Bundle Up Your External Storage

Microsoft's Vista and Apple's Leopard make automated backup easy, so there's almost no excuse for not having additional storage devices. System integrators should capitalize on interest in data protection to bundle external storage using devices such as Iomega's StorCenter Network Hard Drive.

A metallic case housing two 500-Gbyte SATA-II hard drives, the StorCenter Network Hard Drive offers 1 Tbyte of storage capacity. The StorCenter can be accessed by any PC or Mac on the same network for file and print sharing. To expand capacity, the StorCenter has two USB host ports that can be used to chain other devices together. The Network Hard Drive works with Gigabit or 10/100 Ethernet.

The StorCenter supports multiple network file protocols, including Microsoft's CIFS and SMB, NFS from Linux and Unix, and Apple's AFP and Bonjour. Basic HTTP and FTP protocols also are supported. The hard drives can work in RAID 0 or 1 configurations.

Other data-protection features include a journaling file system that prevents data loss in the event of a power failure. Backup software, EMC Retrospect Express, and two client licenses come with the drive.

Nothing special is required for the client machine to access the StorCenter. Iomega supports all flavors of Windows Vista and XP as well as Windows 2000 Professional, Mac OS X 10.2.7 or higher, Red Hat 9, Mandrake 10, Debian 3, Gentoo and FedoraCore 3. PCs should have at least 256 Mbytes of memory, and Macs 128 Mbytes. The clients must be part of the same Ethernet network as the StorCenter.

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