I just purchased a Targa DataBox NDAS400. This is a 400GB samsung disk in a sleek aluminium case. The case has both USB 2.0 and ethernet interface.
The drive is using the NDAS (Network Direct Attached Storage) technology from Ximeta and according to their web site this as some advantages like simplicitly, performance, advanced features and security.
Proprietaty protocol
What I discovered when I came home and eagerly attached the drive to my router was another story. It turns out that NDAS uses a proprietary protocol and not the good old TCP/IP. This is where the security advantage is, since it’s not using TCP/IP and you need special drivers to access the drive the disk is hard to “hack”. This was the major drawback since accessing the drive trough internet, like via FTP, DAV etc. was a no-go.
Special drivers needed
Like I mentied you need special drivers to be installed on each computer that wants access to the drive. The included CD did not have Windows Vista drivers, but I was able to download those from the web. The disk is connected by entering an unique disk ID and a “write” key. You can then manually choose to mount disk drive in read-only or read-write mode.
Might sound ok, but another blow is delivered in the guts when I try to access the drive from two machines. Only the XP drivers allow the drive to be mounted read-write on more than one machine. Since I’m running Vista I’ll have to dismount and remount as read-only before I can mount read-write on another machine.
Performance
The last nail in the chest is performance. Connecting to USB 2.0 gave about 20MBit/s transfer rate copying a large file to the disk. Connecting through 100 Mbit ethernet (cable) gave about 6MBit/s for the same file. But accessing the drive wireless (802.11g, 54MBit/s, WPA-PKI encrypted) I just had to abort the copy. I got about 12Kbit/s through. Totally useless.
Conclusion
Price 5/6
Design 5/6
Ease of use 3/6
Features 2/6
Performance 1/6
Overall score: 2.6
Keep away from this device. As an external USB drive it’s ok, but overpriced. The ethernet part is useless unless you only want to connect only one computer, but then you’d be better off connecting via USB. Needless to say, I’m returning the drive today.
Yes, I had the same dissapointment with it not being tcp/ip.
However, I found the latest Ximeta software from the website does allow multiple r/w mounts on several PC’s (3 I tried). It also perfomed quite quickly – I streamed the same Windows media player video file simultaneously from the Databox via 100mb ethernet (@700kbps to each) without any jumping, pauses or hesitations. Also backed up about 12gb of data to it in about 45 mins. So I’m pretty happy with the network speed and performance. You might find it better with the revised software too (ver 3.20.1523).