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Maxtor Shared Storage Plus NAS box

An easy-to-use networked back-up drive for home or the office

Anyone purchasing the Shared Storage Plus as a back-up device will be glad to know that it allows you to make incremental back-ups as well as full-disk runs. You can specifiy the exact time and day of the week the back-up process will kick in. If you're using a laptop and a desktop you can also set the SSP to synchronise the data on the two machines so you always have the most up-to-date copies of files on both computers. You have to have both devices connected to the SSP at the same time.

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It's fairly easy to set up the SSP, which grabs an IP address from your router or assign itself one. You run the setup utility on the CD on a networked computer which will then locate the drive on your network and allow you to set up shared folders. The same utility is used to launch the SimpleView back-up software and this gives you the ability to select what you want to backup. However, one annoying thing is that all the folders you've selected for back-up have their Windows icons embossed with a small circle and a tick mark. I don't mind the application telling me this, but I don't need to see it in Windows too.

A downside with the hardware is that the fan noise can be irritating if you're sitting close to the drive. It's not loud, but the whine is insistent. If the drive remains inactive for a period of time, it will power down to conserve energy.

I was also concerned by the fact that the SSP only comes with a one-year warranty. With most desktop drives now shipping with a three- or even a five-year warrany, you can't help but wonder about how safe your data really is on the SSP.

The SSP comes in three different sizes: 200, 300 and 500GB, with the 200GB model featuring an 8MB cache while the 300 and 500GB models having 16MB. Maxtor sent over a 500GB for review and this offers enough space for just about every hard drive out there bar the new 750GB job from Seagate

Performance is limited by the Ethernet port and hopefully Maxtor will add a Gigabit interface on the next model - which might carry the Seagate brand. If you're backing up large volumes of data, it's best to leave them running over night, but once you've done it once, you can use the incremental option to restrict the process to files that have been changed since the last back-up.

Verdict

The Maxtor Shared Storage Plus is an excellent NAS box that has been designed for ease of use. It might not have as many features as other SOHO NAS boxes, like the Freecom FSG-3 Storage Gateway, but you can pick up the 500GB model for a fairly reasonable £250 if you shop around, which is half the price of Freecom's 500GB model.

As a simple network-friendly back-up drive, you'll have a hard time finding something that is cheaper and offers the same ease of use. It's not going to suit anyone needing a business-critical system as it lacks RAID protection - you'll lose your data if the drive fails. For the rest of us, it's nonetheless a better option than no back-up at all. ®

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Maxtor Shared Storage Plus NAS box

Not the most feature-packed of NAS boxes, but certainly one of the simplest to use...
Price: £250 inc. VAT RRP

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