Seagate's GoFlex Home is a ever-so-slightly more convenient NAS


You probably remember the GoFlex system, a recent Seagate innovation that adds some versatility to their drives at the cost of you having to buy adapters from them in order to achieve said versatility. Well, the family has a new member in the GoFlex Home, which is a GoFlex-type NAS.

It plugs into your router and provides the usual NAS services: streaming media to compatible devices, automatic wireless backup, and so on. But what makes it a GoFlex? Glad you asked. While you’ll buy the Home with a 1TB or 2TB drive included, you can swap out the one you bought with a larger GoFlex drive or add storage to the USB slot on the back, there.

I’m not sure I see the utility here. If you’re planning on buying one of these and then, say, upgrading it in a year, why not just spend the money now on a Drobo or another multi-drive NAS? Simplicity is one answer, of course, and the GoFlex Home seems to be pretty much plug-and-play, but 2TB for the whole family is going to fill up pretty fast and you’re going to wish you had three or four drive slots to put naked HDDs in.

Anyway, the 1TB will run you $160, and the 2TB will go for $230. It seems like a bit much to me, considering the variety of NAS systems out there. GoFlex is a good idea for power users, but for the home NAS market, it doesn’t seem to bring much to the party.