Maxtor Maxtor Shared Storage Plus 500GB

• Reviewed by: ryzvy

  Strengths: Built-in UPnP server, lots of storage capacity, slim form factor, reasonably fast access speeds.

  Weaknesses: A little noisy, instruction manual leaves much to be desired.

  Overall: I bought this NAS primarily because of its capability to stream media to a UPnP media receiver and so far it has done so reasonably well. I am using it with a DLink DSM-320. The media receiver was able to detect and access the NAS over my WiFi network without a glitch even when my main PC was shut off. The built-in application for streaming content is a bit rudimentary but it works. It only allows you to select a shared folders and then automatically searches for all sorts of media files within it. There is no way I can browse to a sub folder and only select the files within it for streaming. The backup function also works really well and is pretty flexible in what, when and how you want the backup to happen and even allows roll-back. The manual that comes loaded on the included CD is very inadequate. It just spells out all the features of the drive in words without any real explanation as to how to implement or use them. Everything I learned is by trial and error. The implementation of the various features was not very intuitive, at least for me, but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty straightforward. The only other issue I saw with the drive is that it is a bit more noisy than I had hoped, but as I tuck it away under my computer table, its not a real issue. So far I am quite satisfied with my purchase and would recommend it to anyone looking for a reasonably priced external HDD, with lots of capacity and UPnP capabilities.

• Reviewed by: mmachi

  Strengths: Pretty solid capacity/cost ratio.

  Weaknesses: None that are readily evident...

  Overall: I received my a few weeks ago and have nothing but good things to say. Performance is great from numerous PCs on my home network (Using Ethernet and WiFi). Price is not too bad for a 500GB device where most products on the market are under 200GB. Please note that in response to the first reviewer who "gripes" about the capacity being less than advertised this practice is an industry standard and is true of all hard drives (Internal or External). QUOTED TEXT: For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

• Reviewed by: ainesd

  Strengths: easy to set up, print server

  Weaknesses: capacity is lower than advertised; noisy

  Overall: The drive is pretty noisy when not in standby mode. So you'll want to tuck it away somewhere (near a network connection, of course). I've had mine for a couple of months now, and no problems. I am also using the print server feature, and it works well.Setting up the drive was extremely simple. You basically just plug it into your router or network switch. Build quality seems good, too. My main gripe with this drive is that, while advertised as "500 GB", it's actually only "465 GB". Out of the box, if you show the properties of the drive in Windows, this is what it says. This is how much you can store on the drive. 465 GB is equivalent to 500 billion bytes, but this is definitely not the same thing as 500 GB (1 KB = 1024 bytes, and so on). Maxtor knows this; they are in the business.

• Reviewed by: chrismsa

  Strengths: Huge storage, Easy setup, Good backup

  Weaknesses: Pricey, a little bit big and heavy, Additional 2 USB ports can only be connected to hard disk that format as a FAT32

  Overall: I have bought more than 5 external hard disk drives from Maxtor. This is my first shared storage drive from Maxtor. It has a big storage. It can be storage drive and backup drive at the same time. I like the backup feature. It can backup more than one computer and keep the history. Copying the files is the way it backs up which I like it a lot. The price is still expensive and the 2 USB can be connected to FAT32 only NOT NTFS. I would highly recommend. Hopefully, the price will come down soon because I'm planning to buy another 2.