I also did IOzone runs using the Office's USB2 interface and the 80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 ATA/133 drive in the IOzone test machine. In general, cached performance was comparable, but I thought the non-cached results were interesting.

Figure 8: Comparison of non-cached Write performance - 1GByte file size
(click on the image for a larger view)

Figures 8 and 9 show fastest non-cached Write and Read speed is obtained using the Office's USB2 interface - beating out even the internal hard drive. The read testing, however, showed a significant drop in HD performance such that the Office NDAS mode was about comparable to the Maxtor drive.

Figure 9: Comparison of non-cached Read performance - 1GByte file size
(click on the image for a larger view)

Keep in mind, though, that sharing the disk via NDAS mode can also incur a performance hit due to contention from multiple users. In all, however, I'd say you'll be happy with NetDisk's speed no matter which way you use it.