NAS gets exciting (sort of)

Maxtor knows hard disk drives, as its OneTouch external drives have great market presence. The company recently moved into the network-attached storage market with its Shared Storage Drive .

We tested the device and were surprised at some of the choices Maxtor made with the product, aimed at the home and small-business markets. It's as if Maxtor didn't commit to providing all the features either market needs and falls just short of both.

Physically, the device looks like a OneTouch II unit, with an anodized aluminum housing and a small fan that makes little noise yet still stays cool. Drive capacities include 200G or 300G bytes ($299 and $399, respectively).

The drive behaved as a proper DHCP client and took its cue from our network router. It also can act as a DHCP server, but Maxtor configured it correctly to look for a current server first (not always the case in this sector of the NAS market). Because the IP address can't be known ahead of time, Maxtor thoughtfully puts an icon in the management utility in a Config folder on the drive. One click and the browser connects to the drive, regardless of its IP address. The user guide says only Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is supported, but Firefox 1.01 also worked for us.

Installing client software on each PC also creates a full directory structure for each user on the Shared Storage Drive, which is private by default. This encourages users to save their files to the Maxtor disk, a good idea because it centralizes storage and makes subsequent backups easier.

The setup routine was smooth, giving us chances to change the drive name to better fit a current network, add administrator passwords and perform other housekeeping tasks. Maxtor adds a configuration page listing most details for easy printing.

Our first surprise was noticing that the Shared Storage boxes have no back-up software. Home users need backup help, and most NAS units include back-up software to run on each client and store back-up files on the NAS hard disk. True, you can download plenty of third-party back-up applications or even trust Microsoft's back-up utility, but Maxtor's lack of any back-up software puzzled us, especially since the company does a good job with its external PC disk units. Maxtor says it plans to add free back-up software this summer.

Maxtor Shared Storage Drive

Price: $299 (200G bytes), $399 (300G bytes) Installation time: 15 minutes Ongoing maintenance: Set and forget Bottom line: So close to excellent, but lack of back-up software and oversimplified management tools blunt the joy of easy installation and drag-and-sort feature.

Click to see:

However, the excellent new drag-and-sort feature on the box almost makes up for the backup oversight. Client software installed on each PC offers the option to turn on this feature, in which dropped files are automatically sorted into folders named My Documents, My Music, My Photos, My Videos, My Software, My Sites, My Library and My Backup (you can drop files there directly for backup if you wish). Drop a file with a .doc extension onto the Maxtor desktop icon, and the file drops into the My Documents folder (about 100 file extensions dictate the landing folder of dropped files). The shared folder has the same structure but uses the names Our Music and Our Documents. Unfortunately, dropping files onto the shared folder doesn't invoke the drag-and-sort feature.