled. Less thrilling is the price: $699 in May. Those features aren't cheap, nor are the smaller laptop drives they use to power it. Then again, for about $699 you could also get a Windows Home Server, which is quite full-featured but isn't nearly as compact. On the third hand, we're not sure why you would need a NAS to be all that compact unless you were living in a tiny apartment or wanted to sneak it through customs. [Buffalo]

If your unit goes down, a backup can be delivered in under 24 hours. The units are $399 and $599 respectively, and come with a $99 and $249 annual fee. At this price, it's cheaper than rigging up your own backup solution on Amazon's S3 storage, but it might be a little steep if you just want to keep your vacation pics and music safe. Unless of course your name is Christina Aguilera and those vacation pics are of yourself nude, and that music is your next album. We have a server for you to put those onto. [Datto]

See, one of the reasons I liked Windows Home Server so much is that after dealing with many NAS products from the storage companies and networking hardware makers, the MediaSmart server was easier to setup and had a lot of useful apps ready to go at the start. Maybe you like a clean drive, an empty warehouse on your network, but it's nice when some of the initiative is taken for you.

That's why I was relieved (though a bit startled) that the 500GB Media Vault—again half the price of the 500GB MediaSmart Server—was ready to do so much right out of the box.

I plugged it in, ran the Windows-only set up, and was immediately able to back stuff up, either using the super-simple screen for music, movies, etc., or the more comprehensive tool, where you can tell it what you want to back up and when you want it done.I did it on both Vista and XP machines, and was happy to be able to check out my contents afterwards on the PCs and even on my Mac. (WHS only lets you see your backups via a tedious drive emulator, one that obviously doesn't run on Macs.)Even though the $299 version comes with just one fixed 500GB drive, it also has a bay so you can add another 3.5" SATA drive. I powered down the unit, dropped in a 500GB on that I had lying around, and fired it up again. The LED went purple to show that it saw the drive but needed a format. I went to the Media Vault control center, picked the drive, formatted it (as a RAID 1 mirror of the first drive) and voila, in minutes, we were set and, on the unit itself, Drive 2's LED had turned blue.I haven't done any HD video streaming or anything like that yet, but with a gigabit ethernet connection, I don't think I'll have a problem. In fact, though HP says that the Media Vault can't do multiple simultaneous video streams like the WHS, I can't really figure out what I, personally, would miss if I kissed the WHS goodbye and stuck with the Media Vault. (Update: Contrary to original comments, HP now says you can do multiple video streams, so one less advantage for WHS.) Here's how the comparison plays out:

What's not as good as MediaSmart Windows Home Server:
• Won't do multiple streams of video like WHS
• Only two drive bays (a fixed and a spare) instead of four
• Lets you backup multiple PCs, but only one at at time from the PC itself, not through a WHS-style master control

What's the same as MediaSmart Windows Home Server:
• iTunes music aggregation
&bull Photo webshare
• Remote access and web-based file browsing (1-year free)
• Connect via Mac for basic use as a shared drive

What's better than MediaSmart Windows Home Server:
• Web-based remote controls work great on Macs
• Quieter, with less drive noise on a regular basis
• Easy to back-up the server itself to a USB drive
• Easier to access Windows backups, especially from a Mac
• Probably does not share the same data corruption bug as WHS

In the end, this product isn't just another NAS, but a bold statement that HP is making, that it doesn't have to be saddled by the rough riders of Redmond when it can build (license?) its own practically identical box at a lower cost. Now I know that there are some things that you can only do with a PC-like server running a full OS, but honestly, what are they? I mean, do most people, even die-hard server-needers, give a crap? I want to know from you folks: Why bother with Windows Home Server when the Linux-based alternatives are on the surface equally friendly, equally powerful and—oh yeah—half the cost? [HP]

• x-Pict Story HD automatically builds "professional quality" slideshows
• Face detection technology locates faces and frames slideshow transitions around faces
• x-ScrapBook sets photos in templates, using face detection and event-clustering for sharp layouts

Here's what the back of the sucker looks like:
And here's what it looks like when people far prettier than you get together and use it in their Sonylicious home:
Press release:

SONY'S NEW DIGITAL PHOTO ALBUM TURNS PHOTO COLLECTIONS INTO HIGH-DEFINITION ENTERTAINMENT

Store, Organize and Share Photos with Slideshow and Scrapbook-style displays

NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2007 -Sony today announced the HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album for shutterbugs who want to archive, organize and enjoy slideshows of their digital photos. This compact device features an 80GB hard drive, connects to a high definition television via HDMI and showcases up to 50,000 high resolution photos.

The new digital photo album offers several methods for importing photos, including multiple flash memory card formats, CD, DVD, USB or Ethernet. Once imported, photo collections can be managed with the supplied remote control and the device's intuitive interface.

Photos can be organized by date, special occasions such as birthdays and travel (using pre-selected icons), or into as many as 3,000 different photo albums- enough for every major family milestone. The digital photo album also provides the ability to review, edit, rotate, delete and arrange photos for a slideshow or digital scrapbooking with Sony's x-Application® features.

The photo managing x-Pict Story HD™ software creates professional quality slideshows, eliminating the need for PC-based photo editing. Slideshows can be created by selecting from 30 pre-loaded music tracks and transition styles. For personalization, you can add up to five songs from your own CDs. The software also allows for connection to a compatible printer for making prints of your photos or scrapbook pages directly from the device.

The HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album uses Sony's face detection technology to locate faces in photographs and adjusts the slideshow transitions around the location of faces.

When creating digital scrapbooks, the x-ScrapBook™ application sets photos within scrapbook templates, and uses face detection and event-clustering technology to make scrapbook-style layouts of photos with a common trait like photos of children, or pictures grouped by events such as a party or vacation.

When family or friends request copies of the photos they've seen on your HDTV, you can select and save those photos to CD, DVD, or flash memory card.

The HDMS-S1D Digital Photo Album will be available in October for about $400 online at sonystyle.com, across the country at Sony Style® retail stores (www.sonystyle.com/retail) and at authorized dealers nationwide.

The Verdict: Mediocre speeds (~6MB/s), quirky drive formatting, limited sharing options, and the mandatory use of their drive mounting utility means this is more suitable as a network drive to share smaller chunks of data rather than a device to use for moving around big files.

The Catch:

Only one computer can be in write mode, and it needs to be formatted as FAT32 for Macs and PCs to both be able to access it, which takes a big chunk out of your performance.

The Performance: Filling up that 750GB (about 699GB when formatted) when sending data at 6MB/s means you're going to be sitting there for quite a while. You mount the drive like a normal drive on your Windows and Mac using their drive utility application, which is usable but not great. Unfortunately you can only have one computer mounting the drive as read/write, and the other 19 have to mount as read-only.

Formatting the NAS was a pain as well. Vista could only format the drive as NTFS, and not FAT32, so I couldn't use it as a shared drive between Mac and Windows. After some back and forth with tech support, we finally installed a newer driver and got Vista to format FAT32—which turned out to be not a great idea, because FAT32 on large-sized drives is much slower compared to NTFS.

The NAS also occasionally randomly disconnects, and you'll have to reboot both the NAS and your computer in order to get them both to reconnect. Not something anyone really wants to do.

The Price: $119 for 80GB all the way up to $329 for 750GB

The Recommendation: Slow performance thanks to the non-Gigabit Ethernet means you don't want to use this as storage you access often (get another internal drive or a USB drive), but if you have a repository of music or files a lot of people need to access, this could be for you.

[Newertech]

They're not slouches, performance wise, housing 7200 RPM SATA-II hard drives with 8MB cache. You may be sad to hear that the built-in Ethernet is 10/100, not gigabit, but almost like a tradeoff, each drive also has a USB 2.0 port for local connections.

My biggest concern is how well they perform in the home of a total network neophyte. With all the talk of sending network drives home, Iomega hopefully prepared with some nice getting-started software, or at least a well-caffeinated tech-support staff.

Iomega Announces a Breakthrough on the Cost and Complexity Of Effective Network Storage in the Home
***
New Iomega Home Network Hard Drive Brings Simple, Affordable Networking to Home Users

SAN DIEGO, August 27, 2007 - Iomega Corporation (NYSE: IOM), a global leader in data protection and an established leader in network storage, today announced a new line of network hard drives that resets the benchmark for price-performance and easy-to-use network storage for the home.

The new line of Iomega® Home Network Hard Drives, available in 320GB, 360GB and 500GB models, makes it possible for the first time to share network storage at home for little more than the cost of a standard desktop external hard drive.

"Today, the most common use for home networks is to enable shared Internet access," said Tom Kampfer, president and COO, Iomega Corporation. "Families are struggling with how to organize data across multiple PCs. Shared network storage made easy and affordable with Iomega's new Home Network Hard Drive adds the benefit of securely sharing and consolidating photos, music and video over a home family network, as well as increasing storage and backup capacity. At less than $150.00, the Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is a new price-performance milestone for networking today's digital home."

Product features and benefits
The network capabilities of the new Iomega® Home Network Hard Drive are based on 10/100 Ethernet technology, the connectivity standard in today's home networks. With the included Ethernet cable, setting up an Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is as easy as connecting it to an available network port on the home router and running the included, easy-to-use Discovery Tool Home utility for Windows on each PC (for Mac and Linux users on the network, configuration is a simple manual process).

All three models of the new Iomega Home Network Hard Drive feature 7200 RPM SATA-II hard drives with 8MB cache. Once a Home Network Hard Drive is set-up and the network is operating, the device can save files from up to four networked PC or Mac computers for easy file sharing and enjoyment.

"There are an estimated 30 million homes in the United States with multiple computers. Iomega's new Home Network Hard Drives are designed for these families, providing a simple, reliable source of network storage that makes it easy to organize and share files," said Kampfer. "Many computer users want the basics at a fair price; they don't need complicated features and they don't want to pay for capabilities they may not use. The Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is the answer to their home networking needs and can potentially create a consumer mass market in this exciting product category."

All three models of the new Iomega Home Network Hard Drive include a USB 2.0 port for use with a single computer, making the Home Network Hard Drive an external hard drive for incremental storage.

Iomega includes award-winning backup software with its new Home Network Hard Drive, giving users a total solution that includes automated backup of critical files. Two client licenses of EMC Retrospect HD backup software allow users to set up automated backup schedules or perform immediate backups; create progressive backups that capture only the changes from the previous backup; restore a file to any previous backed-up point in time; compress backups; and much more. (Additional client licenses are available from Iomega.)

Compatibility
Iomega Home Network Hard Drives are compatible with Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional; XP Home/XP Professional/XP Professional x64; Windows Vista™ Home Basic/Home Premium/Business/Ultimate; Mac OS X 10.2.7 or higher; and Linux distributions including Redhat 9, Mandrake 10, Debian 3.0, Gentoo, and FedoraCore 3.

Network drive operation requires an available 10/100 Ethernet port; a network hub, switch or router is recommended. A DHCP configured network is recommended.

Price and Availability
The 320GB Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is available now worldwide for $149.00; the 500GB Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is also available now for $199.00. The 360GB Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is expected to be available in late September for $149.00. The 500GB model (as well as the 360GB model in September) is available from VARs, resellers, distributors and select retailers. The 320GB Iomega Home Network Hard Drive is available only at Iomega's online store, www.iomega.com. (All pricing listed here is U.S. suggested retail.)

The following chart demonstrates the speed difference in copying each given file type over to the Storage Central Turbo. Although the chart says "Typical 100Mbps NAS device," we can safely assume that Netgear is, to some degree, referring to its own, original Storage Central:

Netgear boasts functionality close to that of a locally attached drive but with the convenience of being on the network and the security of having an automatically mirrored drive, if you choose that option during setup. On a PC, the drive actually appears as a lettered drive. Unlike many other networked storage drives, however, this one seems to want nothing to do with Macs. (Then again, in the System Requirements, Windows Vista isn't mentioned either.)

Product Page [Netgear]

The site goes live on Monday, and all you'll need to do is upgrade the firmware on any LinkStation Live NAS unit, and you're good to go. Take a look at the exclusive preview gallery of screen shots below, and on the next page, see what else this system can do, and get an idea of the LinkStation live hardware, too.

In addition to accessing all your files, you'll also be able to stream MP3s from your storage device. LinkStation Live units can also function as iTunes servers, so you can access iTunes from anywhere on the network with data rates of 35MB per second. Web access only works with LinkStation Live units, and they're available in four different flavors: 250GB for $229, 320GB for $249, 500GB for $349 and 750GB for $649. – Charlie White

Linkstation Live Product Page [Buffalo Technologies]

The NAS and BitTorrent functions can be administered using any Web brower. It supports hard drive hot swapping and RAID 0 or 1. While it is not as as sophisticated as a Drobo, it will keep all your music and pr0n movies safe while being fully Digital Living Network Alliance v1.0 compliant and iTunes compatible. In addition to the obligatory Gigabit Ethernet port (sadly no 802.11n, but good enough), the Jack In The Box also has a Secure Digital/Multimedia Card slot.

Sadly, it looks like it's Japan only and there's no official price for now (but it's expected to debut at shops for $333). If it ever comes to the US, watch out for the RIAA, who may be looking for that other thing in a box if they catch you using one of these, right after the jump.

–Jesus Diaz

Product page (japanese) [PCI via PC Watch]

The NAS-50HDE includes a fancy LCD interface, 80GB hard drive, and the ability to rip music CDs and MP3s (from players) onto the hard drive with lightening fast speeds. Two 85-watt satellite speakers pump out the tunes for an all-around superb player. All hope is not lost, Americans. This player is set for a summer release overseas and could maybe, possibly come to the States later in the year. Please? –Travis Hudson

Sony intros GIGA JUKE bookshelf with hard drive [Electronista]

The 1TB version is on sale now for $499, and the 2TB will be shipping in August. We're always looking for more storage for all the crap we amass from being on the Internet 18 hours a day (we went on a Batman comic downloading spree last week). – Jason Chen

Product Page [Hammer via Electronista]

Sifting through the crap that is the horrible press release, the 1TB models can use that Gigabit Ethernet connection to connect directly to your router, which then allows you to access your data from anywhere without actually having to turn on your PC. Essentially a cheap NAS, these WD My Books could be a decent way to let your family members access your photos without going through something like Flickr. – Jason Chen

Press Release [Western Digital]

The capacity diff here lies in those swappable drives, and instead of the four 500GB hard disks of its 2TB predecessor, now there are four 750GB hard disks ($695 each for spares) nestled inside. Techno-strap them altogether with RAID 1-5 for your choice of speed or data security, and they also support DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), that nascent industry attempt to make sense of drives and multimedia networking in the home.

Take a look at one more beauty shot of the drive, plus one of the removable 750GB drives:

Damn, 3TB is a lot of movies even when you're talking HD, and then swapping out those drives makes this config even more versatile. We'll take two. – Charlie White

Buffalo teraStation pro 3TB [Akihabara News]

Planex updates its BitTorrent NAS [Akihabara News]

The Storage Central Turbo should be available early 2007 wherever the old Storage Central is sold. We're looking forward to unloading our music, movies, and data onto this little metal guardian. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Netgear via eHomeUpgrade]

Notice Sony is still pushing its hoary old MiniDisc format (did you realize it was first introduced in 1992?), apparently for those who have already been suckered into buying content on that proprietary format. Anyway, these are some attractive designs; might be popular in Japan. – Charlie White

Close-up pictures of the two other models, after the jump.

NetJuke [Akihabara News]

Smart move, Evergreen, anticipating the next home theater PVR with the building blocks for a Mac mini-based TiVo replacement. Imagine one or two of these stacked underneath a mini. Drop in a $190 Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm 500GB disk, and you'll have plenty of cost-effective storage, maybe even enough for those huge HDTV media files. – Charlie White

Evergreen NAS Mini [Akihabara News]

As you can see from the shot on John's trademark "review deck", the buttons are metallic and "RAZR-esque". He had no trouble plugging it in, turning it on, and setting it up with both Mac and Windows. Their install program required a reboot, but everything else was smooth sailing. But at $899 for 1TB, the price may outweigh the convenience. – Jason Chen

Maxtor Shared Storage II Hands-on [CrunchGear]

Since it's an NAS, the Teragate also has a built-in Web server, along with a photo station, so it doesn't have to live its life stuck inside the bedroom closet.

Logitec is also offering 1 and 1.6TB models in case 2TB is too much to justify to your significant other. They'll all be available in September, with the 2-TB retailing for about $2,081. – Nicholas Deleon

Press Release (in Japanese) [Logitec via Ubergizmo]

The NAS has software licensed from Fabrick that allows users to access their data, like video and music, using a Java enabled web browser. You can also use an AJAX web application to manage the files on the drive. For example, dragging and dropping files for transferring to and from your local machine.

Access to the content can be restricted to specific users with password protectionk, and you can also create "microshares" and "microlinks" to link specific content to online auction sites like eBay and social sites like MySpace. You can also create a "Public Site" to share content directly from the Maxtor Fusion with the outside world.

– Jason Chen

Pre-launch Site [Maxtor via MacWorld]

It also has four gigabit ethernet ports, a Celeron M CPU to power it, Apple and Linux file system support, and different types of RAID support. In addition, they added the USB target drive so you could connect this via USB 2.0 to your machine and use it immediately, like you do a USB stick.

Serious storage connoisseurs or business readers could make good use of a drive like this. No pricing info yet. – Jason Chen

Thecus shows five-drive NAS box [Inquirer]

On the storage side, RAID 0, 1 and 5 can be configured to support four 250GB hard drives, which makes for a maximum of 1 Terabyte. Even Dean Cain couldn't handle that much Teri Hatcher.

New 1TB Iomega NAS Device Offers 802.11g [Digital Trends]

The TeraStation Home Server includes media server software that was developed by Mediabolic. This isn't a media center, but it does allow media management easily over multiple PCs. The Home Server also includes four USB 2.0 ports, a USB print server and file server. This will be available in May and prices will begin at $1,499 for the 1.6TB model.

The TeraStation Pro features Active Directory member support, two USB 2.0 ports, four serial ATA hard drives, lockable front panel and even an LCD monitor that will display operational mode, disk usage, network information and any problems. This is available now for $1,999.

Buffalo Technology