| Network Sttached Storage Review |
Network attached Storage Review of the Linksys EFG120 network attached storage unit as an external hard drive for your entire network. Tailored for home offices and small businesses, the Linksys EFG120 is easy to set up and has a number of features that help you get work done both over your own network and via the Internet. It also includes an integrated FTP server, making it easy to read and write files to and from your network whether you’re in Toledo or Timbuktu. An empty second bay on the EFG120 lets you add another drive to the unit so that you can schedule daily or weekly backups to protect your data and automate some of your work flow. The Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit also includes an integrated print server that lets you connect a printer to its parallel port, allowing you to print from any computer on your network. Despite these advanced features, the EFG120 lacks a USB interface for its print server and costs a pretty penny, compared to the competition.
The Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit comes with a single 120GB hard drive. An empty second drive bay on the EFG120 lets you increase the total capacity of the unit to meet your own individual storage needs. The memory expansion limit is dictated by the size of the drives you decide to load into the EFG120’s two bays. You can schedule backups of the first drive to the second drive (if you install one) on a daily or weekly basis. The Linksys EFG120 lacks RAID support, however, which means that you can’t configure it to automatically create backups on the fly by mirroring the disks. Nor can you stripe the two disks together to save a file that’s larger than 120GB.
We tested the Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit on a small Ethernet network with multiple PCs. As expected, accessing files residing on the EFG120 was as fast as accessing the same files on a local hard drive. You might experience a very slight delay if several people attempt to access data on the EFG120 simultaneously, but this is true of your local hard drive as well if you share it with multiple users. The Linksys EFG120 is equipped with a Gigabit Ethernet port, which helps keep it in pace with fast networks.
The Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit can also function as a DHCP server for your network, improving the general performance of your network by freeing up resources on the system you currently use for DHCP services. For example, if you use a single system for DHCP and Web services, you can dedicate that system for Web services and rely on the EFG120 to handle DHCP requests. The same thing applies to the EFG120’s print server, which can free up resources from the system you’re currently using to share your printer. Printer sharing can be a very resource-intensive service, so transferring the task from a workstation to the Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit can help pep up the computer you use to share your printer.The future is here now with your network attached storage review
| " | We tested the Linksys EFG120 network-attached storage unit on a small Ethernet network with multiple PCs. As expected, accessing files residing on the EFG120 was as fast as accessing the same files on a local hard drive. |
