NDAS Storage: Features and benefits

A lot of people don't know what NDAS is or what it can do for them. Especially for people seeking slick and fast storage , versatile and portable, NDAS is about the best you can get as it is not overloaeded with additional options, long setup and tweaking all over. We try to offer some clear view on what NDAS is?

NDAS stands for: N etwork (Plug it in your router/switch and share data with other clients) D irect (Each user directly controls and uses the NDAS drive like "c:" for ex.) A ttached (Ethernet connection allows sharing data between PC, Laptop, PDA, Media Players...) S torage (Store all kinds of data from movies to photos and mp'3s, to PC backups)

In addition to network connection, most NDAS devices also come with USB2 and eSATA connection. That way, you can share the data over network at home and take the drive along to work or friends and useit as a normal USB or eSATA external enclosure.

NDAS is a chip inside a Hard Drive case and not on the hard drive itself. This way, you can use any hard drive you have already and turn it into an NDAS device.

For PC's and MAC's, a driver needs to be installed to talk to the NDAS storage device. This is a SCSI driver which takes care of the communications and it allows you to connect to the drive in READ or READ/WRITE mode. Different PC's can connect to it in different modes. This part is easy to setup using the NDAS Device manager which sits in the tray of your PC (on windows).

Media Players do not need any actions from the user to talk to NDAS storage devices. They will find them since the driver is already integrated in the player. Examples of NDAS capable devices are N35, iamm NTD35HD, MViX Mx-760 and so on. Note that in addition to NDAS, all players feature all other options compared to other media Players without NDAS like SMB, uPnP and so on... NDAS is not a replacement or alternative, it is an additional feature on top of the others.

NDAS is much more stable than NAS but the main advantage is it's speed and ability to have multiple users download and use data without suffering in performance. For instance, watching a HD movie served from the NDAS storage while copying movies from or too the NDAS device from several PC's will work perfectly. The speed between media players and NDAS storage depends however on the player's capabilities. With PC, up to 42MB / s transfer speed can be reached. (Average 35, GBit unit)

A 10/100 mbit unit NDAS storage performs as fast as Gigabit NAS. A GBIT ndas performs between 4 / 6 times as fast as GBIT NAS.

Basic Pros: - No brain networked storage device. No need ofany prior knowledge of NAS or Network. - NDAS is extremely fast networked attached storage - Ndas is relatively cheap for networked storage (for example cheaper than Lacie BigDisk which comes without network) - Most NDAS storage devices can be used in different ways. (USB, eSATA, Network) - NDAS Storage is used as a mapped drive as if it was a HDD inside your PC - NDAS integrates seamlessly with Media Players featuring NDAS (N35, IAMM, MViX etc...) - Simultaneous connections remain performant

Basic cons - NDAS is limited in additional functions (FTP, HTTP Server etc which usually integrate with NAS) - Requires a driver to be installed on all PC's requiring access

Comments: This introduction is very small. Several reviews on NDAS products have already been taken care of by MPC. You can find the ShareDisk reviews, both NDAS storage devices, in our Revoews section.

http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=Reviews

Additional info:

http://www.ximeta.com for NDAS Technology

http://www.coworldcs.com for NDAS Storage devices.

http://www.kjglobal.co.uk for NDAS Capable Media Players

Hope you liked the short into. NDAS is something to consider if you need ease of use and high speed or if you consider buying some USB2 big volume storage (250/400/500GB) like Lacie, you are far better of, and cheaper with NDAS storage and it offers much more functionality! I thought you ougth to know that...

Enjoy Hi-Jack