Freecom Dual Drive Network Center 2TB review

Using the Dual Drive to stream high definition video to a network media player worked fine as long as we didn’t use the Dual Drive for anything else at the same time. Copying files to and from the Dual Drive in the background caused the HD clip to drop frames occasionally. Standard definition videos played flawlessly even with background drive use and we had no problems using the Dual Drive as an iTunes music server.

We couldn’t get the NAS to share a USB printer across our network – strangely, the web interface recognised out Samsung laser printer as a storage device. We had no trouble sharing an USB disk, though. BitTorrent files can be downloaded in the background without the aid of a computer. Unfortunately the interface for managing downloads is integrated into the main administration interface. This isn’t ideal if you want to give users the ability to download files, but don’t want them messing with more sensitive settings.

The 2TB Freecom Dual Drive Network Center is an affordable NAS at just 10p per gigabyte, but Seagate’s similarly priced Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 4TB is even cheaper at just 5p per gigabyte. It’s not much faster, but it’s the better choice if you just want lots of network storage.