Home > Consumer Reviews > LaCie 301269U Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition 500 GB Network Attached Storage Hard Drive

Just received my NAS. Plugged it in, turned on the unit, and ran through the software. No success through the discovery utility. Powered everything off, replaced the network cable, and viola! I am on the LAN and running. Did the update to 1.6.2. Very simple.

I went to the axentra website and the lacie site since this is an evolving product and I wanted the latest documentation/help. No real surprises. It is managed through a web GUI which makes it pretty easy to setup, but I would suggest a wizard to walk the average home user through sharing scenarios. I would think something like an activity based walk through like you can do with logitech/harmony remotes. I was up and running with my folders shared and my users configured in about 90 minutes. Took a while to copy over the data. I prefer to map a drive from my pc's directly to the NAS. Seems to me that is less overhead. I don't have any interest in media connect functionality. My device is mostly a way to share pictures over the Internet & backup data locally to a separate host device. For that it works well. The web GUI is a little sluggish, but what do you expect from a java app running on a $99 server? If I needed the latest and greatest, I'd spring $500 for a windows home server.

Used desktop mirror for my 'My Documents' folder. Works fine. Synchronizes regularly and so far no failures.

PROS:
*Like the slideshow function for my pictures. It pops up a window that users can utilize to browse all the pictures in a folder.
*Low power and quiet in comparison to a windows home server.
*Web GUI does the basics well, but you have to know what you're doing when sending invites/setting up distribution groups, etc.
*$99 for 500 GB NAS???? Wow.

CONS:
*A little slow when viewing directories with a lot of files thru the web GUI. (Still, it's a $99 box)
*Should have a wizard walkthrough as it can get complicated for the average user.
*Wish the USB port would act as a print server.

It started out so promising -- a network storage device for under $200, capable of acting as a media server and with access anywhere as long as you have internet connectivity.

The read/write speed was never good, even with the laptop connected to the router on a wire. The read/write speed of my iOmega portable external drive, connected via USB, was blazingly fast in comparison. Nevermind wireless (54-mbps g network) -- I rather watch the paint dry.

I then started having issues with my music files (stored in the FamilyMusic folder) and the iTune server. I was unable to see the files if I am connected via the browser. The iTune server doesn't load half of the time even though it is visible within iTune. At some point, even when it does load, it loads only a fraction of the music files.

I still use it to store photos and as a file server for files that I don't want to carry around on my laptop all the time. As far as using it as a music server is concerned, I am looking for something else.

Lastly, LaCie should really make this device to support Wake on LAN.

*** 8/2008 ***
I have intermittent accessing sub-directories that I didn't create with Windows Explorer. No such problems via the web interface.

Also had problems with running iTune over the network. The drive/library is always visible but not the contents. After researching a few blogs, I deleted all the album artworks, which were obtained when I had these songs on my laptop, and that seems to have fixed the problems. Apparently, these 'extra' files were confusing the drive.

LaCie mkes a great product, but packaged with poor software, minimal instructions and hardware/software that ultimately did not work was a killer for this product. I was looking for an external hard drive that I could keep at home and access over the internet. I have an Apple Airport Extreme and an iMAC of which the "Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition" was connected to the Extreme via GB Ethernet. So far so good. After the software failed to recognize the existence of the newly installed hard drive for about 3 attempts, it all of a sudden recognized it. Yeah, great, now let's get this thing running.

The skimpy instructions comprised about 10% of what I had to dig up on the internet to even get close to getting this thing to work. After a couple of hours, opening up several ports, and entering a bunch of poorly documented parameters into LaCie's host site, it finally, sort of worked.

Every time I got into the LaCie Home Drive with my MacBook Pro, I would have to log in. Not a problem. Very slow data transfers, but it did actually limp along with the iMAC in sleep mode. The problem started with the inconvenience of having to log in from my local iMAC to access the local LaCie Home drive. Not just once, but for each and every folder on the drive. Nuts! Again there was extremely slow data transfer rates.

Next I decided to change some of the security setups, like a different password. Fine, except the lame software again failed to recognize the existence of the hard drive. Forevermore the drive couldn't be seen by their own software. Then after too many futile attempts to get their software to work, the iMAC eventually couldn't log into the hard drive.

Keep in mind, that everything in the initial setup was painfully slow too. Each individual parameter gets written to the drive one parameter at a time. First comes the password - and it takes 10 minutes? Next parameter - and it takes another 10 minutes? Come on guys. Hello! It's right over here! Setup took about 7 to 8 hours - full of frustration as you could imagine.

The answer to remote data access by several computers of the MAC variety is to open a ".MAC" account. .MAC is fast, well behaved, packed with tons of features that are simple to set up and use, and it's convenient. If you love your MAC and Leopard, you will love setting up .MAC (about 15 minutes for the pair of MAC's) and using it's rich features.

The other LaCie hard drives are fast and reliable and have always been a favorite of mine, but this one is rendered into a dumb brick by extremely poor and incomplete software, questionable hardware, and a frustratingly difficult user interface when it decides to limp along on its terms.

I may have gotten a lemon, but there are too many things going on here and should be a warning for consumers to look elsewhere.

Had this great toy since 3 months now and I can access my files wherever I go. It is simple to set up and to use. Easy to back-up and has a USB plug for printers and other USB drive.

I have not tested the security of data, but I would not trust any of these networked device for sensitive information.

Disadvantages: sharing between users could be improved.

After doing a ton of research on network attached storage devices, I opted for this well reviewed LaCie.

I'm sure it does it's job well, it's just that I'm not a strong network guy and I found the set up cumbersome, confusing and unsatisfying in the end. Don't get me wrong.. I'm a bit of a tech head... I've built my own computers, have no problem reinstalling an operating system from scratch, rebuilding or upgrading a computer system, etc.

I was mainly looking for a way to backup my laptop wirelessly on my network. My main computer is a MacBook Pro and I've been using OS X's Time Machine to do my backups.. I've been very happy with it and it's saved me a couple of times already.

Well, after set up of the LaCie, I realized I had to set up an account via the LaCie website in order to use the drive at all. I then realized that Time Machine wouldn't easily backup to a network attached storage drive without some tweaking. I also didn't like the way I accessed the drive... it was confusing to set up and I never really got it going.

I opted to return the LaCie and purchase a Time Capsule instead. Sure, the Time Capsule was more than double the price, but the ease of installation and use makes it well worth the cost.