First Look – Maxtor Shared Storage II 320GB
For about the past year or so, I’ve been keeping one Network Attached Storage drive.
Until a few weeks ago, I was using a D-Link DGM-600 NAS with a 160GB Maxtor hard drive mounted in its case. While the DGM-600 is a wireless NAS, I was only using it as a wired Gigabit Ethernet unit. It performed excellently, right up until the hard drive quit. I believe the hard drive failure induced some thermal stress. It didn’t seem to hurt the unit’s performance, but the unit’s fan became a bit louder. In my very quiet office, it picked up a bit more buzz than I wanted to tolerate.
So, about two weeks ago, Fry’s put on sale a 320GB Maxtor Shared Storage II drive. The drive comes equipped with one Gigabit Ethernet and two USB 2.0 ports. I have replaced the D-Link set-up with the Maxtor, and so far have been very happy with it. While I’ve mostly only transferred small files to and from it, it took only 33.9 seconds to copy a 478.9 MB file from my desktop to it. As you can see, transfer rates are very fast.
Much to my surprise, Maxtor did include a Mac version of their storage management software, Maxtor Easy Manage, which includes backup, media sharing, and disk utilities. I really haven’t used it for much, though its main window can be used to mount the volume instead of using Finder. It seems like a fairly capable package, and I’ll share more about it as I gain experience with it. As well as using it as a straightforward network share, at some point I’ll investigate its use as a Shared Media Storage platform, streaming to another Mac or an Apple TV.
B, the way, I haven’t mentioned it; but if you had surmised by my keeping it that it’s very quiet, you’re right. It sits on a shelf about three feet from me, and I can only tell its on from the lights sparkling on its front.
For only the $109 this unit cost me, it was a very good bargain.
Until a few weeks ago, I was using a D-Link DGM-600 NAS with a 160GB Maxtor hard drive mounted in its case. While the DGM-600 is a wireless NAS, I was only using it as a wired Gigabit Ethernet unit. It performed excellently, right up until the hard drive quit. I believe the hard drive failure induced some thermal stress. It didn’t seem to hurt the unit’s performance, but the unit’s fan became a bit louder. In my very quiet office, it picked up a bit more buzz than I wanted to tolerate.
So, about two weeks ago, Fry’s put on sale a 320GB Maxtor Shared Storage II drive. The drive comes equipped with one Gigabit Ethernet and two USB 2.0 ports. I have replaced the D-Link set-up with the Maxtor, and so far have been very happy with it. While I’ve mostly only transferred small files to and from it, it took only 33.9 seconds to copy a 478.9 MB file from my desktop to it. As you can see, transfer rates are very fast.
Much to my surprise, Maxtor did include a Mac version of their storage management software, Maxtor Easy Manage, which includes backup, media sharing, and disk utilities. I really haven’t used it for much, though its main window can be used to mount the volume instead of using Finder. It seems like a fairly capable package, and I’ll share more about it as I gain experience with it. As well as using it as a straightforward network share, at some point I’ll investigate its use as a Shared Media Storage platform, streaming to another Mac or an Apple TV.
B, the way, I haven’t mentioned it; but if you had surmised by my keeping it that it’s very quiet, you’re right. It sits on a shelf about three feet from me, and I can only tell its on from the lights sparkling on its front.
For only the $109 this unit cost me, it was a very good bargain.
posted by Andy Foster at
8:38 PM
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