The Maxtor Shared Storage unit is available as a 200 or 300 GB NAS, with two additional USB 2.0 ports for attaching additional storage drives (4GB FAT32 maximum, so I have read, but I have personally not attempted to access a second drive connected via the USB port) and USB printers. The unit comes with a Windows configuation tool, but can also be administrated via its built-in web interface. There is no mention of OS X compatability anywhere on the box, but I am able to use both the shared storage and printer with no fuss. This appears to be a Samba-based system, so you can browse/mount shares like you would any Windows Workgroup using the finder.
I had a little trouble with the printer because the share name is set automatically based on the USB info, and it was a little too long (or a bug chopped off the last character). I had to use the "Advanced" method mentioned in another hint to add the printer as a Windows printer and type out the smb:// URI correctly. It worked like a charm afterwards (using a Brother HL-1440 Laser with Brother's CUPS drivers). So fear not, if you are considering this unit for your Mac/PC LAN, it works very well. I am seeing about 8MB/s downloading and 6MB/s uploading to this drive.
On a side note, I originally had this connected to a Linkss PSUS4 switch/print server, but performance was terrible! I swapped the PSUS4 for another Linksys switch (EtherFast 10/100 EZXS88W), and that fixed it. Also, I am using firmware version 1.1.6 (it came with 1.0.8), which fixed a bug with setting a static IP on the NAS along with who knows what else. Firmware is on the Maxtor site, and is upgraded through the web interface, so no Wintel PC required for the upgrades.
This NAS has a feature that will automatically sort files into specific folders (Movies, Music, Pictures, etc) based on the ending suffix (jpg, mpeg, avi, etc). I found I could not write into these folders directly, so I just disabled the feature (have to use the Windows Config Utility for this one item... lame!) and deleted the folders. This only affects the "Public" share. I dont believe this feature has any impact on any new shares you create. You also only have control of who has read/write access to a share, no GB limits on shares. They all share the available space on the drive.
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