Seagate DockStar makes online storage a snap

Every once in awhile a great technology idea comes along that makes me think: "Why didn't I think of that? " Last year's Pogoplug was certainly such an idea. It basically is small adapter that turns USB storage into not only a NAS, but it also turns it into a web file server share.

Well, this product just got better with their drive manufacturing partner Seagate.

Seagate has built a hard drive dock called the DockStar ($79-$99) with a Pogoplug and USB hub built-in. The little device can turn an inexpensive 500GB portable hard drive into a great network share. Take a look at the beauty below:

The setup is super easy. you just plug your devices in and go to my.pogoplug.com. A wizard takes you through a few steps and you are online. Sharing your files is as easy as entering an email address. Getting local disk access requires downloading a small file, runing it and entering your username and password. The disk will be mounted at boot time if you'd like or can be mounted manually.

What is great about this is that you can, of course, use Seagate drives in the dock, but you can also throw on some of your old USB hard drives or even a USB Flash stick. Instantly, all of your drives are now NAS drives and available to you from any computer in the house or any Internet connected device in the world.

That includes the iPhone, which has a free Pogoplug app. Just for kicks, I threw a season of Seinfeld onto the device and opened my iPhone. I now have access to a season of Seinfeld wherever I am - including over 3G network (not that I can ever get a signal with AT&T) -without clogging up my iPhone.

Conceivably, I could just throw all of my media files on here and have my own little Internet media server. I just might.

It also is a great way to share photos. We just uploaded all of the pictures of my sister-in-law's wedding and invited everyone in the family to download them and upload their own.

But the the usefulness of this little gadget isn't just for home. It also extends to small business. I've worked in many places where people couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of FTP. They'd always resort to Yousendit or call up IT and have them upload the file manually. This device could make small business file sharing (even more) stupid simple. As an IT admin, all you'd have to do is set up some shares and tell people where to drop their stuff.

While I certainly see myself using this device in the future, it does have some drawbacks. Currently there is no automated way to back up this device automatically. They've told me that they are working on that however. The device is free for the first year but requires a $30/year charge after the first year. That breaks down to about $2.50/month.

Also, I am seeing some random connectivity errors - especially on the iPhone. Since the device was only released today, I expect it to get much more stable. I am seeing updates happen fairy often. You also can't currently use the data share as a Time Capsule backup.

There are many things about this device to love, however. It is small and efficient occupying about 3x3 inches sitting on your desk and weighs about one pound. Because it uses laptop drives, it is much smaller more energy efficient than typical NAS drives.

That doesn't mean it doesn't scale up. You could throw just one $200 2TB USB drive and have an absurd amount of online storage -something that would cost much more online. Heck, you could add two more and have 6TB of storage.

For $80 ($99 retail), you really get a lot with this product. I wouldn't hesitate to reccomend it to anyone looking for super simple, super inexpensive home NAS and online storage.