Western Digital Essentials NetCenter 320GB review

Verdict:

Review Date: 27 Apr 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The NetCenter lacks features such as an FTP server or UPnP media server, but it provides 320GB of storage at 64p per gigabyte.

Plugging in a USB hard disk allows its contents to be shared across the network. However, you can't use the same port to schedule backups of data stored on the NetCenter to an external drive.

We encountered an annoying bug in the NetCenter's firmware. The NetCenter often changes or ignores certain file attributes, arbitrarily changing a file's creation date, say, or making invisible files, such as MP3 album art, visible. A firmware update has been promised. Performance was below average, particularly for reading and writing big files.

The NetCenter is cheaper than its competitors, but we think it's worth spending more. An extra £50 buys the Buffalo Gigabit LinkStation, while an extra £90 buys the more impressive Maxtor Shared Storage Plus 500GB.

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