WD squeezes more into ShareSpace

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 19 May 2009 10:49

Business IT - Technology

Home and small office users are cottoning on to the benefits of networked storage. WD has responded by bumping its ShareSpace storage units to 8T.

There are several good reasons for using networked storage even in relatively small installations such as the typical home or small office.

Firstly, it ensures that shared files are available even when one or more computers are switched off or (in the case of notebooks) out of the building. This is particularly important for media files

Secondly, the more of your 'digital stuff' that lives on shared storage, the less time and effort is involved in setting up a replacement computer or swapping an internal hard drive.

Thirdly, the growing use of Gigabit Ethernet means there is relatively little speed penalty compared with locally attached storage.

Fourthly, storing one copy of a shared file (eg, a music track or a video) rather than one on each computer reduces the total storage requirement.

WD has increased the storage capacity of its ShareSpace network storage units to 8T, along with performance and feature improvements.

The additional capacity has been achieved by offering a model fitted with four 2T Caviar Green drives. By default, the unit is configured as RAID 5, giving an effective capacity of 6T and providing protection against the failure of any one drive.

The performance improvement of the new model - claimed to be up to 30 percent for large files - comes from a firmware update that is also available to existing owners.

What about the new features? Please see page 2.