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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.
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!
$150 isn't really that bad considering that you need about $40 for a simple USB enclosure. If you're using three network adapters, one of which is wireless, and the controllers for each of those and the hard drive...it's not really that bad a deal. I can remember three years ago when Maxtor was selling 40 GB NAS units for upwards of a grand. $150 plus the drive deosn't seem that craptastic in those terms. Dok
"You can't screw the system, but you can give it a good fondling." -- Too lazy to look it up
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.
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!
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."
As far as the wireless goes, I agree. But it also has the wired ethernet adapters on it which would come in handy. If you have a network of mainly older Pentiums or PIIs (they're still out there) that can't really handle a larger internal HDD and don't have USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 then this would be a decent solution for large, shared storage. Dok
"You can't screw the system, but you can give it a good fondling." -- Too lazy to look it up
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.
I wish I could install one in my car, that way I could just drag and drop mp3's over to my car without having to burn them all to CD.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.