Net Drives

What We Found (continued)

Wireless Access

Wireless connectivity on a NAS device can be a bonus if you don't already have a wireless access point, but if you do, it's superfluous. If you plug any NAS device into your Wi-Fi router, you can access it via your Wi-Fi network. The Iomega NAS 100d and the Tritton Wireless NAS offer integrated 802.11g wireless networking but lack WPA encryption and enhanced-G speeds, so they would be slower than a wired ethernet network.

The Iomega NAS 100d does have a potentially useful wireless feature: It can act as a Wi-Fi client as well as an access point--place it within range of your Wi-Fi router, and it will connect to your network wirelessly. But again, we don't recommend doing that, since plain 802.11g has much lower throughput than wired ethernet and would slow down everybody's access to the device. Plus, connections can drop unexpectedly due to interference--not something you want happening in the middle of a backup.

Backup Software

Backing up networked PCs is the most compelling reason to invest in networked storage, and all the models we tested had either integrated backup utilities or backup software to install on your PC. A secondary concern is backing up the NAS device itself to another storage unit--if it holds data not stored on any local PC or if you work in an office environment where data backups are critical. The Buffalo LinkStation, the Linksys Network Storage Link with the Maxtor OneTouch II Drive, the Snap Server 1100, and the two Ximeta NetDisk units come with software to perform both types of backup.

The best way to back up a NAS or networked drive is to do so directly to another hard drive. The Linksys EtherFast NAS, with its second drive bay, as well as the Linksys Network Storage Link, the Buffalo LinkStation, and the LaCie Ethernet Disk, with their extra USB ports, make this process easy, since you can attach the second drive directly to the first. With these products, the software for backing up the NAS or networked drive is integrated right into the browser-based configuration tools, so you can set up scheduled backups at the same time you set up user accounts and passwords.

The other way to back up a NAS device is over the network to another drive. The Snap Server 1100 and the two Ximeta NetDisk products can sync their entire drives to other Snap Servers and NetDisks, respectively, over a network.

For backing up your computer's files onto the NAS device, the Snap Server 1100 and the two Ximeta devices ship with Symantec's V2i Protector software, while the two Iomega devices ship with the simple, easy-to-use Iomega Automatic Backup software. The Tritton NAS includes Genie Soft Backup Manager, the Linksys-Maxtor combination uses Retrospect Express, and the Buffalo LinkStation comes with a simple proprietary client backup utility. Curiously, the LaCie Ethernet Disk and the Linksys EtherFast NAS were the only two devices to come without full versions of client backup software; however, LaCie and Linksys say these products work with most major third-party backup utilities.

If you're setting up network backups for all client machines to the NAS, make sure to schedule each machine's backup at different times and at times when the NAS isn't being heavily used (as at night).

Print Serving

Finally, print serving is a great benefit for both small workgroups and home networks, and we wish that all of these products included it. Just two of them do: the Buffalo LinkStation and the Linksys EtherFast NAS. They're helpful if you're trying to build a full-featured network on the cheap. However, stand-alone print servers are plentiful and relatively inexpensive, so you do have other options.

Using the print-serving features on the Buffalo and Linksys devices was straightforward, although setup was somewhat complex (as it is with most stand-alone print servers). First you'll need to attach your printer to the NAS device and set up the NAS to serve it, and then you must install the printer on each machine on the network. But once everything is set up, using a print server is almost like having a local printer at hand.