Customer Reviews

Iomega 33349 Gigabit Ethernet 1TB 4HD X 250GB StorCenter Wireless Network Storage

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This unit is incredibly enticing. Most units, although 1TB, only allow 0,1 RAID which means that in RAID 1 (mirror mode) you can only get 500 Gigs.

This Iomega unit allows you get 750 Gigs in RAID 5 since it has 4 drives. More cost effective storage space.

It also features:

* Linux based OS
* Flexible user and group based security,
* Above average performance with respect to RAID, responsiveness, and transfer speeds.
* Gigabit ethernet as well as 802.11G wireless
* 2 USB ports to attach additional storage
* 4 drive bays to upgrade and replace drives
* RAID 5 !!. This is a prominent feature that sets it in a unique category among entry level NAS.
* A very well built enclosure. All metal, fairly thick at that, as well as very sturdy enclosure for the HD's that uses screws. Nothing plastic of flimsy here.

All very very good features for a NAS. The price is slightly higher than competitive products, but the added features are well worth it.

Wait a second? Isn't the product being rated as 1 Star? I sound like a i am in love for the first time......

The biggest drawback? It's a deal killer.

* BAD AND HORRIBLY DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE ****

The software running the unit itself is flawed. Your data may be intact on the drives itself, but the administration software running on the unit can, and quite often, does fail.

When it fails, you have very little options. There are some limited recovery options on the unit and Iomega tech support has limited solutions as well. If these do not solve the problem, you can send the unit back to Iomega, BUT LOSE ALL YOUR DATA.

They do offer in-house data retrieval services, but quotes have run from $2500 to $6800 dollars depending on the amount of data to be retrieved.

Opening the enclosure itself voids the warranty accordingly, and there is a little a layperson could do on their own.

The internal drives are IDE. This means that taking the drives out and hooking them up to a independent system requires a separate 4-Channel IDE RAID card that supports RAID 0,1,5 + JBOD.

The costs of fixing it yourself can become prohibitive.

The whole point of this product is:

1) Network Attached Storage. Multiple computers accessing the data at the same time.

2) Backup. This requires reliability and redundancy (RAID)

This product, although very well spec'd, cannot live up to it's purpose and will be a liability to anybody using it.

Avoid this product at all costs.

It took some time to get the StorCenter installed and working, including a return to the factory. There was probably no problem with the returned unit but the provided software has some bugs that prevented me from mapping the drive into my systems.
The support staff worked through the problem with me and once I found the correct incantation, the unit has worked fast and flawlessly

Update: The unit stopped working after the warrantee expired. IOMEGA told me I was SOL, no repairs available. $550 brick. Thanks very little.

There are a couple of morals: avoid IOMEGA and buy a RAID 5 unit that gives you access to the drives and indication of health status. The IOMEGA boxen do neither.

There is a reason this thing is SO cheap! Do not buy it! Ours failed after eight months. We had it set up as a RAID5 which we thought would be safe. Big mistake! iomega said they would replace the drive BUT WE HAD TO PAY FOR DATA RETRIEVAL!!!! Horrible service, horrible warranty! Do NOT trust your data on this machine. Check the iomega forums (which are heavily moderated for negative comments by the way, which they will admittedly remove) and you will see the problems people are having with this item.

Has never worked and is on its way back to Amazon. Out-of-the-box, I reformatted it for RAID 5, and thats about as far as I can get. Cannot create the shares and cannot use as anything except a doorstop. See the issues described in this thread: http://www.iomegasupportforums.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=21244&sid=9efc4068cc212a4bb00cc8522b7f6580

We have added other network drives to our network in the past but this one has replaced them all. It was simple to set up. The backup software has worked consistently. There is enough space to allow for redundant backup for a six computer network.

Good value for the money.

Had it set up on my network in less than an hour - being used by all our critical applications. Response time is good. All servers on our network are backing up on this device, now.

My second Iomega Storcenter drive was sent to me by Iomega after literally hours of time spent trying to get the original unit working. The second unit was just as problematic due to what was finally acknowledged as extremely buggy software. Attempts to contact support were ignored by Iomega support - not to mention the run-around evertime I would call in with support in India doing their escalation process from the beginning with every call - apparently the technicians are unable to read the existing ticket. Eventually I would be punted to the US support org - receiving a cryptic e-mail with a phone number I would need to call which was only usable for a week at a time. Due to my schedule, I missed my window to call the US support twice and when I did reach support I was told the software was buggy and the tech I wanted was not available and I would need to call back... and of course the phone number provided then expired (It was apparent I was experiencing known issues and I was out of luck given the run-around). Needless to say, NONE of the features I purchased the unit for worked including the WiFi, the security / user rights, or the RAID 5 features - with many of the configuration screens simply erroring out as opposed to painting on the screen. I ended up putting the unit in RAID 0, plugging it into my router, and using it as a very noisy hard drive next to my desk as opposed to the remote location I had been planning. I sent several e-mails to Iomega requesting a product swap for another product or credit towards another product with no response from Iomega. TAKE THIS AS A WARNING AND NEVER NEVER NEVER BUY AN IOMEGA PRODUCT!!!!

The drive was working fine for about 5 months and then it suddenly began to hang and perform slowly, the data became periodically inaccessible. Restarting the drive through the software never worked properly, it would run for over a day in what appeared to be the "restart" or "shutdown" process. The data would be inaccessible and useless to our entire office during that time. It conveniently crashed overnight 3 days before a deadline and we were fortunate to have backups running nightly of this drive otherwise all would be lost.

The 'repair' feature has proved useless as well. I have yet to reformat the drive in hopes that Iomega can provide some worthwhile solution. As of now the drive says all my data is gone.

As some other reviews mentioned here, the feature set is excellent, the software abysmal and the reliability unacceptable.

Got this device, opened the box, and voila! Firmware upgrade. Did it and everything was fine. Uploaded a bunch of music and started browsing with the built in Media Server...and killed it. Quick call to Iomega got the device back up, but all data was lost. Kinda nervous now :(

Using it primarily for backup. There was no problem with both installation and its usability. Currently there are 4 systems on this one.