Linksys NAS-200
We’ve reviewed a couple external hard drives here at Digit Geek such as the Seagate FreeAgent and the Western Digital My Book but what do you do if you want to share your drive between a number of computers.
When you want to share your drive between multiple computers at once (or even over the internet), the easiest way to do so is to put your drives into a Network Attached Storage device. The Linksys NAS-200 is a great little device that does just the job.
Connecting the Storage System to your network is simple – just plug it directly into an available 10/100 Ethernet port on your router or switch, and the storage is instantly accessible by your whole network.
Here are a few of the technical specifications for the NAS-200:
- Street Price: $179.99
- Two drive bays and two USB ports
- Automatic Backup software included
- More USB ports to add additional external drives
- 10/100 Ethernet port
- Ability to share your files on the internet through FTP or HTTP
Things I like
The thing I like most about the NAS-200 is how easy it is to set it up. The install utility works well with all versions of Windows including Windows Vista, sets up the drives, and automatically maps a network drive. After this you can do everything you need either through the software provided or online so you have total control over the device. The final thing I like is the price. Coming in at just under $200 the NAS-200 is one of the cheapest network attached storage systems available. If you’re on a low budget this is definitely for you. Unfortunately, other than the easy setup and the low price there isn’t that I like about the NAS-200.
Things I don’t like
The thing I like the least about the NAS-200 is its transfer speeds, they are absolutely terrible. Moving 5 files for a total of 5.30GB, from the PC to the NAS-200 took just under 40 minutes with an average transfer speed of less than 3.60MB/sec. Since it has a 10/100 interface, the theoretical maximum transfer speed was 12.5MB/sec and I was hoping to get somewhere around 8-10MB/sec on writes and reads. The NAS-200 also uses proprietary software to format the drives so you can’t swap them into a computer without formatting them before hand. This is really annoying and in my opinion rather stupid, but what can you do.
Pros:
- Easy to set up, all web driven menus.
- Two hard drive storage
- Can be set for multiple users.
- Cheapest Network Storage available
Cons:
- Priprietary disk format
- Slow transfer speeds
Final Thoughts
If you’re in dire need of a NAS and you don’t have a lot of money to spend than the Linksys NAS-200 is a good deal for you. If you have a little more money or aren’t in need of a NAS right away I would hold up. The proprietary disk format and the low speeds just don’t make the NAS-200 worth the money. I don’t recommend this product and I think Linksys could have done a lot better.
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Written by Adam McKerlie on January 8th, 2008 | Category: Hard Drive | 6 Comments »
Steve Berry
March 28, 2008 at 11:19 am
I purchased one about 3 weeks ago, and everything in the above article is true. It is inexpensive and seems reliable. I have not located the automatic backup software yet. Had some trouble with the password to configure, but fixed that with a reset. Very SLOW! 14GB data took 4 1/2 hours to transfer. Probably going to unload it and buy a real NAS in the near future, but budget wise its great.
Steve Berry
Battery Universe
Frank
May 14, 2008 at 8:17 am
I have purchased this about 2 weeks now. Contrary to the speed “problems” I find that the unit performs very much on par with my HP proliants also running @ 10/100. A speed test with 5 files equaling 5 GB, is NOT a proper test. Those files are just too big. For comparison it took a HP proliant DL380 to HP proliant DL380 transfer at 10//100 speeds over 6 hours to move 7GB of data, but each file was a half GB or more. (web log files).
The OS on this device is a form of Linux with about 32 MB of RAM. For a SERVER that has authentication, private/public folders this is CHEAP. Throw in Media server, FTP, HTTP, and other goddies, and the unit seems pretty unbeatable.
imvp
July 17, 2008 at 2:55 am
The disk is actually formated with Linux file system ext2/ext3; which is much better than NTFS or FAT from Windows because it doesn’t require disk defragmentation over time. Now, the transfer speed, I’m getting about 3 MB/s doing ftp. I hope that Linksys can improve the speed through firmware upgrade. This speed is nowhere close to HD streaming requirement.
Peter Chin
August 28, 2008 at 5:46 am
Yes the NAS 200 is cheap, easy to install and setup, but is terribly, terribly slow. I copied my video folder of 360GB to the Nas200, and it took one whole day and night!
I also copied a folder from my iMac to the Nas200, but I cannot see any files from the iMac – although folder info says 39GB has been used. I can see the files from my PC though. Any suggestions, or omissions from my setup?
JohnM
October 9, 2008 at 6:39 am
I also bought one of these – everything is fine EXCEPT THE SPEED, terrible.
markiv
November 4, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I know that the NAS200 uses EXT3 as the filesystem for its internal drives, which is good. I have two specific questions, which I hope someone here can answer:
*Q1* Can I hook EXT3 drives to the USB Ports on the NAS200 – I see that we can do this with NTFS, but its read-onl. We can do this with Fat32, but I have the 4GB file size limitation. Can I mount EXT3 drives to the NAS200?
*Q2* I have two sata drives in the NAS200, but I didnt remove the Sata 1.5Gbps Jumper clip when I installed them (Totally forgot). I’ve already copied data over – its striped to 1TB and I have about 300G of data on it. Can I take out the Jumper clips now to up the interface to Sata 3Gbps? If I do, will I lose the data that the drives already contain.
Answers to Q1 and Q2 much appreciated. Thanks.