Dane-Elec MyDitto Home review

The two-disk 1TB MyDitto is designed to be easy to setup and secure to access remotely. It achieves this through USB keys that each user must connect to their PC. There are two types of key: administrators, which can change settings, and users, which can just access files. It seems like a neat idea, but it’s very restrictive.

For starters, there’s no way of creating additional shared folders beyond the Public share, which everyone can access, and each user’s own shard folder. There are also precious few options, bar turning UPnP and iTunes media streaming on or off. While these settings are controlled through the file browser software on the USB key, it’s odd that RAID settings and the BitTorrent client have to be accessed through a web browser.

The file browser software has to be used for remote access, but we found it very basic. Fortunately, over a LAN you can use Explorer to access the shared folders.

Software annoyances aside, the MyDitto was also slow when transferring files. In RAID 1 mode, large files were read at 15.7MB/s and written at 10.2MB/s. Small files were equally sluggish, read at 6.5MB/s and written at 6.4MB/s. A marginal speed boost came from switching to RAID 0, but overall performance was below average.

At 16p per gigabyte, it’s an inexpensive network storage device. Although the extra USB protection might reassure the security-conscious, multiple users or anyone looking for more than basic functionality will quickly get frustrated with the MyDitto’s limitations. If you want a RAID 1 NAS on a budget then for around £40 more you could buy the excellent Synology DS210j plus two 500GB hard disks.