SMB, UPnP AV and DAAP - the iTunes music-sharing protocol - are supported, meaning you don't need either of the USB sticks at home once you're up and running, but the Admin stick will help you get started - the cross-platform app automatically finds your myDitto on the LAN. When a new user first logs in using the myDitto app, a private directory is automatically created with that user's name. Files can be shared by placing them in the Public directory.
Remote access is easy
This dual-purpose Public directory is the myDitto's one main drawback. Files you want to share to iTunes and UPnP may not necessarily be files you want to make available to all your users. I'm assured that a firmware update later this year will fix this.
There's a BitTorrent client in there, if you look hard enough
Serious myDitto owners may want to max out the capacity and/or use the RAID feature. I tried both, installing a pair of new 2TB drives. The partitioning and RAIDing process took just over an hour, and of course leaves you with a blank machine, although all existing user metadata is preserved in firmware. Data can be restored by connecting the original drive through a Sata-to-USB interface to the second USB port at the rear, a somewhat clunky - although thankfully one-off - process that might usefully be streamlined in a future firmware update. I was able to carry this out with virtually no disruption to my three WAN test users.
Verdict
Potential rivals like the Pogoplug and the Iomega iConnect come cheaper, but without drives. They're simple to set up, but the myDitto is simpler, and its use of directly connected Sata drive(s) instead of USB allows for proper power-down control and RAID that puts the myDitto in a different class. ®
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COMMENTS
FINALLY!
finally a cross-platform, cross-service NAS!
this is what I've been waiting for, something that will be accessible from all OS (I have xp, win7, ubuntu, OSX and occasionally other *nix) and serve audio and video to the consoles!
now all we need to know is...
can it run crysis?
Looks good, but...
...considering that it would be possible to buy a "good-name" 2Tb SATA hard drive and a Synology DS110j NAS enclosure (which would appear to offer a considerably greater choice of network services) for under £200, I'm not sure the myDitto offers enough over the Synology to merit consideration for me, especially at about 30% more expense (for the 2Tb model).
Granted, the "remote access via USB keys" option is interesting, but on the evidence of this review, I think I'd rather have all the extra Synology utilities (LAMP stack, mail server, etc.) and £100 extra in my pocket. But then again, to be fair, I'm not convinced I belong to the myDitto's target market, which I think it would probably serve well enough.
*whoosh*
The concept of two-factor authentication has obviously gone straight over your head. It is intrinsically more secure to authenticate with something you have as well as something you know, and I'd far rather the inconvenience of carrying around the stick if it protects access properly.
http://www.my-ditto.com/forHome.aspx
Besides which, how are you going to make it plug and play without being able to run some software to do it? It's really gratifying that they have embraced Linux for this.
Benchmarks..
Would it have killed Reg to run some simple read/write tests on this thing? NAS boxes can be surprisingly slow. And it's not like it's trivial matter if you plan to actually use that storage.
Vital Statistics
If you take a look more closely at the 'Vital Statistics' table, then that says that DLNA is supported.
