Addonics NASU2 micro USB NAS adaptor

Tiny gadget that shares your USB HDD on the network

Setting the thing up is straightforward. The accompanying CD has a small Java applet that's used to find the IP address the Adaptor's grabbed off the network's DHCP server, though the unit can operate as a DHCP server in its own right. Since the connection app's written in Java, it'll run on any platform. After it's located the NAS Adaptor, click the Connect button to call up your browser and log into the admin console.

A cross-platform Java app finds the NAS on your network

Here, you've got access to the customary array of settings, which govern how the NAS Adaptor interacts with the network, what services it offers and some disk maintenance tools. The Disk Utility section, for example, allows you to format the connected drive, check it for errors and set the period of inactivity after which it tells the drive to spin down.

The NAS Adaptor comes pre-set with SMB and FTP enabled, with guest and anonymous access pre-defined. Adding more users and setting which shares they can access - creating a new user automatically sets up a private share for them - and whether they have read-only or read-write permission for them is straightforward.

The Addonics box doesn't let you corral users into groups, and there's no support for disk quotas. Let's be clear: this is NAS lite - it doesn't offer the array of controls a full-scale NAS box like Netgear's ReadyNAS series or WD's ShareSpace does.

Check or format the connected HDD from the admin console

SMB and FTP are the only major protocols the NAS Adaptor supports, but it does have a BitTorrent tool on board for grabbing material without tying up your computer. The Admin console has a Media Server section, which is headed "X-BOX360 Media Server", so we assume it's a UPnP server. It's also an iTunes server, so music stored in the nominated share can be picked up and played - DRM permitting - on any machine running iTunes.