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Addonics NASU2 micro USB NAS adaptor

Tiny gadget that shares your USB HDD on the network

Addonics wants $55 (£37/€42) for the NAS Adaptor. Now you can almost certainly find a cheaper drive enclosure with a built-in Ethernet port and a similar array of on-board servers, but we'd pay the very small premium simply to connect up a spare external drive without the faff of swapping enclosures around. We're assuming anyone who's in the market for the Addonics already has a drive to use since, again, buying a fresh network-connectable drive will be cheaper than buying a new drive and the adaptor.

Addonics NASU2 NAS adaptor

BitTorrent downloads done in the background

We've noted that the Addonics box isn't for anyone who's looking for full-to-the-brim NAS functionality. You get what it does and nothing more, and you won't be able to load up third-party NAS-oriented server apps, like player-specific music streamers, for instance.

Equally, it's not a high-performance product, as much because it's limited to 100Mb/s as much as anything else, and there's no RAID. No, this isn't going to replace or stand in for a ReadyNAS box or even an Apple TimeCapsule - it doesn't support Mac OS X's TimeMachine auto back-up feature out of the box, though with a fair bit of hackery you may well get it to work.

Addonics NASU2 NAS adaptor

User account support is basic, but sufficient

The NAS Adaptor is essentially a first-step NAS product, allowing you to take an existing external hard drive and network it. Quite apart from the price, if you're starting literally from scratch, you'll probably prefer a single-box set-up to cut down on the cable clutter. But the Addonics unit has the advantage that it'll be easier to upgrade over time, and has functionality enough for most folks' needs.

Verdict

Addonics' NAS Adaptor is reasonably cheap and it's easy to use. It has a decent entry-level network storage feature set. If your home network is NAS-less and you have a spare USB hard drive handy, the NASU2 is a good way to get some share storage up and running. ®

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Addonics NASU2 micro USB NAS adaptor

It's cheap, easy to use and provides a decent home network file-sharing experience.
Price: $55 (£37) RRP

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