For reasons pertaining to data organization and data transfer already outlined above, NAS solutions may be flexible in principle but can only be optimized for performance with a good deal of effort. For this reason, Co-World is instead opting for a technology that circumvents the limitations of TCP/IP by using its own protocol. It builds on the NDAS technology (Network Direct Attached Storage) licensed from Ximeta. NDAS requires the operating system to have a driver which allows it to communicate directly with the ShareDisk devices and also handles all the computationally intensive data conversion from file system to TCP/IP. A ShareDisk is thus mounted as a new drive right in the Windows Explorer and accessed directly on the file-system level as though it were a local drive. Of course, there’s nothing limiting this system to hard drives – optical drives and other storage devices based on the Serial-ATA interface will work just as well.

We’ve already mentioned that the NDAS technology brings a significant performance increase to the table. The device was also very easy to handle throughout our entire test period. However, NDAS also has some drawbacks, the biggest being its drivers. Windows and Mac OS are not a problem, as all current versions are supported. Linux distributions, Netware and Solaris are a different matter entirely, as no drivers are provided for any of them. As a result, the ShareDisk products are not suited as backend storage solutions in larger companies but are more at home in the SOHO segment. This makes a lot of sense, too, since this is where the largest data growth rate is occurring, namely users’ files.

Co-World offers a full line of products under the ShareDisk name. The portfolio begins with the ShareDisk portable, a storage product based on a single 3.5” hard drive sporting both a USB 2.0 port and a network interface. For our test, we were sent a model called the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro that also comes with USB 2.0, but features a faster 1000 MBit/s network adapter as well as an eSATA port.

The ShareDisk Professional line comprises solutions for between two and eight SATA drives. As we mentioned before, these solutions are not limited to hard drives, as the NDAS technology works with optical drives such as a DVD-ROM as well. For the most part, these larger Professional variants use active cooling to manage their temperatures, while the regular ShareDisk drives all make do without mechanical cooling such as fans.