In The Box

All right then... you've built yourself a killer system and have accessorized to the point where you've run out of USB ports. While the hard drive space was plentiful in the beginning, you've now come to a point in time where your downloading habits have outpaced your available storage. You've been checking out the line-up of external hard drive enclosures but really don't want to lose any of your USB toys. But wait; you've got a small home network or a second LAN port built into the mainboard!

If this sounds anything like your own life, then the LanDisk offers to help you out in the realms of mass storage. The ability to add additional storage apart from the main system by means of a network storage device may seem a blessing to those in dire need.

Once you crack open the box you'll see the components shown above. You get the external drive enclosure, a power adapter, a Molex cable for the drive used, a small IDE ribbon cable, a network patch cable, screws to mount your hard drive and an instruction manual. Most of the components don't need a lot of explanation so we'll start off with the main unit, the enclosure itself.

The front of the enclosure is pretty basic stuff. You get a shaded plastic panel that goes a good ways in the terms of helping the unit look good. Behind the plastic panel is a series of LED lights that indicate status monitoring of the drive. In order, the lights indicate data transfer, LAN connectivity, connection to a computer, hard drive activity and power. While nothing particularly earth shattering, it is nice to see that you can tell what is going on with the device at a glance.

Turning the unit around shows us a power port, an On-Off switch, a standard RJ-45 networking port, and a small reset button towards the top. Again, we're not seeing outrageous features, but we see enough to allow us control over our components.

To disassemble the enclosure, you simply remove two screws and everything else just comes apart. You'll also notice that the framework surrounding the hard drive is made of metal for a change instead of a flimsy plastic shell. This will help protect your hard drive after you install it. It won't help you if you drop the unit, but small jolts aren't likely to damage either the drive or the data it contains.

Above is a quick inventory of the cabling included with this product.