Seagate Box Raid

The NetDisk Enclosure is a single drive Ethernet/USB 2.0 combination enclosure for your internal hard drives. It includes advanced NDAS technology for a central, simple and secure network storage with no IP configuration or server required. Install your custom hard drive and software, then connect the NDAS unit into a wired or wireless network (LAN) switch. Then install the driver software and use it like a local disk drive, on each specified computer. No more relying on a server for all your central storage needs. Get the direct networking, high performance and plug-and-play portability you need to be more productive! Since NDAS Enclosure requires no TCP/IP setting, the unit is invisible and safe from external hackers Includes Symantec backup software for added security

Brand: XiMeta Model: ENCL-1P Dimensions: 2.00 pounds Single-drive Ethernet/USB 2.0 combination enclosure Install the internal hard drive of your choice Includes NDAS technology for secure network storage with no IP configuration or server required Compact, lightweight drive offers plug & play setup Allows easy backup or expansion through software features that allow Mirroring (RAID 1), Aggregation or RAID 0

Most helpful customer reviews 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful. Does exactly what I need and does it very well By Virtualmonk I was looking for a way to create a data drive to be used by both me and my spouse but one that didn't involve drive mapping and leaving the computer holding the actual data on all day long. I heard about this device and decided to give it a try with my existing IDE drive. The install ran smoothly until I discovered that each time I shut down my system, I would have to go into the Control Panel to reactivate the Ximeta drive. It turns out that this is "normal" behavior if the drive was originally created as a Dynamic type rather than a Basic type. To fix this, it is necessary to back off all the data, convert the drive to Basic and reformat it. BTW, to my knowledge this isn't documented anywhere except as a response to a question on Ximeta's Support Forum. Once I formated the drive, remounted it and restored the data, it ran without a hitch. It's easily as fast as the drive would normally be were it connected internally in the CPU. I was concerned that because it has no cooling fan it might run hot, but so far the case has stayed at room temperature if not cooler. It's also virtually silent. I have it sitting on top of my CPU and have had no vibration issues. Two suggestions if you choose to pick up one of these units. One, shop around. Prices vary wildly for this unit. I managed to pick up mine on clearance at a major electronics retailer for a lot less than list or even Amazon's price. Second, if you don't already have a favorite IDE drive manufacturer, look for one that by itself runs quiet and stays relatively cool. Aside from the Dynamic to Basic conversion annoyance, I'm very satisfied with this unit and am seriously considering getting another so I can create a RAID 1 mirroring setup. Four months later... I'm still happy for the most part with these enclosures. They do the job and do it quite well. However, I have found two issues that, had I known about them earlier, probably would have caused me to drop my rating to 4 stars. One issue is that, for reasons I haven't been able to pinpoint, the NDAS Device Management software that manages the connections to the drives is hypersensitive and tends to lose connection and have to go into recovery mode at least three or four times a day (not a good thing when you have something like your Microsoft Outlook data file sitting on one of the drives). This could very well be my network setup and have nothing to do with the enclosures themselves, but it's an issue worth mentioning. The second issue, which is a *major* one, is that, while the drives are supposed to be able to run as network hard drives and USB drives simultaneously (i.e., be a USB drive for a nearby PC while it's a network drive to a PC in another location), this is only the case if the network drives are standalone. It doesn't seem to be the case if the drives are bound together (i.e., in a RAID1 configuration with a spare). I found this out the hard way and had to rebuild an array from scratch. Fortunately, the data on the drives was backed up on DVDs, so I didn't lose anything except a lot of time. 25 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Don't belive the troll - Ximeta NDAS is all right By Jacob Corn Don't listen to esanta. Ximeta's drivers did not support simultaneous read/write at one point, but they have always supported simultaneous read. And as of the latest version (out in July 2005, a little under a year before esanta's review), read/write is transparently available for an unlimited number of connections at once (note: Ximeta warns that trying more than 16 connections at once may be slow). Add to that the ability for both Raid 0 striping and Raid 1 mirroring, and you have a pretty attractive package. The sky-is-falling proprietary drivers are available for Windows, OSX, and Linux, and are stable in my experience. Note that (in all the OSes) the drive