Man, what a rip!
I just bought a “NetDisk Network Direct Attached Storage Ethernet & USB 2.0 Combination Hard Drive” made by Ximeta, from Best Buy. It’s supposed to be network attached storage, at least according to the clerk at Best Buy. But it isn’t!
I want a fileserver for my home network, also known as NAS or network attached storage. I already have one, a Linksys EFG80, which works great. It’s visible to any computer plugged into my network as a disk drive. I’d gladly have another one, but at $500 they were expensive when I bought mine about 18 months ago.
So I asked at Best Buy what network attached storage they sell and they pointed me to this one. It will work basically like the EFG80, I can assign it a fixed IP address, it has a web-based configuration utility, and so forth, they assured me.
I get it home and read the manual (which as a CDROM requires a computer to look at it), and it says it’s “network direct attached storage”, which is some OTHER thing this company created. You load their software on each PC, and the software communicates with the drive over the network and passes files back and forth. As long as your system is compatible with their software. As long as you use a 100Base-T switch in full duplex mode. As long as you don’t use 802.11b wireless access made by D-link or USRobotics. As long as whoever last requested the write access also remembered to relinquish it - incredibly, this thing only lets one user be the writer, and anybody else has to get that user to release writer mode before they can become the writer. No web based utility. You have to use it through the special icons it places on your desktop and your system tray. And on and on. But, they say, it’s cheaper than real network attached storage. Well, yeah, so are floppies.
So I am pissed, at the manufacturer for making a cheesy also-ran product and especially at Best Buy for calling it network attached storage and telling me it’s real NAS when it isn’t. They say I have 30 days to return it for a full refund for any reason, which of course I will - but between buying it and studying it and returning it, I’ve blown 3 hours. Bet they don’t return those.
So I’m blowing 3.1 hours instead, and warning the Dopers - don’t buy this thing if you want NAS, no matter what Best Buy tells you!