I find it amusing that simple little USB-based NAS devices like the Addonics NAS 3.0 Adapter (NAS30U2) can take some techie know-how to use. USB NASes like the NAS30U2 aren't NASes that use hard disk drives; they are NAS adapters; you’ll need to provide your own USB storage devices or printers. When you configure the device, the Spartan management interface does not offer a lot of hand-holding. Still, there is a very well documented user manual; this combined with surprisingly speedy performance and a straight-no-chaser feature set make this wonderful, tiny, and very affordable ($65) USB NAS an Editor's Choice pick. It's efficient to use as a file and print server, and has a few other goodies like multimedia streaming, BitTorrent management and compatibility with iTunes playlists.

Specs and Setup

The NAS30U2 is smaller than a pack of cigarettes at .91 by 2.17 by 3.35 inches (HWD). It's even smaller than the diminutive , another USB-based NAS. Yet, on top of the chassis Addonics has managed to place three LEDs representing activity for power (blue), system (red), and network access (green). Much to my annoyance, the system LED stayed red all the while I was testing. Red should never be used on networking devices unless there is a problem. There was no problem with the device because everything worked during testing. The accompanying user manual does not state what color any of the LEDs should be, but I am going to assume that since the "System" LED was red and everything worked fine with this NAS, that is the LED's default color.



The NAS also has two USB ports, one for storage devices and the other for printers. You can actually connect a storage device to the printer port, but you will only have Read access to the device. I was concerned at first that this NAS had limited storage capacity when I saw that it only has two USB ports. After all, the has four. Yet, the Addonics NUS2000 has a total capacity of 8TB. Addonics states that the NAS30U2 will support up to 256TB NTFS-formatted drives and up to 128PB exFAT drives. Under FAT32 it supports up to 2TB.

That's a lot of storage. While I didn’t have a 256TB or 128PB drive lying around, the device did handle 500GB drives effortlessly.

The NAS30U2 also has a reset button and Gigabit Ethernet port. It supports NTFS, FAT32 and FAT64 file systems.

The unit ships with a CD that has install guides, user manuals, and a setup utility. Setup is initiated by double-clicking an executable JAR file from the CD. The file is called Auto Setup, but when it opens you have to manually select one of five Addonics NAS products that are displayed in the first setup screen—I wouldn't exactly call that "Auto."

However, once I did make a selection, the software installed a utility that easily detected the NAS on the network, displaying the IP address, device name, and workgroup it belonged to (WORKGROUP, by default).



Interface and Features

From the utility that displays information about the NAS, clicking "Connect" gets you to the management interface. The UI is stark, no fancy graphics and fonts, no eye-candy Apple-esque design. It's all about efficiency—it opens up as a small, plain window displaying system information about the device including data and time, firmware version, and information about any connected USB devices.

When you do connect a device, I noticed it takes a couple of page refreshes to see the device in this window. Until you do, you just get a "device not detected" message.

While the NAS30U2 isnt loaded with features, it has all the basic functionality that you would want in a NAS. For instance, the NAS can act as a Samba or WebDAV server for file sharing. You can also add users to share files and folders. When a USB device is added a default public folder is made available to share with users on the network.

Of course, this is a simple device. Ironically, that simplicity makes it a better choice for more technical users. If you set up the device as a file server, you have to be able to map to the drives, to shares or to map via the HTTP/HTTPS protocol that WebDAV uses. You don't have an interface on the device itself with which to view, upload or download stored content as you do with or , where those tasks are done in the file manager of an operating system like Windows Explorer. Instructions for performing the necessary mapping are detailed wonderfully though, and not just for Windows but for Mac OS X and Ubuntu users as well.

The NAS30U2 has other capabilities. It can be used to stream multimedia files to an Xbox. It supports BitTorrent downloads. Although it can act as a print server, it does not support GDP/Host-based printers, and Addonics warns that connecting some multifunction printers may result in some features, like scanning, not working.

A convenient feature is the PPoE setting, which allows multiple users to share one PPoE connection to the Internet. The device can also act as a DHCP server. It can connect directly to a PC's network adapter via an Ethernet cable. Once is does, it will give the computer an IP address.

One limitation to the device is that some vendors' external USB drives over 2TB won't be recognized. Addonics explains that this is because some of these vendors (Seagate, is one) placed proprietary technology in their USB devices to overcome the limitation that older OS' such as Windows XP has with a 2TB capacity. This isn't much of a deal-breaker, however, because this limitation will mainly affect older, legacy external USB drives.

Remote Access is not an inherent feature of the device. However, with Samba and webDAV enabled, it's possible to setup port forwarding on a router to get external access to the device. I don't like USB NASes for remote access anyway. I find the technology just too slow for remote access.

Nimble Performer

I was surprised at how speedy uploading a 1.5Gb HD video file is to a 250GB external drive connected to the NAS. Usually, uploading large files to USB NAS drives is a lesson in patience. The upload was 15MBps—superior to some SATA hard drive-based consumer NASes I've tested such as the which only managed 10MBps and , the which did a meager 6.25MBps. Even the NAS30U2's closest competitor, Cirago's NU2000, could only upload the same file to the same drive connected to it at about 7MBps.

Delivers As Touted

The NAS30U2 is devoid of flash and sparkle, but this little device deftly pulls off everything the vendor promises. It's a cheap, efficient way to share and scale storage on a local network. Yes, there's no built-in remote access as there is with another Editor's Choice USB-NAS pick, Pogoplug. If you need a more user-friendly USB NAS that is all about remote access, Pogoplug will be a better choice. However, Addonics delivers everything as stated in its documentation about the NAS 3.0 Adapter (NAS30U2), and its performance is top notch for a device in this class, earning it four stars and our Editors’ Choice award for USB NASes.

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