If you’re looking for a simple, easy-to-set-up network hard drive, the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive is right down your alley. Available in 500GB (US$160) and 1TB ($210) sizes, the Home Media Network Hard Drive is simple. It is one disk, no complicated RAID setup and one simple program to install.

Once that program is installed, it finds your network hard drive and allows you to configure it. Any time the program is running and you connect to the network your drive is attached to, it finds and mounts the shared volumes on the drive.

You can store your iTune library there and share it with everyone else on the network.If you have devices like a network-connected digital picture frame, you can store your images and serve them up to the frame.

You can use the disk just like a server, storing anything you can normally store for use on the network.

You can attach one USB printer and, as long as you have the drivers on each computer on the network, use it just like a network printer (which it technically becomes). I would recommend that if you plan to share a printer, you set a static IP address on the device, because if the hard drive gets a different address the next time it boots, you’ll need to set up the printer again.

The drive includes a copy of Retrospect Express (PC and Mac) so that you can automatically back up one machine to the drive (the software is not limited to the Iomega drive). And the package includes 2GB free backup storage on EMC (Iomega’s parent company) Mozy Online Backup service.

The Good

Easy to set up. Volumes mount automatically when Home Storage Manager program is running.

The Bad

I found that sometimes Home Storage Manager would quit if I left the drives mounted and took my MacBookPro to work, where there is no Network Hard Drive. Got the disconnect all message, which I clicked OK on, and the program would quit. I don’t think it crashed, it just quit.

The Ugly

Nothing to see here.

Is this drive something you just have to have? Probably not. But is it a worthy competitor in the network hard drive field? You bet. Its simplicity of setup is its best feature.

Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10