NETDISK SOLO NewFAST - Enclosure 351UNE

At my job, the guys who run one of the biggest and fastest supercomputers in the world just bought a few million dollars worth of solid state drives (SSDs) due to their rapid read/write speeds and low power consumption - so when I wanted to consolidate the stack of 1 and 2 GB camera SD cards in the closet, it struck me that what was good enough for the supercomputers at work was good enough for my little home network. Now I needed a network drive and enclosure.I had never heard of the the IOCell 351UNE, but this price/performance chart at Small Net Builder sold me on it: [...]As you'll see if you are able to access the chart, the $/Mbps ratio for this device is in a class of its own. It meets or exceeds the performance of devices that are an order of magnitude more expensive.Combining the IOCELL 351UNE Network Direct Attached Storage (NDAS)enclosure with a 2.5" PNY 128GB SSD  PNY 128 GB Optima SSD SATA II 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive (SSD) P-SSD2S128GM-CT01RB  and an Icy Dock 2.5" to 3.5" adapter  2.5" To 3.5" Ssd/sata Convert  was as close as I was going to get to a fast read/write supercomputer flash drive on my budget. I ordered all three, hoping that everything would fit and play nicely together. So far, I have not been disappointed. The combined unit is cool, silent and consumes very little power without a fan, and just does its job. I can read or write to the drive from anywhere in the house, and my screen savers on the computers are now slide shows that randomly cycle through thousands of family pictures. Boring to anyone else, priceless to me. The software included with the device installed easily on both my Windows Vista (wired) and Windows 7(Wi-fi) laptops -- I have yet to install it on my wife's Vista laptop (Wi-fi), but if anything goes wrong, I'll update the review.One note: other reviewers have complained that NDAS is not true Network Attached Storage (NAS) and that they can't access the drive remotely over the 'net. To that, I say thank goodness. NAS devices have IP addresses, and IP addresses can be hacked. The 351UNE is not hacker-proof, but miscreants will have a more difficult time finding your data on NDAS than on NAS.EDIT: I have had this device for a year and a half now, and it still works flawlessly. Mounted it to a new Windows 7 computer today with no problems (make sure you go to the IOCELL site and use the latest drivers - and, if you forget them, all the codes you need are on the bottom of the device).At least for me, mounting the 351UNE is a lot easier than the experiences that I have had with standard NAS. The 128GB SSD is now full, but storage prices have come down, so I plan to daisy chain a 256GB SSD to the 351UNE. I continue to recommend this product.

This product works really well, I cannot say enough great things about it and constantly recommend it to everyone who is looking for 'off PC' storage. Please use this device instead of connecting a USB external drive. Setup is easy enough for a true novice to set this up with the bypassing of having to assign an IP address. The software does all the work for you and connectivity is very fast. I've tested playing multiple video streams from 4 notebooks (1 MAC) and never did i get any drop in performance or jitter in the video. All the reviews i've read say it performs read\write better than the WD My Book World Edition and is naturally better than a USB only device. N.B. I did find (and noticed that users have indicated as much) this device will not connect across switches\bridges because of its broadcast network connectivity. A minor inconvenience as i have to disconnect it from my network router and connect to my PC directly as I connect both devices via a wireless bridge. Nevertheless, a fantastic buy!

I have a CompTIA A+ Certification and have been working professionally in IT/SysAdmin for over five years. NAS technology is not that hard- an HDD interface, and a simple network protocol program (many are freely available) and the know-how to put them together are all that's needed. I've built several NAS devices from spare parts- and so can you.This product is junk. Instead of doing the networking the "normal" way that works, IOCELL has elected to use a special proprietary driver/program that DOESN'T work well. They used a complicated system to do an easy thing- and it doesn't work.So:First- the software is proprietary; no one else has it, can use it, fix it or update it (or learn about it )- which is bad if its junk or if IOCELL goes out of business or discontinues the product.Second- the software install caused system crashes on two separate PC's. They were both Windows 7 (64bit) operating systems- you know- the CURRENT OS the whole world is using? The IOCELL website and software says it works with Windows 7, and one PC was a brand new HP- pretty mainstream. Why wouldn't it work?Third- There's no need to use a driver/software system like this with a NAS device that's made properly. All versions of Windows have has the ability to "map" a "network drive" since Windows 3.1. You do it once, and so long as the NAS is attached to the network, the drive is always there. What is so hard about that?Can you (yes you reading this) type this command: " \\mynas " ? With proper NAS software, you'd only have to type this (granted, in the right spot) to connect to a NAS. Its far simpler to attach/un-attach/re-attach as needed than having a software driver load/run to do this for you.This is a bad implementation of what should be a simple system. Yes- it might work for some people- it might even work well for them. It didn't work for me (twice), and I have the knowledge to know it shouldn't be done this way.Avoid this product. Build your own NAS, or spend slightly more $ on a better product that does NOT us the "NDAS" software- your life will be happier and your tech will work better across the board. Good luck!