1. Introduction

I've looked at a number of disk-included Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices lately, but this time I'm going to take a look at a couple of "bring your own disk" (BYOD) boxes.

After my last review of Maxtor's Shared Storage Drive, a reader pointed out an issue that I had not considered. With some of the devices that include a disk, if the disk fails out of warranty, the device becomes useless. The consumer can't replace the disk with a new one because often the disk itself contains part of the operating system.

But with a device where the drive is not included, the consumer can always replace or upgrade the disk because by definition, the firmware has the ability to initialize a new disk. BYOD devices can also help you save a few bucks, especially if, like many of us, you have a spare IDE drive (or two) lying around or salvageable from a retired PC.

In this review, I'm going to compare two inexpensive BYOD devices - the Tritton Simple NAS and the Hawking Technologies Net-Stor. Both of these companies sell these products either with or without an included disk. But for my review, I'm going to look at the versions that don't include a disk.