Now Seagate Has a Really Simple, Really Cheap Home NAS Solution

Recently the manufacturing trend in mainstream network storage has been to eschew using Microsoft's Windows Home Server packages, which is basically a low-powered PC, and coming up with their own proprietary machines. Seagate's? Basically just a hard drive.

It's the GoFlex Home, the networked version of their GoFlex Desk. When I say "networked", I mean that you can literally take the hard drive part out of a GoFlex Desk and dock it into a GoFlex Home and it will work just fine. Keep in mind that it doesn't actually come with that router in the image above, that's just to illustrate that it's a networked drive. But it does come with that docking station that the drive sits on.

The NAS—they don't want to call it a NAS—works just like most up-to-date NASes do: Time Machine support, streaming content to media players (Xbox 360, PS3) around your network, USB printer support, third-party real-time backup, remote access with your iPhone/iPad and smartphone as well as Facebook and Flickr integration. The bonus stuff like the remote access and Facebook/Flickr need you to pay a bit extra, but most people who just need cheap network storage will make do with what you get out of the box.

Seagate also stresses the 5 minute setup/installation as well, meaning they're really aiming at the first-time NAS buyer who doesn't want to get into the complicated (but useful) Windows Home Server setup style. But, for these people, you get the ability to easily share your content on your local network with, grandma, all by just generating a link for her to click on.

It comes in 1TB and 2TB sizes, and will MSRP for about $30ish more than similar-sized GoFlex Desk drives. So look at the MSRP to be $160 and $230 for the 1TB and 2TB sizes, but the real prices will ultimately again be slightly cheaper ($140 and $200). [Seagate]