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(More customer reviews)The Netdisk DUO Newfast is a technology breed of it's own. It offers USB 2.0 direct connect functionality, but also enables you to access the drive as a network attached storage device. While neither of those functions separately are unique amongst the plethora of cheap attached storage these days, what makes this product stand out from the crowd is the ability to do both...AND provide RAID 1 (mirror) redundancy between two disks at the same time!
Okay, OK! It's not really a NAS...hence their naming it NDAS - which I can only assume means Network Direct Attached Storage. Think of this device as iSCSI, but using their own LPX protocol instead. If you're looking for a media server on your network as an all-in-one self contained device...this is not for you. So, no direct access from iPads, iPods, AppleTV, Sonos, uPnp, etc...unless you have a host computer sharing this as a network drive.
Unfortunately, the product installation is not for the faint of heart, and even with a college degree in computer science it took me the better part of an afternoon and a call to their support line to resolve a couple of setup challenges. What is also misleading about this device is that it does NOT operate as an IP accessible NAS device since it communicates using it's own LPX protocol over Ethernet.
That is good and bad, depending upon who's point of view you prefer:
1) Good, since it does not use TCP/IP, nor has an IP address, it's fairly secure and does NOT require firewall manipulation to utilize (thanks to it's proprietary LPX protocal).
2) Bad, since it does not use TCP/IP, and therefore cannot provide file sharing over a network without either the use of the provided client software (Windows or Mac only), or requires the use of a host machine (Windows) to provide a network share.
As long as you're only planning on using this device as a network accessible drive from Windows or Mac, and you don't mind installing client software on all machines, the DUO will meet your expectations. If you want a network file share without the need to have a host computer always attached, on, and running, then this isn't the solution I'd recommend.
Speed of the NDAS in USB mode is comparable to any other USB attached drive (30-40 MB/s), however the network NDAS mode offered a wide range of experiences depending upon the size of the files copied and the number of files. I saw anywhere from sustained large file (DVD isos) copy speed over direct CAT-5 cable connection through a switch upwards of 40-50+ MB/s. But with a copy of 1000's of smaller MP3 files, the speed dropped to 10-18 MB/s. All in all, still not bad and it only took a few hours to transfer half a Terrebyte.
There are several options for using this device, but I would argue that the most common and logical use would be RAID-1 mirrored redundancy of two same sized drives. I dropped in two Western Digital Cavier Green 2TB drives, and setup was a simple as sliding the drives into the bays and turning it on.
The DUO senses which mode it should be operating in by the cable that it senses connected. And I do mean connected at the back the device...regardless if the other end of your USB or ethernet cable is plugged into something else or not. Do not keep both cables plugged in at the same time, it will not work and it causes all sorts of strange issues...hence my call to their support line. Once I understood that you only plug in the cable that you want to use (USB or ethernet - NOT both), the DUO figures out the rest.
CAUTION: In USB mode, when using RAID-1 mirroring, the DUO will allow a computer to see both internal drives as available USB drives to browse and read/write to...however...only the drive in the right hand side bay as you're facing the front(drive bay A) is the one you want to copy files to from your computer. Why? Because when you switch back to NDAS mode (unplug USB cable from back and plug in ethernet cable), after the client software discovers the NDAS in NAS mode it will perform a RAID drive sync and copy the contents of drive bay A to the other drive and overwrite the other drive's contents. How do I know this? Well, as you might have guessed I made the mistake of copying content to the wrong drive that showed up in Windows when I plugged in the USB and when it synced in NAS mode, all those files were lost. This is documented in the manual, albeit not very well (one sentence in the drive configuration table options).
So, the USB sanity check to follow when in RAID-1 mode is to only copy files to the first USB drive letter that shows up in Windows, and when doing so...watch the green lights on the top of the DUO to make sure the right hand drive bay A is the only one fully lit green when in use. This way you'll rest assured that when you revert back to NAS mode after using USB, the RAID-1 sync will copy these files from drive bay A properly to drive bay B and not the other wrong way around.
If you can deal with these nuances then this is as cheap and flexible USB/pseudo NAS device you're going to find that provide higher speed data transfers. Personally, this solved my problem of only being able to backup computer sector-by-sector images to USB drive (due to image file size limitations of NAS SMB, etc) yet still give me the flexibility of using the same mirrored drive solution to act as a NAS backup repository for daily incrementals for all of my computers at the same time. So far so good.
Notes: FYI, I have three PCs (XP, Vista and Windows 7) and a Mac on the same subnet reading/writing data to the NDAS simultaneously without issue both wired and wirelessly. I use Acronis True Image Home for backups (didn't use the software that came with the DUO). Be sure to format the DUO from within Windows disk manager on the most recent Windows OS that you have. I ran into issues when initially having formatted the drives from XP, then accessing the drive in Vista and Win7. So, I reformatted in Windows 7 and no longer any issues from any of the other Windows flavors. Also encountered an issue with Symantec Endpoint Protection, [...]
Looking forward to trying out the advanced BIND features for expanding the NDAS with up to 8 additional DUO drives. It would be great if I could setup a second DUO linked to the first for mirroring, so that a second DUO could be swapped in and out of the network for offsite storage and safekeeping.
Click Here to see more reviews about: IOCELL Networks NetDISK DUO 2 Bay USB/Gigabit Network Direct Attached Storage Enclosure for 3.5-Inch SATA Interface Drives 352UN (Black)
The 352UN is unique external hard drive that can make up to 2 hard disks with SATA interfaces available for external storage via USB or on the LAN using NDAS. It is compact, sturdy, easy to setup and provides several advantages for the small network or home user that are not possible with more expensive servers. Windows users can assemble the drives in RAID configurations, via the network to create a large disk or to maintain a mirror image of all the data in real time.Network and USB connections are possible from Windows, MAC and Linux computers and multiple Windows based computers can share write access on the LAN.
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