Yet another affordable network attached device – this time it’s called the VGear LANDisk Network Hard Drive Enclosure and ExtremeMHz reviews it . How does it work? You install an IDE hard drive into the enclosure and then connect the drive to your network. Browse to the device using the name of the drive (yes it has a web server built in!) and then make changes to the drive settings using the web browser. You can then connect to the hard drive over the network as if it was another PC. It doesn’t quite work like a local drive but hey – who cares? It works well! The downside is that the system only supports FAT32 and NTFS. The unit supports:

  • 100BASE-TX/10BASE-T
  • Microsoft Windows 98SE, Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows NT4.0, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP and MAC OS X (10.3.X or above versions)
  • Ultra ATA / 133 Hard drives

The verdict?

Its write speed certainly did impress, but the read tests were much less desirable. This was partly due to its support for only FAT32 formatted drives. However, its very appealing design, ease of use, and unique functionality earns my recommendation.

[Check it out]

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