The case of the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro is based on a design that we have already seen used for other external drives. It is made of aluminium and contains a drive tray which houses the 3.5” SATA hard drive. Co-World ships all of its ShareDisk Gigabit Pro models with a hard drive pre-installed. You can choose between models containing 250, 320, 400, and 500GB drives, although from a technological perspective, there is nothing that would prevent you from using a 750 GB or 1 TB model instead. However, installing or exchanging the drive requires nimble fingers, as the hard drive has to be mounted underneath the circuit board, cables and all (see photo further down). This means that the drive first needs to be inserted using the drive tray, after which the cables have to be attached individually – which can be a challenge, due to the confined space and their small size. Once this is achieved, the final step is securing the drive in place with screws.

To test the performance of the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro, we chose to use a Western Digital WD740 Raptor that has a much higher data transfer rate than the 60 MB/s (read rate) advertised for this device by Co-World. Co-World equips the Share Disk Gigabit Pro with a Molex plug to power the internal hard drive. Luckily, this worked out okay for the Raptor we were using. Most modern hard drives only possess the newer SATA power connector, though. Co-World bundles an adapter cable with the drive for such a case.

Once the drive is re-sealed, powered up, and attached, you can choose from one of three interfaces, namely USB 2.0, eSATA, and an Ethernet interface for either 100 MBit/s or 1 GBit/s. Sadly, the interfaces can only be used one at a time. If, for example, you connected a USB 2.0 cable, the network interface is automatically deactivated. While this is unfortunate, it does seem to be par for the course these days, as we have seen the same thing in all other storage solutions that offer multiple interfaces. It’s always an either-or decision.

Unlike other NAS devices, an IP address is not required during the ShareDisk’s setup and installation. Instead, you simply enter the device ID, which consists of four blocks of five characters each that can be found on the bottom of the drive. You can find the so-called Write Key, which is programmed into the device’s circuit board and can’t be changed, right below. You will only be able to write to the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro if you enter this key during the installation or type it into the client’s management software. Otherwise, that client will be limited to write-only operation. This brings us to one of the device’s limitations. As a result of this concept, user management like that found in most other NAS devices cannot be implemented. Instead, you can only decide whether you want a client to be able to write as well as ready.

Whichever you decide, the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro will appear in the Windows Explorer or the Mac Desktop as a new drive once the NDAS drivers are installed – just like any normal drive installed inside the computer. The principle is reminiscent of iSCSI in so-called SAN environments (Storage Attached Network). This method encapsulates the SCSI protocol inside TCP/IP and integrates disk volumes made available through iSCSI targets using Clients (Initiators).

The simple operating principle based on the NDAS driver grants the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro what conventional NAS devices lack, namely high performance. Our WD Raptor had no trouble at all far surpassing the 60 MB/s transfer rate specified for the device. The results of our low-level benchmarks also showed that it offered virtually the same performance as if the drive had been attached directly via SATA or eSATA. A transfer rate of just under 90 MB/s and a seek time of 8 ms is outstanding. Performance would still be very good even with a slower hard drive. Our WD Raptor, which spins at 10.000 rpm and consequently generates a fair amount of heat, is not very well suited to the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro, which lacks active cooling. This could lead to a drive’s early demise as a result of overheating. As we already mentioned above, we conducted this test only to determine the device’s full performance potential. We would consider this a complete success.

Another drawback of the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro’s dependence on the driver becomes apparent when trying to access the same data from various clients. For devices lacking the driver or unable to install it, direct access over the network is impossible. As far as such clients are concerned, the device doesn’t exist. Seen in this light, the only thing the ShareDisk only has the network connection in common with a NAS device. If you wanted to access it from a device such as an Xbox or a similar device, you would first create a network share of it on a client PC that has the driver and then make it available.

We were very taken with the device’s bundle. Co-World ships its ShareDisk Gigabit Pro with an installation tool that sets the device up in a matter of minutes, a tool for creating CD and DVD images (which can easily be stored on the ShareDisk), as well as the backup solution Acronis TrueImage. However, only the basic version of this last application is included, and it is up to the user to upgrade to the full version which offers additional features (for a fee).