Seagate is shipping a Linux-based network-attached storage device claimed capable of providing data security to homes or small offices. The Maxtor Shared Storage II is a dual-drive appliance with gigabit Ethernet, two USB ports, a capacity of 1,000GB, and DLNA-compliant media server software from Mediabolic.

(Click for larger view of Maxtor Shared Storage II)

Seagate, best known for relatively quiet, high-quality AV-grade hard drives, acquired value drive vendor Maxtor in May of this year. The drives within the SSII appear to be Maxtor models spinning at 7200rpm, with 16MB of cache. The SSII appears to be based on a Mediabolic reference design based on a Marvell Orion 88F5182 “media vault processor.”

Seagate says its new Maxtor Shared Storage II appliance complies with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) guidelines, allowing it to interoperate with digital entertainment devices from many other vendors. No PCs or Macs need be active in order to share and stream digital files, Seagate says, citing the example of a family streaming music in one room, movies in another, and photos in a third.

Seagate says its Maxtor storage appliance comes with an “EasyManage” CD that helps users create public and private network shares, without special knowledge. The disk has a utility offering a graphical view of backup and storage status for all users, and a “Drag and Sort” application said to automatically identify and sort 100 different file types, putting them in specific music, photo, movie, Web, software, or documents folders.

The SSII can be configured in RAID 0 and 1 configurations, and supports scheduled backups to external USB drives, for added data security. It can also serve USB-attached printers.

Availability

The Maxtor Shared Storage II is shipping in July to “major retailers, distributors and online stores,” Seagate says. It has an MSRP of $900, and an apparent street price of just over $700.

Mediabolic's Media Server software is also available in Linux-based storage appliances from Buffalo, and reference designs from Freescale, PMC-Sierra, Broadcom, Toshiba, and IBM.

Linux-based storage appliances for small offices and home users are also available from Infrant, Intel, and others.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.