Networked Attached Storage (NAS) is a fantastic idea. Just plug a drive into your network and have an instant file server. No server to configure or update. Easy to put in the closet and forget about it. Or is it?
I bought the Western Digital Netcenter because it had OS X support and it can attach other USB hard drives to give you even more space. The Netcenter comes with a nice utility for getting connected and has a functional wed admin UI for configuring the drive. The drive is very quiet and looks nice.
The software part is limited. The only security that it offers is share level passwords (which went out in like 1998). I’m pretty sure it uses NetBIOS. Share level passwords are completely broken for OSX so using it for secured folders is out.
I setup the drive in my closet with my router and DSL modem. It was replacing my PIII server which is now setup with RAID and is my source code control server as well as the gateway to my home network. I didn’t want to mess with putting large drives for storing backups, music, movies, etc. into that server.
I quickly found that any initial positives were completely wiped out by a large number of negatives. The first problem is that it is S-L-O-W. We’re talking walk away and have dinner not just coffee to copy your iPod shuffle backup. I knew NAS would not be as fast as a real file server but I didn’t expect this. It literally took me days to get all the files I wanted to copy over to the drive (but not just due to the speed). The other major problem is that it would just randomly disconnect. I constantly would need to retry the copy. In Western Digital’s defense, the problem may be with OS X’s Samba (SMB) interface. Many people have reported general problems in Tiger. However, I could get the same problem running Ubuntu Linux. I don’t typically run Windows so I don’t know if the same problem is experienced with XP. I didn’t really feel like rebooting into Windows to find out.
Given the speed and the generally flakiness of the connection, I just couldn’t keep the drive. I think NAS is an interesting concept but if the Netcenter is any indication, it’s not ready for primetime.
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