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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 $.02 Canadian.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It might be a NAS, but which protocols does it speak? NFS? Samba? FTP? DAV? Which authentication methods is it capable of? Can it authenticate against my (insert your favourite authentication service).
Anybody has any ideas?
bash$
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..."
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!
Why does this device need to be both wired and wireless?
It's probably cheaper to produce one unit which can do both than to make the two additional units (with all support/documentation/troubleshooting).
bash$
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.
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!
Setup reasons for a start. If it only has WiFi, and your access point has WEP enabled (and if it doesn't, why the hell not?), how is the enclosure going to get the key to connect? You're going to have to plug it into a wired LAN (or crossover cable) to allow it to get an initial IP, fire up your web browser, browse to it, set the WEP key, let it connect then remove it from the wireless LAN.
As an aside, whilst this is funky, no RAID is a drawback for me. That and my firewall at home is in transparent mode as I had a nice block of routable IP addresses that seemed more than enough 2 years ago when I just had 3 servers and a desktop. Now I have 3 servers, the xbox, the firewall, the wireless access point, 3 laptops in day to day use, another laptop which gets used by guests and if I add a NAS whammo, one IP left. It's going to be a pain to setup NAT *sigh*
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. :-)
That's not so unlikley. If you do most of your computing on a laptop, or a tablet, or if you have a mythTV box, network attached storage that was always available would let you shut down your big desktop for a significant energy/noise savings.
I'd love to have my a firewire-to-ethernet bridge to let my external FW drive beaccessible (albeit slowly) without crossing the room and plugging in. Plugging in the FW is still an option when copying DVD images or making backups, but if I just want to pull A file out of a backup, or access the gigs of mp3s that I moved off my laptop because I was running out of storage, why should I have to plug anything in, let alone leave an entire PC running turning money and electricity into heat while it does nothing.
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've been waiting for one of these things for a while.
It'll let me use my pocket pc as my car MP3 player. I can have massive *wireless* storage in the boot or glove box. The bandwidth is fine for MP3 & video playback and the simplicity and tidyness of the setup makes up for the price.
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.
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.