LaCie 301156U 1 TB Ethernet Big Disk Network Attached Storage Hard Drive

List Price: $286.99 Discount Price: $265.00

Features:

• Gigabit Ethernet & USB 2.0 interface
• Expandable capacity through a USB host port
• Users & share level permissions
• Jumbo Frame support
• Quick & Easy IP configuration

Accessories:
LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ 301199U 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 RAID System	LaCie 301257U 1 TB 2big Network Attached Storage Hard Drive with 2-disk RAID

Customer Reviews:

Mediocre product, mortifyingly bad tech support. AVOID. [Posted on 2008-05-22]
I picked one of these up about a month ago because I desperately needed some serious additional storage, and once I verified that it seemed to be working as advertised, at the end of the first week I deleted from my PCs' hard drives the stuff that I had transferred to it, thus opening up a lot of space, which was kinda the whole point of the exercise.

By the end of week 2, the machine was acting very strangely, actively - no, aggressively - trying to snag the *.*.1.1 slot on my router, even if it caused an IP conflict with one of the PCs. I contact LaCie tech support, which was clueless - gee, we don't know why it would try to do that. Let us know if it does anything else weird. Trying to force it to stick to a single IP address rather than a dynamically assigned one caused different problems.

Late last week, I stopped being able to get files off of it at all, via any machine - music, video, the photos of my son's first eight months, you name it. LaCie tech support was clueless, and sent me two patches which didn't work as advertised; one caused the drive to lose track of the "shares" (i.e. directories) I had set up on it. I finally gave up on trying to access it via the router and finally got through to the machine via a direct USB connection. Even then it's very intermittent - while trying to recover my data, I can't get at everything. LaCie sent me a return authorization number to send the drive to them for service, but they wouldn't even begin to have a conversation about recovering the data that I couldn't reach - that was clearly off the table for discussion. I've opted instead to return it to Amazon and get my money back. I'll probably just get a 1TB internal drive for my main PC instead of trying to go the network route, but you can bet it won't be a LaCie drive - why would I want to get a different one of their drives when they're obviously clueless as to how the thing works?

Anyone looking for a mass storage device along these lines would do well to steer clear of LaCie.

Way below the expectation, performance, stability [Posted on 2008-05-29]
First, I need to say that I seldom write a review at Amazon.com mainly because I like to stay tranquil. Today, for the best interests of all the people, I decided to write a brief but very important review: Avoid this product.

I found that there are not many 1TB NAS HDD at Amazon.com. I was suspicious at first since there were negative feedbacks. However, since I noticed 5 star feedbacks, criticizing negative reviews, as well, I was doubly suspicious. The strong tone of the good reviews sound convincing. So I decided to buy this -- and it was a wrong decision.


1. Unstable firm ware and web interface. If you format this HDD, you will immediately notice that the Web interface cannot parse the disk information properly any longer. You can format only thru web interface. Note that this disk supports only XFS file system, which is not NTFS or FAT32. This means
- You cannot use this HDD as a 'USB HDD' at all.
- The USB connector provides an emulation of 'Ethernet over USB' feature.
- Web interface is amazingly slow and unreliable.

2. Slow speed
I was fascinated by 7200RPM and 1Gbps feature of this product. It is regretful that you cannot experience this at all. I tried 30GB files copy from a computer to this HDD.
- It takes, in the 21th century sense, for ever.
- The copying tends to fail at every reason.

3. Noisy hardware
This is a subjective point. This HDD is more noisy than your recent laptops, but less noisy than your printer or desktop.

Again, I am writing this review because I believe the consumers should not be cheated by the low price of this HDD.

LaCie Ethernet Big Disk [Posted on 2008-05-31]
Purchased this item hoping to use it with Leopard OS X on the newest iMac. Unfortunately, Time Machine does not support this drive as an ethernet network back up drive. It is recognized on the network but not by Time Machine. Attempted to use the drive as a direct USB 2.0 connected back up drive. Unfortunately, the drive was not recognized by either the new iMac nor an older one running 10.4. Online tech support was not helpful at all. If you choose to buy this product and need tech support, dig for the number and call them directly. Pity, on paper it would have been a great set up.

Simply Brilliant [Posted on 2008-07-12]
This is my second Lacie Big Disk. I highly recommend them. They work seamlessly with my iMac and my Windows based laptop. Just plug in the provided Ethernet cable and the iMac automatically discovers it and adds it as a external data source.

Works But Slow [Posted on 2008-07-14]
The drive was very easy to set up on the network, even for someone who knows little about computers (but knows how to follow product directions). My only problem with the drive is how slow it is to transfer information over the wireless network. I use the drive to save a large number of high resolution digital pictures. I know I didn't buy a top of the line drive. And I the systems I have at work are probably many, many times more expensive. Still, I was surprised how slow the transfer rate was. When I have a lot of work to do with the pictures on the drive, I'll often just do a direct link between my computer and the drive (taking away the wireless network part). That does help in some instances. I am not disappointed if the drive is reliable and holds the information stated. I just probably had unrealistic expectations of the rate of transfer over the network connection.

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