When we read that Co-World promised a transfer rate of 60 MB/s for the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro, we already expected it to be a good deal faster than conventional devices. However, we never expected that the NDAS technology would work so well that it presents practically no bottleneck for SATA drives.

The WD Raptor drive we used to test the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro’s capabilities is a rather ill-suited match, though, due to its high thermal output. It did, however, allow us to determine that the Co-World unit offers two to three times the performance of other NAS devices and is the first network storage device that practically doesn’t slow down even current hard drives. Since it doesn’t have any fans, it is also very quiet. In order to use the ShareDisk, you will need the driver and the slim client application – which automatically limits the potential user base to Windows and Mac OS users. On the other hand, the NDAS approach isn’t really designed with large workgroups in mind anyway. In addition to the Gigabit Ethernet interface, the ShareDisk can also be attached using USB 2.0 or eSATA. Naturally, this last option offers the best performance, although the difference compared to network operation are only tangible when writing to the drive.

Due to its proprietary protocol, calling the ShareDisk Gigabit Pro a NAS device is almost a misnomer. After all, accessing the device without the appropriate driver is impossible, which locks out devices such as handhelds, Xboxes and the like. You can get around this limitation by creating a network share on a client computer using Windows or Mac OS with the appropriate user rights, but of course this also requires that client computer to be running.

The look and feel of the Co-World device was also up to our expectations. We don’t expect to see the hand-soldered board we found in our review sample to appear in the retail models. As far as price is concerned, you should expect to pay around €350 for the 500 GB version. Compared to other professional NAS devices using a single hard drive, that’s a fair price, though – especially considering the outstanding performance. Co-World also lets you combine two ShareDisks into a RAID array. If you’re leaning in this direction, you should also take a look at the Professional models, as these are designed to house up to eight hard drives.