back to article Dane-Elec myDitto Nas device

Perhaps I'm getting cynical, but it's a rare event these days when a product crossing my desk positively fires me with enthusiasm. And when it comes to yet another disk device - we old journos call the subject of storage "snorage" - what could be duller? The myDitto from Dane-Elec is an exception on both counts. Dane-Elec …

COMMENTS

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  1. Andy Barker

    Drive sizes?

    The features table shows 2.5" drives, and the article shows 3.5" (and 2TB) - I presume has to be 3.5" drives the device accepts?

    Sounds rather nice - I'll have two please.

  2. petur
    Thumb Down

    done right?

    If you need to carry along a USB stick to get access to your NAS, I would not call it 'Done right'.

    These days I don't even carry any USB stick along anymore, that's so previous century.

    1. handle

      *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.

  3. Tim Walker

    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.

    1. Chz

      Not a fair comparison

      A second drive bay is worth a whole lot more than Synology's utilities. Granted, an empty DS210j is about the same as the 500GB myDitto so that would make an interesting comparison. I want to performance statistics on this thing. If it's fast (and the Synology j models are a bit pokey), it could be of interest.

    2. Dr. Mouse

      Nothing like

      The DS110j is a single bay device, the myDitto dual.

      I know that different users have different requirements, but to do a comparison you would need to choose the DS210j, which puts it much closer (you could buy the 500gb of the myDitto and whack a 2TB drive in for about the same price as a DS210j and a 2TB drive)

      The 2TB version looks rather over priced to me. £150 extra over the 500GB! Your 'avin' a giraffe inchya? Even if you are putting 2x1TB in, £100 easily covers it, even at retail prices.

      1. handle

        2TB version price

        Probably, like a top of the range car, it is aimed at people with more money than sense. If that means it subsidises the cheaper one then that can't be bad!

      2. Tim Walker

        You're quite right...

        ...about the myDitto being a two-drive unit. I should've read the review more closely - sorry Chris :-)

        I too would be interested to see a comparison of a Synology DS210j and myDitto with equal storage loaded in, though I still think the software feature set of the Synology sounds like it would suit my requirements more closely. Horses for courses, though...

  4. serviceWithASmile
    Thumb Up

    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?

    1. Tom Chiverton 1

      Ummm

      My LinkStation has been doing that for a good year or too...

      1. serviceWithASmile
        Happy

        just looked that up

        actually looks pretty decent, BUT it doesn't have the USB key gimmick which I have to admit makes me want the myDitto much more

        thanks for pointing me to it though

  5. jason 7
    Stop

    Missing feature?

    When are more NAS devices going to start offering on the fly data encryption?

    I only know of the Segate Blackarmor range that does that for a reasonable price.

    A lot of small business folks dont want servers and just want a small box to fileshare from but encryption is pretty important if your data has financial/medical stuff.

    In fact any data.

    1. Mark 65

      @jason 7

      QNAP ones do. Takes the write speed down from over 60MB/s to around 15MB/s or below though.

  6. handle

    Power consumption

    Can you measure this, please? The spec says 12V 4A (i.e. 48W plus power supply losses), most of which is probably consumed spinning up two 7200 drives. Obviously it will be drive-dependent. The manual says the device can be programmed to spin down the drives during the long periods of inactivity such a thing will inevitably experience, and it would be great to know how much power is consumed in this mode.

  7. Llama
    Go

    Print server

    Now if only this thing could be a usb printer server as well i would buy one in a second.

  8. frank ly

    Flashy

    I tried to find specs or reviews of the likely data transfer rate for this; no luck. Existing references to Dane-Elec products are for flash memory, USB sticks and external hard drives. Suddenly, they come up with a two bay NAS drive (and a one-bay unit also available, according to their own website). The Dane-Elec website is very light on technical details.

    I'm wondering if they are a front or rebadging operation for an established NAS producer or a far-eastern maker of generic internals. Any tech detectives out there?

  9. graeme leggett Silver badge

    Looks good

    I'll have one. Well I would if I could afford it.

    I like the remote access by key idea particularly

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    DLNA?

    I noticed that DLNA is not mentioned in the list. No streaming of videos and music to my PS3 then?

    1. Stuart Archer

      Vital Statistics

      If you take a look more closely at the 'Vital Statistics' table, then that says that DLNA is supported.

  11. Olli Mannisto
    FAIL

    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.

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