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Monday July 13, 2009
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 On Monday, Hitachi announced several new external storage products, capitalizing on the company's acquisition of Fabrik in February.
By far the most interesting product is the SimpleNet, a USB adapter that transforms a traditional USB drive into a NAS product. At $79, the SimpleNet is designed for consumers who own a USB drive and an existing router, and want to share the drive over the network. Several routers already include USB connections for doing this, but it also requires the purchase of this new, more expensive router.
According to Ken Higgins, Hitachi's vice president of worldwide branded sales, the SimpleNet also has another advantage: it doesn't require a consumer to reformat his or her hard drive. The SimpleNet is compatible with FAT32 and NTFS formatted drives, as well as the HFS+ used by Mac OS X. Apple's Time Machine is also compatible with the SimpleNet device.
Hitachi also unveiled a series of rugged SimpleTough drives, each containing a 2.5-inch drive from 250-Gbytes to 320-Gbytes to 500-Gbytes in capacity. The SimpleTough line ranges in price from $99.99 to $149.99. A less rugged SimpleDrive Mini is roughly identical, minus the tough exterior: prices in that family range from $89.99 to $139.99, Hitachi said. Both drives are bus-powered.
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July 14, 2009 1:46 AM
For $20 more you can get a PogoPlug which supports WAN NAS as well as LAN and a nifty web interface (as well as desktop disk mounting option) for sharing with 3rd parties/individuals. You can even plug a USB hub into and share multiple USB storage devices. Supports Windows, Linux and Mac. Mine is currently hosting a 4-Bay USB hard drive enclosure.