Iomega StorCenter ix2 2TB review

Iomega's StorCenter ix2 is the newest addition to its range of NAS drives. Finished in gun-metal grey and housed in a reassuringly weighty metal shell, the ix2 looks like it means business.

With 2TB spread across two 7,200rpm, 32MB cache drives there's no shortage of storage. And these drives can be configured in mirrored RAID1 or JBOD arrays. Performance was disappointing, however. Writing large files saw the ix2 manage just 11MB/sec. Transferring small files proved taxing, with write speeds dropping to 9MB/sec. Read speeds weren't a lot quicker, with large and small files reaching 18MB/sec and 14MB/sec respectively.

The ix2 goes some way towards making up for its deficiencies by virtue of its ease of use. Installation was rapid and the web interface clear. A dashboard on the web interface's front page gives a quick overview of disk usage and lists connected USB devices. The twin USB ports at the ix2's rear support storage drives, printers and even some Bluetooth dongles.

Elsewhere, the ix2 boasts FTP, iTunes and UPnP media servers, and there's also Axis support for direct recording from IP security cameras. EMC's Retrospect HD comes bundled to deal with workstation backup.

Iomega gave us access to a unit running the latest beta firmware that adds AFP protocol support, remote access, DDNS and a BitTorrent server, and these improvements will be available by the time you read this.

Despite this, the StorCenter ix2 is unremarkable. Performance is average, and other drives such as Netgear's Duo offer more comprehensive features for slightly more cash.

Author: Sasha Muller