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Asus Launching a Wi-Fi Hard Drive
TheFoot writes "The Register reports that Asus is promising to 'change your perception on data storage'. They're talking up a hard drive enclosure capable of taking any 2.5in ATA-100 hard disk. It also contains an 802.11g adaptor and antenna, plus a pair of wired 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports. US $150 + the price of the hard drive. They've changed my perception--why did data storage just get more expensive?" Now now, this could actually be useful. tempest2i notes that there's a Macworld story as well.
This is an interesting reminder about the "network data storage device" market. Cut those things open, and there's a standard HD plus the interface hardware it takes so that the drive can be reached over the network. In fact, cut open a USB 2.0 or Firewire HD and you'll find pretty much the same thing, and the same goes for external CD or DVD drives.
So, for $150 plus the cost of whatever HD you'd like to use you can build your own "network data storage device". If you just want a HD hanging on the network, without any need for the rest of the features of a full grown file server, then this is the part you want.
Blah Blah blah. Tell me more about Linux and gaming.
Linux isn't everything. In fact, this is a situation which makes you wonder if your file server really needs to be running Linux. If all your file server is doing is connecting an HD to your network, then this device can do it in hardware alone.
I hope it supports WPA. Ohhh, but imagine the fun of an "open" media drive. RIAA and the MPAA will really hate life.
I remember when the iPod was first released a few people mentioned going into stores, plugging theirs into demo machines and taking copies of all the software they wanted in seconds.
Without the need to plug anything in, imagine what could be nicked with one of these!
erm, uh, toting that hard drive around in your backpack so you can have portable fileserver without a laptop? Thats my only idea, and a poor one at that. 2.5" disks are more rugged than their 3.5" counterparts, but not *much* more. I wouldn't want to be bouncing around everywhere with $250+ worth of fileserver plus NiMH batteries in my pocket. If you really want portable storage, a laptop isn't a whole lot bigger, and a lot more useful. Actually, now that I've read the article, the thing isn't even really portable, unless you hack a battery pack together yourself. Kinda silly premise for a product actually. Why not just make a full-blown router with hard drive? Certainly hybriding a $40 router to a $150 hard drive widget with wireless already can't be all that much more expensive. Just my $.02 Canadian.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It might be a NAS, but which protocols does it speak? NFS? Samba? FTP? DAV? Which authentication methods is it capable of? Can it authenticate against my (insert your favourite authentication service).
Anybody has any ideas?
bash$
What's the cheapest non-wireless Ethernet hard drive enclosure available? Anything less than USB 2.0 or FireWire enclosures?
It'd be pretty useful to just carry around a storage tablet from place to place, although large transfers would just kill some of the usability for regular users of the networks, since last I checked bandwidth was split N ways between N clients.
While the idea of an enclosure is nice, I think I'd rather spend the same amount of money on something that could be an access point, too. Netgear surprised me with their new router, the WGT634U, which offers a USB 2.0 port for attaching storage devices in addition to 108Mb turbo wi-fi. This is a trend I like.
It's not the gear, it's the functionality.
Then there's all the iPod cracking fun. "Let's see what that jogger has on his iPod..."
The RF bandwidth is 2 or 10 Mbps, but really less, and not even guaranteed. Compare to 480 or 800 Mbps achieved over the wire, or Gbps over SATA. I see absolutely no reason to use such a device, except maybe in some obscure situations - such as when you have all-wireless network and need a portable network storage. But even then this would be a poor choice - you'd want RAID.
Why does this device need to be both wired and wireless? Most users will use the device either by the wire, or as part of a purely WiFi network... who would use both interfaces? Seems like this device could be cheaper if it came in two different versions, one with the wired ports and the other with the WiFi parts.
If you had one of these stashed in say a neighbors house with some illegal stuff on it and you got raided you could probably get away with it.. This could also be good for a close range offsite back up. Just have an agreement with a neighbor to keep a harddrive of eachothers at eachothers house in case of fire or some other disaster.
Moo!
I think I have made my hard drive sufficiently vulnerable by installing Windows on it. Adding a Wi-Fi adapter directly to it seems a little over the top.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
The $150 price tag is steep, so hopefully that will go down.
But right now, I've got an almost fully wireless setup going with my 12" power book. Bluetooth mouse/keyboard, SE T610 phone for controlling iTunes, and an AirPort base station.
This could be really usefull for storing iTunes music, bittorrents, etc, and sharing it across multiple computers easily.
Am i the only one who's initial reaction was "it still needs to be plugged into an outlet." It's not as if hard-drives are these hulking eyesores that we all wish we could hide under the kitchen sink.
:)
If their target is the home market, i don't know many people who go around thinking "gee, i wish i could have a hard drive sitting around hidden away, but not inside my computer case."
If its a corporate market, i doubt any company would want their access being cut-off by some employee using a microwave to heat his lunch.
just my thoughts.
from the if-you-don't-have-wifi,-what-do-you-have? dept.
wires
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Actually, this might be a fun solution for off-site data backup. Go hide one outside somewhere (preferrably in a locked, powered container) and mount a pringles can off of the antenna. Assuming no one walks off with your new drive, you've got offsite storage!
With no doubt, this must be the biggest security hole I have seen lately. 802.11g directly to the hard drive. Bravo. Is this an April Fool's joke posted prematurely or are they really out of their minds thinking that anyone would be so stupid to buy such a hard drive, which is basically asking to be cracked? I find it insulting. I hope script kiddies will have lots of fun.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I thanked him for his time, and left with what I wanted. :-)
But when you add home use people might want to store movies and music and ehehm nature programs on their laptop but not actually have it present on the laptop. Sure you could then at your desk at home have a usb/firewire external drive but that means you loose the mobility of a laptop. It can be fun working on the floor or sofa. Some laptops have tv outs so put the laptop on the tv and watch your downloads on the big screen.
This wifi drive would then allow you to access your own files at home without any need for plugging in cables. Just put the thing somewhere central and your laptop is hooked up just like you use a wifi network station to allow you to use the laptop without cat5 cables.
Frankly this is the only real use I can see. The WIFI-HD needs to be powered by a powercord and that means it ain't all that mobile. So it can't be used to give you PDA a storage boost. Using it in the office is pretty lame as it ads another security risk, an other piece of software to admin and its function can be easily duplicated with the existing file server.
But for people with only laptops at home it could make sense.
Only other possible use might be people with a PDA who are not close to a PC like setup but who are closed to something like a car. But it would have to be small operations as something like the Police Ambulance would have access to far better solutions. Maybe something for a mechanic? Store all the schematics and data on the WIFI-HD. Give him a pda and as long as he is within range of his car he got all the data in the world. Cheaper then pulling data over mobile phone lines.
Mmmm, might not be such a bad gadget after all.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I guess bluetooth isn't fast enough. But it would rule to see small form factor, low power consuming hdd's with battery built in. Then whatever devices utilizing the media off the hdd can be smaller and you can stow your mp3s, video, pictures etc. in your backpack or back pocket or something. We're not talking high performance here. I'm sure you could stream an mp3 over bluetooth with the right sized buffer. 802.11b/g seems like overkiller for a portable application.
_nfotxn
Firewall, what firewall?? (Unless, of course, its made of lead).
You just need to get close!
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Yes. It is. The fact that someone marked such a stupid question insightful is idiotic. Questions rarely provide insight and obvious questions like that never do. Anyway, enough ranting. To answer your question, I would really like one of these because I have a wireless laptop that I only plug in when i need it at my desk. Like, to plug in my ipod or my current firewire external drive. I plug it into an ethernet network in this case. But if I am on a my couch wireless, I cannot access that drive. "But wireless has such low bandwidth!", you say. I would not want to do large backups wirelessly, but lets say I want to stream a video file over it. Or perhaps have my iTunes playlist and songs on it. Its perfect for these uses. Not to mention as a central sharing point. Alas, this device is useful.
There is likely no operating system on it. Once upon a time, software did not drive hardware. Hardware is perfectly capable of tasks like this all alone. Now, if there is an authentication system and such, there may be a small embedded bit of code on a chip that runs through a tiny thing that resembles the processor that you are familiar with. This code would monitor the state of the system and would trigger various hardware events when necessary, and would store network data. an operating system in the modern sense might be almost a waste.
"they've changed my perception--why did data storage just get more expensive?"
-and complicated (obviously not for the likes of us, but needless to say the likes of us can figure something less expensive and far more useful out.)
I fail to understand why the industry is trying to decentralize the elements of computers and electronics. At the same time it's still just as easy and less expensive to put it in a computer or share a hard drive on the network.
EVEN plugging an existing external hard drive into a computer with wireless capabilities is probably simpler and cheeper.
Yeah. You can do this with an entire PC with an encrypted file system. Just use an 802.11b network connection for it, and you can power it off when the black vans pull up outside.
I would recommend a journaled file system like ReiserFS. I wouldn't use a laptop for this, since killing the AC will only make it run on batteries.
If you're extra paranoid, just make sure you have a very similar looking PC with the same IP, and other names and plenty of legit files you need to access (I recommend harmless bikini-clad models), and the same encryption. This will prevent the "hey, why did we see lots of 802.11 traffic and you only having one WiFi device? What's it talking to?"
Also the "Why is it encrypted, what do you have to hide?" to which you reply "my mother visits a lot, and I don't want her stumbling on my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model collection".
Another alternative is the "hidden server". A server at University of North Carolina running Netware 3 was accidentally drywalled into an alcove. A network admin found it a few years later when trying to figure out the "extra machine" on the network. He finally traced it's ethernet cable to a blank wall.
You could do the same, and just unplug the ethernet cable. An easy way to accomplish this would be if you've wired up your home with CAT5. Just have one socket connected to the server on the back side, then when the thugs show up, or when you aren't using it, unplug the cable from the wall to the router.
Good luck.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Netgear makes a device like this, the WGT634U, which is also a broadband router with hard drive support. The product literature only lists versions of windows as supported. But the USB Hard disks can be formatted with FAT, FAT32, NTFS (read only), and Linux file systems according to a support page. The drive can be accessed by ftp or smb.
Netgear has gpl source for a few of their models here: ftp://downloads.netgear.com/files/GPL/
what about an ipod dock, or attachement, that is a wireless adpater. think about it "update your music collection while its plugged into your cd player" that would be very cool and would help the uptake of 40 gig ipods methinks. id prefer to pay $150 for that!
Keep your WiFi HD in a vent or something. Recharge as necessary, maybe run a power line into that secret spot. If politzei raid your house and steal - i mean, confiscate everything that looks techie, you wait until they are gone and then run to someone you trust with your WiFi HD. let them copy it, and return before the bad guys return to say "ho, wait a minute, we have records here of another drive. hand it over." you gladly and apologetically give them the device knowing that (a) your data is safe and (b) anything incriminating was *totally* removed when you visiited your friend.
What do you mean "hardware alone?" It needs to run something to be able to communicate with clients and share files:
It will have a Web-based management interface through which the drive can be accessed. Files will be freely shareable, have read-access only or be restricted to password-owning users.
The info lacks details but it looks like all access and sharing will be done through a web server. How useful is that? I don't know, since the article also mentions that previous attempts by other manufacturers in this direction have failed, including what I thought was a better solution:
Sony tried with a WiFi-connected file server in early 2003. The FSV-PGX1 was a 20GB hard drive controlled by an embedded Linux system that turned it into a file-server. It could be used by up to 250 people who accessed it by CIFS, if using Windows, or NFS if using Unix/Linux. The WiFi version was 11Mbit/s 802.11b, which meant that file-server access speeds weren?t great, particularly with several people sharing it. Again, it was a light device, weighing in at 320g.
I could actually see a use for such a device for home users with multiple computers or a very small office; but I don't think it's a good idea at all. Given from what I've seen the security (or lack thereof) most people use to set up their wireless networks, this type of device will make all sensitive data directly accessible and available to everyone nearby without even needing to have any computers turned on.
They've changed my perception--why did data storage just get more expensive?"
That's like bitching that a 40GB iPod is $500 when you can go to Best Buy and get a 40GB hard drive for $60. This does so much more than a bare hard drive that comparing the two on a cost-per-gigabyte basis is absurd.
With the Asus device, you are getting an ultraportable network attached storage device (with a pair of wired 10/100Mbps Ethernet ports) that also speaks WiFi over 802.11g. It has security managed with a web-based interface which allows you to specify which clients have read access, read/write access, no access, etc.
What a neat filesharing device! Load it up with your favorite MP3s (for which you hold copyright, of course), set it on a table. and let all of your friends access the music, adding or removing as they see fit.
get a reasonably long cable, spread it across the room,
attach your new ATA hard disks to it and don't bother
closing the case
Data storage that not only is seriously expensive, but far too slow for any real use. I have an 802.11G wireless network here at home and while it's fine for basic tasks like Internet access and moving small files around it's slow.
Despite claiming to be 54mbit, it really only gets 8 - 20 mbit even when I sit right next to the access point. There are a bunch of technical reasons why this is so, but the bottom line is that disk should be fast. ATA20 isn't a disk standard because people want ATA150. They'd buy ATA600 if it were possible, because disk is already the slowest part of our computers.
Making it slower is just stupid marketing guys trying to figure out how else to get rid of 15 million spare wireless chips.
Of course you could do a software raid with these.
The question is why you would want to. I could maybe see a centralized backup option for your home network or something i guess.
My pet peeve is why they can call it wireless data storage when I am still plugging the dang thing into the wall for power 24x7, so how exactly is it wireless?
Now give me one of these that is powered from the USB port and/or battery option and I am actually interested.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
A Wi-Fi hard drive can also be a security nightmare! Anyone with the right equipment (a wifi card and a decent laptop) could eavesdrop, and even modify data on-the-fly. Using encrypted filesystems is a *must* in such a case, and even then, data integrity would still be in jeopardy.
It may be possible to turn the tranceiver off, but you must trust the manufacturer that no back-door can be remotely opened.
So how do you shield such drives? TEMPEST protection is already hard enough without this...
The biggest issue here is not to stay clear of such equipment (if you have security objections), but to ensure that vanilla (non-wifi) hardware doesn't have WiFi chips you don't know anything about!
It's a bad feeling to know that your computer could (passively, thus undetected) listen to RF, and behave in strange ways. We're on the brink of hardware that could be used as spyware. A scary thought!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
...boot from it? This would be an interesting option to explore... You could have a completely mobile, moduluar computer...You want to change hard drives, or have a faster CPU, no sweat -- connect to a different component.
One of the primary design constraints for home theatre PCs is that they need to be absolutely silent. Since hard drives can be noisy, keeping the number of drives in your system to a minimum should be important. Many people (myself included) use networked fileservers to serve media to their HTPCs.
These little boxes seem like just the ticket. Imagine a diskless HTPC. All that you would need to do is boot it over the network and mount the drive in the Asus enclosure as your root filesystem. If you were to use a Via C3-based motherboard and a power supply with passive cooling, you could then have an HTPC with no moving parts and thus, totally silent.
Can we get this in a CD drive? I wish there was a way to have a "remote" cd drive. That is the only thing holding me back from tossing my machine in the closet. I can get a 25 foot KVM cable, but, when I want to play a game (no-cd "fixes" aside), I have to go over there and pop in the CD. Can I have a CD drive sitting on my desk with the machine itself sitting in the closet?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Mini-itx motherboard in a portable enclosure, although I might switch it down to a Nano-itx now that they're becoming available.
250gig 3.5" hard drive instead of a 2.5 mainly cause they're half the price and hold twice the storage.
CD-RW
802.11g
FM audio transmitter
Small battery pack. It only needs to run everything for 10 minutes.
12-volt Power Supply
No screen; No keyboard
The idea of this is a portable storage / mp3 player. All controls are through it's Apache server, so I connect to it from a PDA or a laptop with a wireless card. It runs off 12 volts, so you can use it anywhere. As long as you can keep it within a few hundred feet of you you can use it.
The original idea was for an MP3 player for my truck that I didn't have to dedicated to it or physically install. All I have to do, is carry it out of the house and plug it into a cigarette lighter. The battery keeps it from having to reboot when I move it from outlet to outlet. a 15 volt wall-wart and my auto-cigarette lighter adapter has enough voltage to run it and keep the battery topped off. It broadcasts to a nearby FM receiver or can stream the audio, although sometimes I just connect to the MP3 library over Samba. It automatically synchronizes with my home network when it's in range.
When I'm at work, I just leave it in the truck and I've got enough range to connect to the FM headset and PDA I carry with me. When I'm at the gym, I park close to the building and queue up a long playlist before I leave it and the PDA in the truck. The best part of the whole thing is that it's inconspicuous. I don't have to leave an expensive looking gadget sitting in it all the time. I built it into a small, cheap looking plastic toolbox, so I can carry it anywhere without anybody paying any attention to it.
It keeps growing. I'm currently experimenting with adding moving-map GPS using a USB GPS receiver. My big problem there, is updating the display on the PDA properly. I'd also like to synchronize my email / contacts / calendar / notes / tasks to it. It's an easy way to transfer large files back-and-forth between work and home and wherever else I happen to need them.
I'm also considering with adding a second wireless adapter to it. The primary that controls it is highly secure and doesn't broadcast. The second one would be completely open and would scan for access-points. Partly so it could automatically connect to the net as I was driving around. Partly so I could use it as a gateway to the net from the PDA.
I'd really like to get it all down to something I could actually wear on my belt. I could already get away with a smaller version if I ditched the CD drive, went to an embedded motherboard, switched to a small HD, and added batteries. It this point, it wouldn't be as powerful and would be twice the price. Maybe in a couple years...
Toys...