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LaCie 301269U Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition 500 GB Network Attached Storage Hard Drive
See it at Amazon.com for $99.99Average Customer Rating
(2.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Works Well
(4 out of 5) by W. Lee on Feb 27, 2008First, be aware that the "Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition" and "Etherenet Disk Mini" are different products with different features. This information is related to the Home Edition. It works very well for me, although a little slow when accessed through the web interface.
After opening the necessary ports in my DSL router, I had to reboot the whole setup (edminihome, dsl, router) a few times before things worked. Not sure if that is needed, or if it just took some time for things to propagate through.
When you ask it to share a folder through the internet, it emails the receipient an URL pointing to the shared folder. The URL contains a long random string (I guess it's some kind of a cookie), but no password is required to sign in. So anybody who gets a copy of that URL (eg. if the email is forwarded to someone else) will have access to the shared folder, and I don't see a way to log who are actually accessing the files.
You can plug in multiple USB drives into the edminihome using a usb hub, and they are all visible to the edminihome. However you can select only one of them at any time to serve as MySafe. The remaining USB drives will be dormant. When selected as MySafe, the USB drive can be accessed through the web interface, but cannot be mounted as a network drive (FamilyLibrary, MyLibrary, and MyBackup can each be mounted as a network drive).
After opening the necessary ports in my DSL router, I had to reboot the whole setup (edminihome, dsl, router) a few times before things worked. Not sure if that is needed, or if it just took some time for things to propagate through.
When you ask it to share a folder through the internet, it emails the receipient an URL pointing to the shared folder. The URL contains a long random string (I guess it's some kind of a cookie), but no password is required to sign in. So anybody who gets a copy of that URL (eg. if the email is forwarded to someone else) will have access to the shared folder, and I don't see a way to log who are actually accessing the files.
You can plug in multiple USB drives into the edminihome using a usb hub, and they are all visible to the edminihome. However you can select only one of them at any time to serve as MySafe. The remaining USB drives will be dormant. When selected as MySafe, the USB drive can be accessed through the web interface, but cannot be mounted as a network drive (FamilyLibrary, MyLibrary, and MyBackup can each be mounted as a network drive).
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Good consumer NAS, but no speed demon to be sure
(3 out of 5) by M. Dickson on Dec 9, 2008 (Durham & FL)I worked in IT in the past, so I wouldn't consider myself new to setting up networks or NAS devices. I have set lots of them up, this LaCie Home Edition wasn't too difficult, but I can see how some people would be frustrated too as its not very well thought out. That said, I have got it delivering files to a Windows XP desktop, Windows Vista laptop and a MacBook Pro. As per usual, the Mac is the easiest, their is something called the HipServ which shows up in your shared devices and then you click on Family Library or My Library. I have set it up with a static IP address and have shortcuts to folders on the NAS, so it looks and works as if it were the same as an internal drive.
Bad news though, it is slow, even by consumer NAS standards. Using my 802.11n network, I get 4.5MBps and through a gig LAN connection I get about 8MBps. Silver lining, its a stable connection so you can start copying things and come back to it later - much later. I threw about 350GB on it immediately off an older USB drive that was dying and it took over 24hours. Talking of USB, forget the USB port on the back for adding additional storage, its just for backing up what you have on the NAS which is helpful, but it would be nice to use it for other things too.
I have also connected to it whilst away from home and it works well enough once you've set everything up - again though, helps to know a little about network setup. Bad news is that its very slow, like topping out at 20kbps so downloading a movie or something is going to take a long time. OK to use for grabbing a Word file or something that you forgot to transfer to your laptop before leaving on a business trip!
You get what you pay for, for the money its not a bad NAS. It does what it says and its fast enough to stream movies/music - standard def at least. It is relatively inexpensive and fast enough for backups from multiple computers - as long as you stagger the backups. To give an idea of speed, its roughly 25-35% as fast as a typical USB2 drive.
Bad news though, it is slow, even by consumer NAS standards. Using my 802.11n network, I get 4.5MBps and through a gig LAN connection I get about 8MBps. Silver lining, its a stable connection so you can start copying things and come back to it later - much later. I threw about 350GB on it immediately off an older USB drive that was dying and it took over 24hours. Talking of USB, forget the USB port on the back for adding additional storage, its just for backing up what you have on the NAS which is helpful, but it would be nice to use it for other things too.
I have also connected to it whilst away from home and it works well enough once you've set everything up - again though, helps to know a little about network setup. Bad news is that its very slow, like topping out at 20kbps so downloading a movie or something is going to take a long time. OK to use for grabbing a Word file or something that you forgot to transfer to your laptop before leaving on a business trip!
You get what you pay for, for the money its not a bad NAS. It does what it says and its fast enough to stream movies/music - standard def at least. It is relatively inexpensive and fast enough for backups from multiple computers - as long as you stagger the backups. To give an idea of speed, its roughly 25-35% as fast as a typical USB2 drive.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
I'm Impressed
(4 out of 5) by Jason Daniels on Jul 11, 2008 (Austin, TX USA)yes, it was a pain to setup - but I'm very impressed with what its letting me do right now... Access my entire iTunes library wirelessly over my Airport Express (over multiple machines at once!) For just over $100?! Wow.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
LaCie Drive is Good, but Could be Better
(4 out of 5) by Richard S. Stroud on Mar 25, 2008 (Kokomo, IN USA)I wanted a drive to 1) provide backup between several Macintosh computers and 2) provide file retrieval when I was far away. The LaCie 500GB Home edition does these tasks very well.
The drive's HipServ software allows you to put an icon on the desktop. Clicking on this gives you almost instant access to the drive. But if you put the computer to sleep, then wake up later, the icon no longer works. You must re-find the disc. On 802.11b this is too slow.
If the router has not been restarted, the DNS address most likely does not change. The icon should still work regardless of computer status. This would make this drive a nearly perfect product.
The drive's HipServ software allows you to put an icon on the desktop. Clicking on this gives you almost instant access to the drive. But if you put the computer to sleep, then wake up later, the icon no longer works. You must re-find the disc. On 802.11b this is too slow.
If the router has not been restarted, the DNS address most likely does not change. The icon should still work regardless of computer status. This would make this drive a nearly perfect product.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Good network server especially for $99
(4 out of 5) by J. Davis on Aug 8, 2008 (Stanford, CA)I have owned this drive for 7 months now and it works very well. All of my files were moved from my three computers onto it so each can now access anything. I got the rest of my family to create folders on the drive so they are using it too. Even my iTunes library is completely on here. I made sure to create a backup of this drive too, which I update regularly.
It does spin up quite frequently, but it is not a problem for me. I like that I can access all my files from anywhere in the world. Since I travel a lot, it makes it easy to get to music, photos and personal data.
It does spin up quite frequently, but it is not a problem for me. I like that I can access all my files from anywhere in the world. Since I travel a lot, it makes it easy to get to music, photos and personal data.