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You guys know that I am an amateur cook? And when I use the term cook, I use it liberally. And I am not that good at it too. I remember cooking some simple beef a while back and I followed the supposedly try and tested recipes and methods – marinate the meat overnight and use fast and high heat (grilling) to cook it. Turned out to be overdone and tough. The next try, I cut the time used to grill the meat, turned out a bit tasteless. Anyway, at least I am improving. The recent batches of food that I cook actually was a mark improvement than the previous attempts. Even my parents are starting to trust me with the preparation of the food. They used to only ask me to cut a few pieces of vegetables before chasing me out of the kitchen. Now I am doing some of the actual cooking. In all honesty, I think it is something to be proud of.

Anyway if you are thinking of going on to a barbeque, you might want to think of “rubs”. Basically they are a dry mix of spices and herbs that you “rub” them on the meats before you grill them. They are different from marinates as they are rubbed immediately before you put on the grill. The marinades on the other hand should be on the meats for hours, preferably overnight. That way, they are absorbed into the meats. Rubs are easy – you just rub them on the meat and don’t really have to worry about them when you do the grilling.

Hmmm….Nantucket Off-Shore Dragon Rub. Asian seasoning for grills and woks. Remember the “Asians” Americans think of might not be the “Asians” that we are. I am guessing that it is much easier to lump all “Asians” into one big group. Just like how we lump “Whites” into one big group – “Western Food” but in actual fact, there are so many types of “Western Food” out there.

And is that a dragon with a pair of chopsticks grilling the food with its own flame at the Great Wall of China? What’s up with that?

No Salt. All Natural. The exotic and assertive flavours of pan-Asian cooking are combined with yin-yang balance in our Dragon Rub. Rub it on meat, poultry, fish and vegetables before grilling, broiling or baking. Sprinkle into stir-frys. Dragon Rub is also sensational blended into marinades and barbecue or saute sauces. What are saute sauces?

Some directions for use – lightly coat surface of uncooked food with sesame or vegetable oil; drizzle with citrus juice, soy or fish sauce. Rub with Dragon Rub to taste. For stir-frying, mix unto liquid ingredients or sprinkle on food while cooking. The ingredients are lemon grass, ginger, Chinese garlic, Chinese cinnamon, star anise, cloves, lime peel, green onion, cilantro, turmeric, red pepper and sesame seed. And this is a product of the USA!

As usual, I bought this from iHerb. My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60. Be safe when shopping online.

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Yet another soap for review. I actually have been using the Dr Woods Liquid Black Soap for a few months already. And I must say it is one of the best soaps I have ever used. Of course it is not perfect but it is very close. My skin is definitely better and it works very well for the hair too. For lazy people like me, I guess I cannot ask for more. But since I have been online shopping at iHerb (which can be rather poisonous for my wallet), I have come across numerous brands and types of soap, some of which have rather good reviews. So I decide to try them. This bar of soap is from the same manufacturer of the liquid black soap I have been using, so it should be good. Hopefully.

About 149g of soap. Made with organic shea butter, cocoa butter and oats. I am guessing that they are supposed to be good for your skin. Anyway, this is an “exfoliating body bar” which is also rejuvenating. I don’t really get any kicks from bathing with this kind of soap. All I want is my skin to be clean and not that rough. I have been suffering from sensitive skin since I was young. If I don’t get rashes after bathing, I consider that good already.

All things good?? We want to feel good in all ways – from what we put on our skin or in our body, to how we treat others and our environment. We want to feel special and indulged, without being wasteful or robbing future generations of our natural resources. That’s why we strive to use only the most natural, effective and sustainable ingredients we can find. We make everything here in the USA but search the world sourcing the finest ingredients for our products to create a brand we believe in….a brand that makes a difference by doing what’s right for you, your family and our planet. Hey, this is good. Just imagine destroying the planet and making things difficult for our children in the future. It makes no sense. That is why I always support such brands. Better than those big crappy companies which dirty and destroy the environment so that they can make exact profits.

Made in the USA! Eco-friendly and 100% vegan. Just wonder what kind of ingredients do other soaps are made from.

Some interesting information – our raw black soap with organic Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter and Osats is a moisturizing, deep cleansing exfoliant that’s effective on all skin types. Rich in nutrients, Vitamins A and E, our natural Antioxidant formula helps regenerate skin cells and neutralizes free radicals. In addition to restoring your skin’s natural elasticity, our unique combination of Organic Shea Butter and Cocoa Butter will luxuriously moisturize your skin and give it a healthy glow. We guarantee it. Dr Woods proudly supports women’s cooperatives in Africa that process thee plantains and harvest the Shea nuts used in our Raw Black Soap with Shea Butter. Indulge with good intentions. Hope that what they say is true.

Some ingredients.

Check it out – Black soap is not black at all. More like milky. If you were to check out the real black soap on eBay, they are indeed black. Yes, they do look like lumps of crap someone just left behind after doing their “big” business. But I am guessing disgusting looking black soap would not sell very well in the markets of the developed world. So they are left with no choice but to make it look more presentable. I hope that they don’t take out too much of the good stuff that makes black soaps one of the best types of soap in the world.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60

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Woohooo! Got another dried mango snack to try out. As you guys should know by now, I am a big fan of dried mangoes. I think it is because I can’t really take mangoes. Often I will get a bit feverish after consuming them, but I guess this is the main objective of life – trying out stuff which are not exactly good for you. Some people like to jump off perfectly good aeroplanes or something like that, I like to eat stuff which makes me feverish. But honestly, dried mangoes taste fanatic! They are slightly sour and sweet. Plus the texture (if done right) is superb. I like mine slightly wet and soft. Some of my friends would rather choose dried mangoes that are very thin and dry because it is much easier to eat them like that. Well, each to their own.

And no, I didn’t buy this from iHerb. One of my friends bought for me from Malaysia. If I am not wrong, you can’t find this brand in Singapore. Or at least it can be a bit difficult to source for them. Overall, the taste is quite good. It is a bit too sweet but then again, the brand is SunSWEET.

The Sunsweet Premium Varietal Mango. Philippines Grown. Nice, comes with a resealable pack. But quite useless for me, since I can finish one pack in a single sitting. There is only about 140g of dried mangoes there. I hope that the boycott of Jolibee by Singaporeans don’t extend to mangoes. It is kind of sad to see Singaporeans picking on the wrong group of people. The problem isn’t Filipinos or Jolibee. The problem is the Singapore government. The “boycott” just makes Singaporeans look Xenophobic, something which the Singapore government is trying to demonize us as.

Back of the pack. They claim that I have found the best. So go ahead and indulge. Eat Sunsweet Premium varietal Philippine Grown Mango for a healthy and satisfying treat. Enjoy Philippine Grown Mango anytime for a super tasty snack that’s plum full of nutrients. naturally flavourful and sweet, with just enough tartness to tantalize our taste buds. Ok!

Wow, check out the antioxidant score! I am wondering after drying the mangoes and adding don’t know what preservatives and sugar, how much of the antioxidants still remain? I am guessing quite a lot will be lost right? You don’t expect the antioxidants to remain once the fruit has been removed from the trees right? Sadly, you can never beat fresh fruits in terms of the health benefits. Of course you can always try fermenting them…..

Some nutritional information.

The ingredients are dried mango, sugar and sulfur dioxide. Actually not too bad lah. I was hoping that they ditch the preservatives since from what I know, dried mangoes do keep very well.

Yes, it is slightly moist, just the way I like it. Don’t give me that extremely dried piece of Mango jerky. Tough to eat and taste like long pieces of candy which I feel is like of weird. Give them to the kids. But of course it might be a little difficult to make kids enjoy dried tough mango strips.

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Very nice this one. I was pleasantly surprised. However do note that this is not actual licorice since it is made from only brown rice syrup and not molasses. Real licorice is made from molasses to give that complex and rich flavour. This is basically just normal soft candy in the licorice style. If you would like slightly healthier candy, licorice would be it. Since this is “all-natural”, that would mean that it is made from natural ingredients. Of course I have absolutely no idea what natural ingredients really means. But then who cares. As long as it tastes decent, I am all for it.

And yes, I bought this from iHerb. Readers might think that I own shares in iHerb but I don’t. The main reason why I shop at iHerb is because it is much cheaper than what you will find in Singapore. And since the shipping charges are very reasonable, overall it is still cheaper than Cold Storage or whatever new-age stores you can find. I got the VIP status as well, so there is an even further discount for me.

The Natural Vines Straweberry Soft Licorice. 226g of very delicious licorice. You won’t find any “licorice” flavour – it is probably overwhelmed by the strawberry flavour. That is the way I like it. When I was growing up, my parents would throw licorice at me, telling me to eat them rather than the other candies. It never grew on me. I know friends who just faints at the sound of the word “licorice”. I am wondering how many of you guys grew up eating licorice? The poor Brits seem to like Licorice. As well as that scientist fellow in Fringe. They must have been indoctrinate from young. And they have very bad taste. Hope that they will be just old relict of an age gone by.

Back of the pack.

Hmmm….connoisseurs know that a truly satisfying licorice made from only the finest, all-natural ingredients is almost unheard of – until now. Made exclusively from all-natural food sources, Natural Vines brand licorice has no preservatives and contains only high quality ingredients, as you would expect from a gourmet licorice. Wow, I definitely didn’t know this is a gourmet treat. If I knew, I would have worn my penguin shirt.

Our unique cooking process, combined with over five generations of dedication, delivers a licorice that is rich and complex in taste and has a coveted soft texture, all in conveniently bite sized pieces. For those passionate in the pursuit of the ultimate licorice, Natural Vines brand licorice awaits you. Made in the USA!

Ingredients are wheat flour, cane syrup, sugar, brown rice syrup, palm oil, malic acid, natural strawberry flavour, beet juice, natural colour, glycerin, licorice extract. And seems like there is quite a lot of calcium in the sweets.

To tell you the truth, this tastes just like normal candy. And I love it. Love it so much that I finished half the pack before I knew what was happening. Never did I expect myself to be eating licorice and liking it so much. But of course this is exactly licorice so I feel better about myself.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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I bought something different for a change. And I think we Singaporeans should start looking at different types of foodstuff as well. It might not be that healthy to just stick to one type of food, especially if we know that the food we are eating all these while is not that great. Just look around you and you will have to agree with me. Our diets are certainly not the best. We are falling victims to all kinds of diseases, especially those long term illness which doctors don’t seem to have any answer for. At most, they will prescribe some medicine for you to take and after a while, you come back and they prescribe even more medicine for you because the previous medicines had some side effects which need to be “cured”. So yes, we spend most of our free time going to doctors and listening to them say comforting things. And we are all paying for a premium. So why not change your lifestyle and start exploring other foodstuff? Sure they might not be any healthier but it gives your tastebuds something to think about right? Furthermore, it is not boring if you continuously try new things.

As usual, I bought this from iHerb. They are made from Lingonberries. They are some sort of berries that can be found in Sweden and apparently the Swedish love them. If you have been to Ikea and eaten their meatballs (less the horsemeat), it actually comes with Lingonberry sauce (not raspberry as most people believe). The taste is a bit tart with a hint of bitterness. Of course when made into a jam like sauce, it comes loaded with tons of sugar. So yes, it is palatable for most of us folks. It should go down pretty easy for most of us, especially if you eat them with meats.

One bottle of Lingonberry something. Check out the Swedish banner.

Hmmm…..a wild natural treat from the Swedish forests! I wonder are they really wild? It might be rather difficult to harvest berries from the wild since it would take quite a lot of manpower to actually harvest them, seeing that they are disperse throughout the forests.

Yes, the best before date is stamped onto the Swedish banner.  Anyway, this is the Felix Wild Natural Lingonberries.

Another view.

Some nutrition facts.

The ingredients are wild Lingonberries, sugar and fruit pectin. Product of Sweden. Oh, I love Abba.

Exactly the stuff which you eat with those meatballs. I kid you not. Initially I didn’t fancy eating meats with jam or fruits. Very typical Chinese I am. But it sort of grows on you and now I do have those Ikea meatballs with generous helpings of Lingoberry jam. Of course in Singapore, the quality of those Ikea meatballs have dropped. In fact, they don’t even look like meatballs anymore. More like flatten ugly rubber brown balls. Worst of all, the meat is tasteless. I am guessing they add starch or whatever filler to the mix. Or they use poor quality meats to make their meatballs. That is sadly Singapore for you. The quality drops as everyone tries to cut corners and make a huge profit as fast as possible before running out of the country. We are not longer famous for our quality and efficiency.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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Well, apparently my hair looks like of dull. Well that is what my friends often say about my hair always. You know when you go out with a group of friends and you run out of things to say, they start commenting about my hair. But since the same comment kept on popping up, so I guess that means something. I have been using the black soap to wash my hair and it certainly feels fine to me. In fact, my hair feels stronger and thicker. But I am guessing what they meant is that my hair isn’t that “glossy” or something like that. The reason could be that I don’t use conditioner anymore. I am just too lazy to spend time after shampooing my hair to apply conditioner. Hey, I am busy you know.  I do have a life.

Anyway, I bought this shampoo to have a try. Seems rather popular at iHerb. Sure it is not a conditioner but hopefully it will help. I think I will wash my hair with this Avalon Organics Shampoo perhaps once or twice per week. The rest of the time, I will still use the black soap. I think that the black soap has really helped both my skin and my hair, so I will stick with it. And of course it is very convenient to just have one bottle for both hair and skin. As usual, I bought this shampoo from iHerb. If I am not wrong, Watsons carry them as well – at a much bigger markup than iHerb. You might want to consider shopping online instead.

Very nice packaging.

This is the Avalon Organics Thickening Shampoo. Do I need thicker hair? I don’t think so. But as I have mentioned previously, this is the most popular brand, so I chose this one. It comes with Biotin B-Complex therapy whatever that means. Fortified with biotin, saw palmetto, wheat protein and vitamin E for an energized scalp and thicker, fuller hair. About 400ml of shampoo for glorious lather. Hey, it contains 70% organic content.

WTF? The ingredients list is unbelievable. I think they added everything but the kitchen sink to the shampoo.

Okay, here are the benefits – helps build body in fine, thinning hair. It stimulates scalp to encourage hair growth, cleans and nourishes hair from follicle through entire shaft, strengthens hair strands and boosts volume s hair feels thicker and softer. It is PH balanced. I guess that means it is good.

Made in the United States.

I will be trying this shampoo out real soon and will give you guys a report. Hope that it will give my hair a much needed “shine” to it. Personally I don’t really care whether my hair is shiny or not, but sometimes you have to succumb to peer pressure. That is a fact of modern life. So stay tuned.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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This time this is not for my nephews. It is for me! This candy brings back memories of the time when life was simpler and the candies were actual candies, rather than those crap that we get nowadays. Yes, the ones that are made from some unknown chemicals and while some do taste great, we definitely don’t know what will happen once we consume those candies. And at my age, I think it might be a good idea to stop playing with my health. True, I would like to enjoy a treat or two once in a while but I would rather do it with some peace of mind. Come on, once you reach my age you will find yourself with all sorts of health problems and if you don’t take care, you will certainly regret it.

Anyway, I bought this from iHerb. My favourite source for those made in the United States stuff. And this is organic! I am pretty sure most of us don’t really know what “organic” really means but I would like to think that it is better for us than the others. Hahaha, not that reassuring right? But that is life. There is no certainty in life.

The Corn Candies Candy Tree Organic Cherry Twists. Delicious!

Wow, organic with no added sugar. It is wheat-free, gluten free and looks like a cloud or something.

Corn candies was founded in 1984 by two parents who were concerned with what their seven children were eating. They cooked up lollipops, toffees, licorice and hand candies – made with organic ingredients. Organic corn malt as a base flavoured with real fruit juices and sweetened with organic apple juice. Their children, and now grandchildren, have enjoyed these wholesome organic sweets for years….now your can too.

The ingredients are organic corn syrup, organic rice flour, organic rice starch, organic apple juice, concentrated fruit juice (cherry 3%) and citric acid. But wait, it is made in the Netherlands. That would be Holland. The same place where all Singaporean male always go when they get lost during their national Service. I had always thought that iHerb mainly brings in US stuff.

Do they look tempting? Yes they do! I finish this entire pack in one go. If you don’t like your candies too sweet, this is for you. You will feel a little sweetness at the end but it is not overpowering. The sweetness could be from the apple juice. However if you are buying the candy for your kids, they might not like it. The sweetness is subtle but kids don’t really appreciate subtle. You know years and years of being spolit by the commercial candies we have in Singapore will do that to their taste buds. Anyway the cherry flavour is pretty good as well. Could be a little stronger but we can’t always have what we want right? For old folks who worry about their teeth, this candy can be a little tough though.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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Occasionally I do eat chips. Well, nowadays more often then before. The reason? Simple, I went online shopping. Probably the most addictive thing I ever did was online shopping. Once I started clicking and purchasing stuff online, it became something of a habit. And it is just so simple. A few clicks and the items will be posted to you. There is no need to worry about transport or whether today will be rainy or whatever. You do it in the comfort of your own home. And yes, I do have a debit card. The problem is that they accept debit cards as well. If only they don’t, I probably won’t be spending so much of my hard earned money shopping online. But at least I don’t shop for those useless (and expensive) things like some of my friends do. You know they shop for those luxury brand watches or whatever jewellery or whatever. Big big waste of money in my opinion.

My favourite place to shop online is iHerb. It sells health and beauty products. And surprisingly it sells potato chips as well. They deem it as “healthy” snack. I almost choke on that when I saw it but hey, no matter what, they are still a business and they do need to sell stuff that people buys right? And since they sell it much cheaper than what we have in Singapore, I have no complains. It is just too bad they don’t accept Paypal, only credit cards. Delivery is pretty fast as well. DHL takes about a week to ship to Singapore.

This is the pack of Kettle Potato Chips Bakes. The flavour is Hickory Honey Barbeque. Looks like of tempting right? I can’t wait to get my hands on them chips. Remember this is baked and fried chips, so I guess it is indeed healthier.

Made with real sliced potatoes. Guess what the other brands made their potatoes from?

Not that much though. About 113g of chips here. I can finish this pack in one sitting no problems.

The back of the pack.

The ingredients are potatoes, safflower and/or sunflower oil, honey powder (dried cane syrup, honey), sugar, salt, dried tomato, dried onion, dried paprika, maltodextrin, torula yeast, yeast extract, spices, dried garlic, citric acid, paprika extract and natural smoke flavour.

Well, here we have the nutritional information. Check this out – it contains quite a lot of Vitamin C per serving. I wonder how they managed to achieve that? Won’t Vitamin C be destoryed when they bake the chips? And of course a healthy does of “sodium” as well. Does potatoes contain a lot of potassium? Can’t find any reason why there is so much potassium though.

Baked potato chips used to be a healthy compromise. Less fat. Less taste. Less satisfying. Well, not anymore. Kettle Brand Bakes deliver real potato goodness, bold flavour and nothing less than pure indulgence. We slice fresh whole potatoes. Yes, a real whole potato. We toast each slice to a hearty, satisfying crunch. And season the chips with bold, mouthwatering flavours. In fact, they just might become your potato chip of choice. And that’s no half-baked idea. Bite into the lively blend of hickery barbeque and sweet honey. I am guessing the smoke flavour is supposed to be hickery.

Check this out – 0 grams trans fat, only all natural colours and flavours, only natural oils, no preservatives, non-GMO ingredients, gluten free and real food ingredients. Yes, those other brands are looking like of scary right about now.

Well, did I enjoy it? Yes, I did. The texture is a bit different – it feels more firm and crunchy. Of course it could be because Kettle usually have thicker slices of potato. The taste wise is quite nice. Though I have to admit, the hickery flavour isn’t that great while the honey can be a bit overwhelming. But overall, it is pretty nice. I am sure that if you are a potato chips fanboy, this would not disappoint you. And yes I have become a fan of Kettle.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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Fruits Spread is just another fancy word for jam. This is jam with some fruits preserves or something like that. Nothing really that fancy but if you would like something that comes from the United States and termed “healthier” than this might just tickle your fancy. As usual, I bought this from iHerb. It has become my favourite place for online shopping. The prices are relatively reasonable and the shipping prices are low. Of course they require you to purchase a certain amount to get that kind of discount, but even with shipping, some products are still much cheaper than purchasing from Singapore. If you have been to Cold Storage you might have seen some of the items iHerb carries and if you compare the prices, you will agree with me.

One bottle of the Walden Farms Strawberry Fruits Spread. Can last quite a while in my household. I don’t really like jam. But my nephews love them. He would eat jam with everything – french fries, noodles, whip potatoes, fried chicken……everything.

340g of fruits spread. It is sugar free, calorie free and fat free. Honestly, that is not real food.

The ingredients are purified water, strawberry flavour, natural flavours, glucose, citric acid, some sort of gel, red cabbage colour, xanthan gum and some sort of preservatives. Hmm….this isn’t that good afterall. But then preservatives are always need in mass produced products, especially for edible items that are to be kept on the shelves for long time. I would certainly prefer my foodstuff to be preservatives free.

Well, Walden Farms Calorie Free Strawberry Fruit Spread is made from natural strawberry fruit extract for a sensational fresh strawberry taste. Great on toast, pancakes, oatmeal, in yogurt smoothies and to make delicious PB&J. For me, I think that whenever you have sensational marketing like “no calories, fat, carbs, gluten or sugars or any kind”,  it is certainly not a natural product. I would rather they have actual real strawberries in the fruit spread. Strawberry extract?? What exactly is that? Come on, give me the real thing.

My iHerb Referral code is MLD668. Use it to get a US$10 discount for US$40 and above for your first order. Or use it to get a US$5 for anything less than US$40. By the way, iHerb has a discount on DHL shipping to Singapore for orders over US$60.

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Not for me, but for my company. We needed a cheap solution for some smaller backups for the less important data and do not wish to combine backups together. So I got this set. If you are a home user, you might want to take a look at this D-Link DNS 320 NAS. Not too shabby for its price and it comes with 2 bay slots which allow you to have RAID 0 or RAID 1. If you are looking for some added data safety, I would recommend RAID 1 for redundancy. Basically it is just mirroring. Two harddisks each with a copy of the actual data. So if one of the harddisk fails, you have the other for backup. Of course it is highly recommended that you replace the faulty harddisk as soon as possible to ensure your data will still be intact. Surprisingly, most people don’t care about their data until disaster strikes. By then it is just too late. You can whine about it all you want but there is nothing much anyone can do. Even if you go to a recovery center, they might not be able to recover all your data and it probably cost more than a bomb to restore your files. Trust me, I have seen people spending thousands of dollars trying to get back their family photos.

So why not have backups? This is exactly where a NAS comes in. NAS or Network Attached Storage is a device which can store data through the network. The convenience of having a NAS in your network is priceless, especially if you have multiple computers or users in your network. Just “park” your data on the NAS and you can access the data anywhere on your network. And since it is just a data store on a network, you can backup various computers on the NAS easily. Although in my case, the NAS is just for storing backups, most home network users or even office users do share data on a NAS as well.

The big box for the D-Link DNS 320. The actual device is not really that big. Slightly better than 2 external 3.5″ harddisk stacked together.

Looks cool? Well from the outside, yes. But the device is actually very plasticky and feels kind of cheap.

Yes, it comes with Gigabit ports but I am guessing it is more or less useless unless you use SSDs. Please note that this is just the NAS. It does not come with any harddisks. You will need to get your own. Supports only SATA drives. The coolest thing is the price! Just S$109. Much much cheaper than the market. If I am not wrong, a 2-bay NAS will hit about S$200 or so. The price is extremely attractive to home users as well. Nowadays we have tons of digital media to store, even in our own home. Data like photos, videos, music, documents and so on. With harddisks being so cheap now, it is indeed a good time to invest in a NAS.

Wow, you can share files over your network, stream media to your PCs and TVs, protect and backup important files and easily manage your data using this device.

Photo of the ShareCenter DNS320.

Check the contents and minimum requirements.

Yes, we know. Hey, it comes with this Farstone Recovery software. Cool! I am currently using the open source Cobain Backup software but won’t mind trying something else out. This is actually sold at US$30 per license. And the features look kind of impressive for a home user. At any rate, this D-Link would be a very useful addition to the office as an alternate backup storage device.

They just love repeating the same thing over and over again.

The features include store, share and make regular backups of files. Sterams music, photos and video to compatible UPnP AV enabled devices such as Xbox 360 & PS3. It can even securely access files over the Internet. Though I would not recommend it. Nowadays we have very cheap online storage solutions like Amazon’s S3 or Dropbox which provides a more reliable method of online storage. I usually have a combination of a few – backups on my local network and only the very important files are backup on Dropbox.

Check it out, it supports RAID 1 which is what we are looking for. We need the redundancy to allow me to sleep at night. Can’t imagine if one day one of the harddisk fails, all my hardwork will be gone in just an instant. Honestly, you don’t need that fast a speed when doing backups. It is also interesting that there is a build-in FTP application. If your backup software supports FTP, it might be a good idea to transfer via FTP since it is usually faster.

Oh, by the way, RAID is not backup. It is very important to understand this. Backups are backups. They are copies of your data which you should keep somewhere safe. RAID is for redundancy in case your device breaks down. And RAID does not protect you against accidental deletion, viruses or corruption. So make sure you have backups my friends! Heck, go backup your data right now.

Useless information. The box is just too big, so they need to add some nonsense on it.

Some information on how to add the harddisks. Pretty easy. Just push the clip at the back, then slip the cover off. Add the harddisk(s) via the guides to the SATA connectors (make sure they are properly aligned first!) and just pop back the cover. There, you have just added storage to the NAS!

The stuff that comes with the box.

The actual ShareCenter. Made from very cheap plastic.

The back with the clip. This is the clip where you push and hold, while sliding the top cover off when you need to add or change harddisks. There is a fan at the back as well. But it feels pretty weak if you ask me. Yes, it is very silent but in Singapore’s weather, heat is a problem. And no matter how expensive your harddisks are, heat is going to kill your harddisks.

This is where you slide your harddisks in. There are two SATA connectors, so make sure you align your harddisks properly.

Yes, I chose WD Caviar Green because they are supposed to be cooler and do not use a lot of power. 2TB is quite a lot of storage. Since I am going to use RAID 1, even with 2 x 2TB harddisks, the total storage will still be only 2TB. Remember this is for redundancy. I don’t need speed here. And even if I would like better performance, using RAID 0 is extremely dangerous. If just one harddisks fails, then all the data on the array is lost. If you would performance, you should get some other NAS device. This D-Link DNS320 isn’t for those heavy users.

3 years warranty!

Yes, I slot in the harddisks. Very easy thing to do. Very good fit. Again, make sure you align the harddisks properly first.

Yes, both harddisks are detected and the RAID 1 is constructed without any issues. Quite nice. The power on button is located on the bottom right (right next to the power LED). The button on the button center is for other uses. So don’t be an idiot like me and keep on pressing that button, thinking the NAS is faulty or something like that. If I am not wrong, the USB port is for you to connect an external device for backing up the NAS. The button is meant for the device to automatically copy data to the USB device.

I have only just started using this NAS. Performance wise, it is not the fastest I have come across. In fact, it is one of the slowest. But then comparing the price, I think it is just right. And hey, it is faster than the old Bufflao NAS we had in our office. I can’t remember the model but that was rather sluggish. And the web interface was as slow as hell. I spent like an hour adding 15 users to the Buffalo NAS. Nearly pulled all my hair out. Of course this DNS320′w web interface isn’t speedy, but it is acceptable. So if you are on a budget or would like a simple network storage that just works, then take a look at this D-Link. Remember to flash the firmware to the latest!

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