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Yeah, take a good look at Western Digital’s new College Refrigerator ShareSpace network storage system. Western Digital is attempting to bring an easy to setup and maintain home or office backup/storage system to the masses. I have to admit, it sounds interesting.
Let’s get some of the neat features out of the gate. This box allows for RAID 0,1, and 5. The neat thing is that swapping out drives should be easy as the box handles the RAID configuration. That’s a very nice feature. No fooling with stupid disk arrangements. Another feature is that this box utilizes WD’s GreenPower drives that utilize 33% less energy. The box features gigabit networking - can you say “Duuuuuuh?” A neat utility monitors disk health and emails you if there are problems. More software allows networked computers to be constantly backed up. About time! And, honestly, the only way that typical folks are going to back up. It also allows remote connection to the box. And features a built-in FTP server, if you care for that. And finally, it features graceful shutdown processing if hooked up to a battery backup UPS. And it features 3 USB ports (1 in front and 2 in back) that utilize quick syncing with the touch of a button. Hook up a drive, push the button, and let it gobble the data.
4TB system is, gulp, $1,000. 2TB is $699.
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That thing is freaking colossal!
“Hey, is that a new computer? It’s small for a PC.”
“No, that’s my backup drive.”
Hilarity ensues.
Erm… a grand?! I could get an old PIII or early P4, slap in a SATA controller, 4TB of disk space and a copy of Linux for quite a bit less than that. Four WD Caviar 1TB drives run in at just over $450. How do they get away with charging another $550 for… what? A gigabit network card and an underpowered system-on-a-board? Hell, I could buy a new machine from Dell, load it up with 4TB of HDD’s, and probably STILL stay under a grand!
You forget, Justin, that this is not aimed at geeks, nerds or techies. The target is more like regular small offices/businesses which need a backup solution. Something of this style/size will suit many places for several years and will “just work”, without having to customise the system to match their needs. The biggest problem with a lot of new tech stuff on the market is that it is not accessible to the greater public…they don’t know how to operate it. Why do you thing the smaller home-style one-touch backup systems are still around? Because they work for the vast majority of the population - those that couldn’t tell a CPU from a PSU.
Is this thing going to be the same disaster that was the WD MyBook World Edition II??? That thing also said it supported Gigabit… but what they meant was… it can plug into Gigabit LANs, even though the maximum transfer speed was not even 10 Mbps. That thing was painfully slow!!! Most people just ended up stripping the drives out of the housing to try and re-coup the money they wasted on that Rip-off. Be very very careful. Wait and see what the actual transfer speeds are before buying. Go and Google “Western digital my book world edition II transfer speed” before you take the plunge.
Finally, a storage device that’s big enough to handle all my downloaded porno. Looks like I won’t be needing all these external hardrives / usb flash drives.
The enclosure and RAID 5 are the best parts about that thing.