Asus Launching a Wi-Fi Hard Drive 218
TheFoot writes "The Register reports that Asus is promising to 'change your perception on data storage'. They're talking up a hard drive enclosure capable of taking any 2.5in ATA-100 hard disk. It also contains an 802.11g adaptor and antenna, plus a pair of wired 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports. US $150 + the price of the hard drive. They've changed my perception--why did data storage just get more expensive?" Now now, this could actually be useful. tempest2i notes that there's a Macworld story as well.
Make your own network storage device... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, for $150 plus the cost of whatever HD you'd like to use you can build your own "network data storage device". If you just want a HD hanging on the network, without any need for the rest of the features of a full grown file server, then this is the part you want.
actually a good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Thieving from computer stores? (Score:5, Interesting)
Without the need to plug anything in, imagine what could be nicked with one of these!
Re:Make your own network storage device... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be useful for... (Score:4, Interesting)
Networked, but which protocols? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anybody has any ideas?
Re:Encryption? (Score:4, Interesting)
Other interesting Wi-Fi Storage (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the gear, it's the functionality.
Add to an iPod or other music player (Score:5, Interesting)
Then there's all the iPod cracking fun. "Let's see what that jogger has on his iPod..."
Interesting.. Hide your stuff.. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is awesome. (Score:4, Interesting)
But right now, I've got an almost fully wireless setup going with my 12" power book. Bluetooth mouse/keyboard, SE T610 phone for controlling iTunes, and an AirPort base station.
This could be really usefull for storing iTunes music, bittorrents, etc, and sharing it across multiple computers easily.
Re:Overkill? (Score:3, Interesting)
offsite data backup (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Overkill? (Score:5, Interesting)
Setup reasons for a start. If it only has WiFi, and your access point has WEP enabled (and if it doesn't, why the hell not?), how is the enclosure going to get the key to connect? You're going to have to plug it into a wired LAN (or crossover cable) to allow it to get an initial IP, fire up your web browser, browse to it, set the WEP key, let it connect then remove it from the wireless LAN.
As an aside, whilst this is funky, no RAID is a drawback for me. That and my firewall at home is in transparent mode as I had a nice block of routable IP addresses that seemed more than enough 2 years ago when I just had 3 servers and a desktop. Now I have 3 servers, the xbox, the firewall, the wireless access point, 3 laptops in day to day use, another laptop which gets used by guests and if I add a NAS whammo, one IP left. It's going to be a pain to setup NAT *sigh*
Re:How is it better than USB or FireWire? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone else successfully copied large files this way - wireless to wireless across a basic service set - with reasonable performance? I don't get anywhere near 11 Mbps, or even 2 Mbps. By contrast I get great performance between a wired peer (or the Internet) and a wireless one.
If it's the same for this hard drive kit, I can't see it working well.
Re:Make your own network storage device... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what's driving me crazy. I'm looking for a cheap Firewire IDE adapter so that I can make a nice fast external hard drive enclosure with about a Terabyte of space that I can connect using 1 Firewire connector. You can buy a whole external case for $40 or $50, but just a simple adapter with 2 Firewire ports so they can be chained together is $60 or $70.
Re:Make your own network storage device... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes the speed/security/price advantages of wired in no way make up for the cable clutter. Imagine trying to hack two clusters of half a dozen e/iMacs into a small, school library. You can run wires over the floor (with channel if you are lucky) hubs in the center of each cluster, and presto, you ve ugly wires, trip wires, dozens of wires everywehere! Or one Airport base station, some access cards, and presto, every machine is on the net, nobody trips and calls OSHA on you.
Now you throw one of these HD enclosures in a corner and host disc images of all your reference cds on it. (although I recognize the wireless is not a clear advantage as long as you're tucking it into a corner anyway)
Not every application for a network requires speed, especially if all your network does is share internet access. 802.11b is still fast enough for web access, even streaming media.
Re:Howz it wireless if it needs to be plugged in? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not so unlikley. If you do most of your computing on a laptop, or a tablet, or if you have a mythTV box, network attached storage that was always available would let you shut down your big desktop for a significant energy/noise savings.
I'd love to have my a firewire-to-ethernet bridge to let my external FW drive beaccessible (albeit slowly) without crossing the room and plugging in. Plugging in the FW is still an option when copying DVD images or making backups, but if I just want to pull A file out of a backup, or access the gigs of mp3s that I moved off my laptop because I was running out of storage, why should I have to plug anything in, let alone leave an entire PC running turning money and electricity into heat while it does nothing.
Re:Could be useful for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Light Storage (Score:2, Interesting)
And my perception of hacking too (Score:4, Interesting)
You just need to get close!
Re:Useful? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How is it better than USB or FireWire? (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll let me use my pocket pc as my car MP3 player. I can have massive *wireless* storage in the boot or glove box. The bandwidth is fine for MP3 & video playback and the simplicity and tidyness of the setup makes up for the price.
wireless ipod (Score:2, Interesting)
Usefull when the secret police come (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ANd? (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you mean "hardware alone?" It needs to run something to be able to communicate with clients and share files:
It will have a Web-based management interface through which the drive can be accessed. Files will be freely shareable, have read-access only or be restricted to password-owning users.
The info lacks details but it looks like all access and sharing will be done through a web server. How useful is that? I don't know, since the article also mentions that previous attempts by other manufacturers in this direction have failed, including what I thought was a better solution:
Sony tried with a WiFi-connected file server in early 2003. The FSV-PGX1 was a 20GB hard drive controlled by an embedded Linux system that turned it into a file-server. It could be used by up to 250 people who accessed it by CIFS, if using Windows, or NFS if using Unix/Linux. The WiFi version was 11Mbit/s 802.11b, which meant that file-server access speeds weren?t great, particularly with several people sharing it. Again, it was a light device, weighing in at 320g.
I could actually see a use for such a device for home users with multiple computers or a very small office; but I don't think it's a good idea at all. Given from what I've seen the security (or lack thereof) most people use to set up their wireless networks, this type of device will make all sensitive data directly accessible and available to everyone nearby without even needing to have any computers turned on.
Re:Make your own network storage device... (Score:5, Interesting)
Arguably, you'll need at the very least the cable gates for power anyway. I can't remember putting network cables in the same gates being a problem in any place I've been. And if there was, I suppose I'd just as easily trip over the power cord as the network cord...
Actually, the use that came first to mind was using this along with a laptop - like an extended hard disk, no wires to plug/unplug. But, you're *very* likely to have a wireless router too, so why not simply hook it up there, with a cable?
The only way I found a need for this is a) if I go to our summer house with my laptop, b) someone is staying at home so the router needs to stay and c) I want to take a couple extra hundred gigs of vids/whatever with me (usually, that's the time when I try to get something *else* done).
If this was cheap enough, maybe it could be the "floppy" of tomorrow. A couple hundred gigs of data, no wires, just turn on wireless and transfer. Would be rather slick, but in my opinion it's a bit expensive for that use, a CD/DVD is something I can burn and borrow (or hell, give) away, not so sure about this one...
Kjella
Silly idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Despite claiming to be 54mbit, it really only gets 8 - 20 mbit even when I sit right next to the access point. There are a bunch of technical reasons why this is so, but the bottom line is that disk should be fast. ATA20 isn't a disk standard because people want ATA150. They'd buy ATA600 if it were possible, because disk is already the slowest part of our computers.
Making it slower is just stupid marketing guys trying to figure out how else to get rid of 15 million spare wireless chips.
Hardware, spyware? (Score:5, Interesting)
A Wi-Fi hard drive can also be a security nightmare! Anyone with the right equipment (a wifi card and a decent laptop) could eavesdrop, and even modify data on-the-fly. Using encrypted filesystems is a *must* in such a case, and even then, data integrity would still be in jeopardy.
It may be possible to turn the tranceiver off, but you must trust the manufacturer that no back-door can be remotely opened.
So how do you shield such drives? TEMPEST protection is already hard enough without this...
The biggest issue here is not to stay clear of such equipment (if you have security objections), but to ensure that vanilla (non-wifi) hardware doesn't have WiFi chips you don't know anything about!
It's a bad feeling to know that your computer could (passively, thus undetected) listen to RF, and behave in strange ways. We're on the brink of hardware that could be used as spyware. A scary thought!
Great, but can you... (Score:3, Interesting)
Storage for home theatre PC (Score:5, Interesting)
These little boxes seem like just the ticket. Imagine a diskless HTPC. All that you would need to do is boot it over the network and mount the drive in the Asus enclosure as your root filesystem. If you were to use a Via C3-based motherboard and a power supply with passive cooling, you could then have an HTPC with no moving parts and thus, totally silent.
CD-Rom? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm working on something like this cept more so... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mini-itx motherboard in a portable enclosure, although I might switch it down to a Nano-itx now that they're becoming available.
250gig 3.5" hard drive instead of a 2.5 mainly cause they're half the price and hold twice the storage.
CD-RW
802.11g
FM audio transmitter
Small battery pack. It only needs to run everything for 10 minutes.
12-volt Power Supply
No screen; No keyboard
The idea of this is a portable storage / mp3 player. All controls are through it's Apache server, so I connect to it from a PDA or a laptop with a wireless card. It runs off 12 volts, so you can use it anywhere. As long as you can keep it within a few hundred feet of you you can use it.
The original idea was for an MP3 player for my truck that I didn't have to dedicated to it or physically install. All I have to do, is carry it out of the house and plug it into a cigarette lighter. The battery keeps it from having to reboot when I move it from outlet to outlet. a 15 volt wall-wart and my auto-cigarette lighter adapter has enough voltage to run it and keep the battery topped off. It broadcasts to a nearby FM receiver or can stream the audio, although sometimes I just connect to the MP3 library over Samba. It automatically synchronizes with my home network when it's in range.
When I'm at work, I just leave it in the truck and I've got enough range to connect to the FM headset and PDA I carry with me. When I'm at the gym, I park close to the building and queue up a long playlist before I leave it and the PDA in the truck. The best part of the whole thing is that it's inconspicuous. I don't have to leave an expensive looking gadget sitting in it all the time. I built it into a small, cheap looking plastic toolbox, so I can carry it anywhere without anybody paying any attention to it.
It keeps growing. I'm currently experimenting with adding moving-map GPS using a USB GPS receiver. My big problem there, is updating the display on the PDA properly. I'd also like to synchronize my email / contacts / calendar / notes / tasks to it. It's an easy way to transfer large files back-and-forth between work and home and wherever else I happen to need them.
I'm also considering with adding a second wireless adapter to it. The primary that controls it is highly secure and doesn't broadcast. The second one would be completely open and would scan for access-points. Partly so it could automatically connect to the net as I was driving around. Partly so I could use it as a gateway to the net from the PDA.
I'd really like to get it all down to something I could actually wear on my belt. I could already get away with a smaller version if I ditched the CD drive, went to an embedded motherboard, switched to a small HD, and added batteries. It this point, it wouldn't be as powerful and would be twice the price. Maybe in a couple years...
Toys...
Re:Could be useful for... (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, I have 4 PCs in my house that are used as "media centers" at times. The problem is, my main storage drive is by necessity attached to the PC in my bedroom. I can't leave that PC on all the time because it generates noise and heat and uses energy. But if I want to watch movies or listen to music on the downstairs machine or the one in my daughter's room, I have to turn on the PC in the bedroom. This makes it difficult to keep mapped network drives on the other PCs, and difficult to share a unified media catalog. I want to have the same media available to any location throughout the house. (Especially nice for taking the laptop out back by the pool to work and study.)
This product would be very useful to me. A centralized, location-independent, quiet media library/fileserver that can be left on 24 hours a day. Also it's cheap. I will definitely be buying one.
Re:Make your own network storage device... (Score:4, Interesting)