Iocell Netdisk 351UNE



Product: Iocell Netdisk 351UNE
Website: www.iocellnetworks.com
Specifications: 3.5-inch SATA bay, eSATA, USB 2.0, Ethernet (NDAS), 161x213x48mm, 567g
Price: £249.99 (1TB)

BURGEONING COLLECTIONS of digital media and the rise of the home network have resulted in an ever-increasing demand for extra storage space, and with large file sizes being bandied around, transfer speeds could do with a shot in the arm as well.

Luckily the industry is delivering, and rarely in such an attractive fashion than Iocell and its Netdisk 351UNE. Sporting the very latest in high-speed connectivity, it offers eSATA and USB2.0 for direct connection and most importantly, NDAS technology for accessing files at high speeds over a network.

NDAS, or Network Direct Attached Storage, is a proprietary technology developed by Ximeta, with software drivers for Windows typically provided by device vendors like Iocell or - for Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X - available directly from Ximeta. In a nutshell, NDAS bypasses the TCP/IP protocol layer at both the source and destination, which makes for easier setup but more importantly faster speeds – up to six times faster than NAS in fact, according to claims.

The Netdisk device itself sports a tidy, angular design, houses a SATA drive and is available at up to 2TB capacities or enclosure-only. Setup under Microsoft Windows on a network is predictably quite straightforward, requiring a short software installation that uses a wizard to register a unique security key and mount the drive in the desired mode. After this initial setup, a small system tray utility grants access to security settings and the ability to view users currently accessing the hardware. It can then be hooked up to a router via the Ethernet port to grant wireless access to a LAN and for future expansion, multi-disk configurations allow up to eight drives linked in a RAID 0 array.

Users who don’t already have their own backup software will find a range of solutions supplied, including Syncbackpro and SE, Onclick and Infohesive, so everything from backup and restore to organising, encrypting and searching large collections is available out of the box.

Of course the real appeal of the Netdisk 351UNE would be its ‘lightning fast speeds’, and we were eager to take it for a spin to see if it could live up to it’s billing.

We ran a series of tests by transferring varied collections of files in 1GB, 2GB and 10GB packages to and from the drive over each of the connections, and turned up some pretty impressive results.

USB 2.0 speeds were as you’d expect, delivering an average of around 25MBps for both read and write times. Transfers on eSata were predictably the fastest, averaging 59MBps in the write tests and 56MBps for read tests. Copying over a network via NDAS fell somewhere in between – 34MBps write and 32MBps read.

Now, these results are some way below the quoted 100MBps maximum, but bear in mind that these are average times for random read and writes of varied collections of files to reflect the drive’s real-world capabilities, so in this light we were quite pleased with the results.

In addition we also copied a few 1080p video files onto the drive and threw them across a wireless connection to a media streamer in another room and were pleased to note almost flawless playback – all but indistinguishable, in fact, from the streamer’s performance with the same files when stored locally.

Iocell certainly seems to be onto a winner with the Netdisk 351UNE then, and though the MSRP is a little higher than we expected it’s worth noting that at the time of writing, the drive could be picked up online for an astonishing £60 (enclosure only) or as low as £120 for the 1TB model if you shop around. Our only real gripes are that there's no dedicated media connectivity to cut out the need for an additional device such as a media streamer - since one of its purposes was listed as storing HD video content, audio/video connectivity on the device would have been a bonus - and no built-in wireless, but at this price we really can’t feel too aggrieved.

In Short
We’re not sure about Iocell’s “world’s fastest” claims, but the Netdisk offers high capacity storage and high speeds with a minimum of fuss. The 351UNE model opens up some impressive new technology to those who need to add storage to a home or office network at an attractive price. µ

The Good
High speeds, great deals available online.

The Bad
Lack of media connectivity.

The Ugly
No built-in wireless.

Bartender’s Score
8/10