Customer Reviews

Iomega Home Media 1 TB Network Attached Storage 34337

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(98)

 

 

I've been using the 1TB media drive for about a month and a half now and have had a very positive experience. I set it up on an XP machine and had little problem connecting to it from my Vista laptop and XP netbook without installing any software. The only feature I haven't used is the USB print server (my printer is located in my office and the hard drive is connected in the living room next to the router and haven't wanted to move either one so they could be physically connected).

My PS3 automatically found the device on the network, and I use the PS3 to watch TV shows stored on the hard drive on my HDTV. This works great. I can't edit files using the PS3, but I can play AVI and MP3 files (I sometimes play music through my stereo system this way as well as TV shows). Formats like .mkv files won't play this way, but that's a function of the PS3 rather than a limitation of the hard drive.

I'm not using the backup software that comes with it; I manually load files to the device from any of my computers. I store my business files, writing, music, etc. on the drive and thus can, for instance, sit outside with my netbook while still accessing all my files (which is handy since the netbook has very little local storage). All my files are in one place and it doesn't matter which computer I'm using.

Uploading files is not much, if any, faster than a USB 2.0 drive in my experience, but download speeds seem very snappy and even very high resolution video files play back over the network with no delay.

For me, this HD solved a lot of problems. I highly recommend it if you have multiple PCs in your house and a collection of media or data files that you want to share, especially if you have a supported device like a PS3 connected to your TV. If you only have one PC and don't want to play media on your TV, you're better off with a 1 TB USB drive since that will be cheaper.


Pros
* Decent transfer performance over my network (via both wired and wireless connections)
* Can connect to it via PS3 or Xbox 360 to view/listen to media files
* Pretty painless setup
* Takes up very little space
* Works exactly as advertised and I'm in no danger of filling up the huge 1 TB drive

Cons
* Drive is a little noisy
* Whether it's a factor of my router or the net drive, sometimes my netbook (wireless) and PS3 (wired) lose connection temporarily. I think this is something happening on my network rather than the drive though.
* If I rename a file on the drive using my PC while a file is playing back on my PS3, there is a hiccup on playback: I lose sound for a second, then sound resumes but video playback lags for a few seconds before resuming. Audio and video remain synced when this happens, though.

I was shopping for a storage device to back up all of my data from my 3 computers (1 running mac os x, 1 running windows 7, 1 running xp) and my wife's laptop (vista) so some type of device sharable between multiple devices was a necessity. Initially I was thinking about buying a larger drive and putting it in my home server but came across the iomega device on sale when walking through a local store. They were on sale so I snapped it up... I bought a gigabit switch as well and did a couple of tests from my two PCs - one with gigabit and one with 100Mbps. The transfer of a 700MB avi file tool took ~ 68 seconds with the one with the fast ethernet (100Mbps) interface. My other pc with the gigabit interface was able to transfer the file in about 35 seconds.

I don't like installing 3rd party apps to manage backing up so I'm manually copying things over that I want to back up versus using iomega's included software.

The device is DLNA compliant and will stream to various media devices.... you'll be able to see it under network and also the PS3 sees it as well. I believe the playback of various media types are dependent on what your player will support (ps3 - divx (both avi or divx extensions) - mkv's won't work since ps3 doesn't support it). XBMC picks up the shared folders as well.

You can set up different permissions for each folder by going to the web interface. The web interface comes up as completely open by default. You'll have to set up an admin password. You can create user accounts for each of the folders and specify under each folder if you want to secure it and which users to allow access to the folder. Creating/deleting folders is a snap as well (though folder names are limited).

The device is also a print server. I plugged in my usb hp 2410 all in one. I only use it as a printer so I installed just the print only driver from hp and it works ok... a little setup is required like specifying the ip address, and for Mac osx specifying the queue as printer1 but took me less than 5 minutes... takes a bit for the print job to come out (~30 seconds) but now I can print from any of my computers which is a plus.

I only wish that the drive was a bit quieter (the cooling fan of the enclosure is the culprit I believe) as well as a way to spin down the drive in a power save mode if no one is accessing the server since it sounds like the drive is always on and I worry how long the disk will last being on 24x7... guess time will tell but since this is my back-up drive, makes me a bit uneasy.

I'm getting another one b/c they are so inexpensive, plus I plan to reuse the 1TB HDD in the old one. But here's what happened: One day it was working, next day it wasn't being located by the network. Hmmm. Weird. I power it down, then power it back up. Lights on the case flash, then turn off once the NAS gets up to speed, about 20 seconds I think. The drive is still moving, but the same thing happens each time. I look in the lengthy Iomega forums and see other people have posted this problem. One response from the Iomega person asks if there were any 'brown outs'.
Oh, yeah! I put two and two together, the power outage I had at home corresponded to the NAS failure!
SO... if you buy this thing, be sure to give it a UPS.

I had it networked with my ReplayTV boxes and was able to watch archived TV from it at real time, albeit 480 resolution.

I bought my first one of these, and the fan was very, very noise since it was rubbing on the fan housing (slowly eating itself alive). I contacted Iomega, and they said they would replace the unit...with a refurbished unit. I also would have to pay to ship the unit back to Iomega. I just sent it back to Amazon for a replacement...Amazon is really fantastic!

My second (replacement) unit from Amazon had another fan problem right out of the box. The fan would not run, ever. The unit gets hot and I'm worried the hard drive will be toast, so I'm sending it back as well. I contacted Iomega, and they first said the unit did not have a fan, so it's OK...hard to believe they don't even know their product.

Anyhow, Iomega has really poor quality control, awful customer service and replacement policies. On the other hand, Amazon has great replacement policies so this hasn't been a stressful event.

Here is the flat honest truth, its an excellent affordable NAS. I TB of storage goodness is awesome.

The bad is if you have a b/g wireless router still running on 10/100 Ethernet and you plan on streaming movies and music as well as large data files, you will be disappointed. You need a router that handles Gigabit Ethernet as well as the new Wireless N platform so prepare to dig deep into your pockets. You will also need Wireless N Cards for all your computers and devices, so again, prepare to dig deep.

I have a Linksys WRT54G2 router running 4x 10/100 Ethernet ports. Copying files on this maxes out at 2mb. Sad but true. I spent nearly 8 consecutive hours transferring my 400 gbs of videos to this drive via Ethernet, not wireless. (I shudder thinking about doing it over Wireless G)

When streaming videos to my PS3 very often the video would start to stutter and I'd have to pause the video so it could buffer for a few minutes. To stop this I would have to remove all devices from the network except the PS3 and NAS so the devices would have optimal bandwidth.

[Update, the stuttering issue is directly related to my PS3. Most other devices stream fine except when the network is bogged down with too many appliances reading from/writing to it.]

The iomega drive itself is running the Twonky UPNP media server. This is good; why? because the Twonky, unlike the(Windows Media Player 11) WMP 11 UPNP server is faster, handles a tonne of formats, and can even stream the album art off of music files stored on the ID3 tags to devices such as the PS3 which the WMP 11 UPNP server cannot do.

The WebPage for the device is convenient and well laid out. You can even adjust the brightness of the LED there. You can only add new shared folders through that webpage and you can set them to be shared via DLNA or itunes music server or both. There is no way to directly connect this drive to your computer other than the ethernet cable. To do this you would have to assign a static IP address to the NIC on your PC and set the IP address acquisition on the NAS to automatic; If that doesn't work set a static IP address to the NAS as well. Then just plug the Ethernet cable in and the drive should turn up in "Network"

The extra USB port in the back cannot be used with a USB hub sadly. I attached my HP printer fine. NTFS drives cannot be read by it despite the specifications say that it can. FAT32 reads fine. All these features can be used without the included software. The only real reason to use the software is to secure the drive on the network.

The power adapter is designed so when plugged into a power strip, it doesn't block any other power outlets. It has a power off button and it can also be turned off via its web page or restarted there as well.

If the hard drive in the casing dies the drive is not user replaceable/upgradable. The included drive is somehow tied to the casing. You have to send it back to iomega to get the drive replaced.

If you really desperate this will work pretty well, however i recommend spending a little more like 400 and getting a NAS with multiple drive bays and is capable of RAID 1 and has user replaceable drives. The HP and Linksys options are much better.

Peace out peeps.

The product installed quickly and easily and worked as advertised for a week. Upon no longer working, I contacted technical support and needed to spend over an hour on an instant message chat to arrive a the conclusion that the drive was fried and needed to be returned (at an additional $25 cost to me!). To aggrivate matters further, I had just spend the week burning CD's, and iomega couldn't offer any assistance in recovering the data. The final nail in the coffin is that the e-mail with the return authorization information never arrived. After several attempts to contact customer support, I gave up and returned the product directly to Amazon. Great service by Amazon, poor quality from iomega. Purchase another product - it isn't worth the risk or hassle associated with this product.

This drive is great if you have more than one computer and are tired of moving an USB drive between them. You hook it to your wired network and all your computers can see and share it. If you have a large media library, this terabyte media server is your solution.

It's not just a dumb network drive either, it can work as an iTunes or DLNA server so you can play videos and music directly on a compatible device such as the PS3 or a PC running the free XBMC media center application.

Set up was easy. I haven't used the CD that came with it, I'm sure it is great, but this drive does not need any special software to work and the less bloat on my system, the better. Connect it to the network just like you would a computer and turn it on. Give it a moment to boot up, then go to your computer and look for it in your Windows Network under WORKGROUP. It has a funky name like Iomega-0a1234 which you can change.

Now you can start using the device. You can copy files to and from it just like a regular Windows network share. Write speed on a regular (100Mbps) network is about 5-6MB/s. To take advantage of its Gigabit capability you need both a Gigabit switch like this one: Netgear GS608NA Giga Switch 8Port and your computer to have a Gigabit ethernet port. Then the write speed is close to 10-11MB/s and read is around 20MB/s (tested under Linux).

Keep in mind that you *do not* need Gigabit to play videos. A regular home network should be just fine, although if your playback devices are on WiFi you might be pushing it and will experience problems if it's the slower kind (802.11b). Stay with wired (any kind) for consistent video playback.

I also plugged an USB flash drive in the back to see how it works. The flash drive appeared as another network share by its name (I now have a "lexar" share next to the "music", "movies" etc). This means the Iomega drive has the capability of making your old USB drive accessible over the network also!

To see its web configuration GUI you must know the IP address to put in a web browswer. That's probably one of the reasons to use the Iomega software but it is a simple command otherwise, or your router can show the IP in its "DHCP clients list". The web config is clean, it allows you to create or delete folders, enable/disable the iTunes and DLNA servers for each folder, create users who can access them. You can even adjust the brightness of the white LED so it does not light up the whole room at night. Nice touch.

TwonkyMedia Server is the embedded software inside, so do not be surprised if you find that name in your DLNA browser. There is a second nifty web interface on port 9000 which gives you access to the TwonkyMedia GUI without the "friendly" Iomega skin. There you have a PC media browser, a mobile media browser in two resolutions and more advanced configuration settings including MAC-based access controls.

The drive runs warm (100F) at normal room temperature like most USB drives. It is not particularly quiet due to the fact that it's a 7200rpm hard drive and has a small exhaust fan in the back. There seems to be some variance in how noisy the fan is, some may be quieter than others. On the good side, this fan appears to be temperature-controlled so keep the unit ventilated and don't sit it next to equipment that runs hot (cable box or game console) and you won't get to hear it whine too loud. Better yet, since it's a network drive, you're not stuck with keeping it on your desk, you can put it anywhere you can run a network cable.

I'm giving it five stars despite the noise problem because right now, for this price, it has a great feature set. For future versions however, I would want a quieter fan, the ability to control hard drive noise (quiet mode) and a low-power idle mode. I don't think I want the hard drive to shut down because power-up is most stressing on hard drives, I'd rather leave it running at low speed or something like that.

I have not tested hooking up a printer to it so I don't know how well that works. I recommend an already-networked laser printer Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces instead.

I have been using this Network Drive for the past 2 weeks. Here are my initial impressions.

Appearance-
Clean lines. Looks like a good quality product.
The drive is much smaller than regular NAS storage drives. In fact it is only as big as a regular external USB drive. Of course the appearance and size of a NAS drive shouldn't matter as you can put a NAS drive anywhere in the house unlike a USB drive. Nevertheless, the small size is a convenience if you need to take your drive to your friend's place to share some files :-)

Initial Setup-
I must say the initial setup of the drive was not a very smooth experience. As per the instructions I tried to install the drive detection software on a Vista machine. I was running as a standard user and entered the admin password when the installer prompted for it. However, the installer could not complete the installation. I logged in again as the admin user. This time, the installation completed. However, the drive detection software could not find my network drive even after several attempts.

Fortunately I had an XP machine also on the network. I installed the software on the XP machine as an admin user. The installation went smooth and the drive detection software found the drive almost instantanously. It also created mapped drives for the shared folders.

In short, when the setup software works, it works very well. Else it is a totally useless, as in the case of my first attempt on the Vista machine. I don't know if this is an issue with all vista machines.

After I accessed the network drive from my XP machine, I realized there is nothing wrong with the network drive. In fact you don't even need the setup software if you can find out the IP address of the network drive.( Searching by machine name did not work for me). Just enter the IP address in windows explorer like \\192.168.0.101 in my case and you can access all the shared folders on the network drive.

The web interface to access the network drive settings is very simple and user friendly.

I havn't tried out the backup software yet.

Performance-
In spite of this initial setup issues, I would rank this drive very highly. After I figured out how to access the shared folders I have had absolutely no issues. File transfers are fast and reliable.

One crucial feature that has not been mentioned in the documentation is that you can attach this drive directly to a computer through the ethernet port and transfer the files. This was mentioned by one of the earlier reviewers and is surely a great feature that allows you to use this like a regular external drive if you do not have a router or do not want to connect your drive to the network.

Overrall the drive has met my expectations of a home network drive.

I have friends with units that work just fine. Mine didn't, and that began a trip through hell with Iomega's stubborn and unhelpful "customer support".
Unfortunately for me, I didn't buy it through Amazon, or I would have sent it back and asked for a refund. But instead I had to pursue the warranty replacement route.
The original unit would just drop off the net (could not be detected by their software) after one or two day's run time. The power switch was non-functional, as was the reset button. The only way to shut it off was to unplug the power, wait, and replug. Then it would "live" for another day or so before repeating the failure mode. After a struggle with the online chat room type of tech support, they finally relented to give me an RMA number so I could ship it back. The remanufactured replacement they sent back only lived long enough for me to bring up the configuration screen, which I noticed said the unit's firmware was V1.09, much earlier than the current V2.63 on the unit I returned. Then the unit hung and could not be restored no matter what. This time it took several hours with three different techies having me jump through all kinds of hoops (making me an unpaid lab technician) to prove that the unit was non-functional. Today they finally issued a second RMA and I shipped the unit back. I can hardly wait to see what happens next!
My conclusion is that if you get a good unit and it lives for a while, it can be a joy. My friends are happy with their working products. But if you get a lemon, you are in for a lot of grief. Way more aggravation than the product is worth.

This is a rewritten review. Downgrade the rating to 3 stars (it won't let me change it).

I bought the Iomega 1TB Home Media Network Hard Drive in mid-February of 2009. I wanted to set up common storage on my home network so that everyone can work on whatever files they need to, regardless of what computer they are on (and the price seemed reasonable). I was also attracted to the feature that the hard drive has a USB port that is available to plug in another external drive or a printer. I was interested in using it to put my printer on the network (an HP Officejet 6210).

The setup instructions basically tell you to "plug it in, turn it on, and it will work." That's great if things work, not so great if they don't.

There is an Iomega utility that sits in the system tray (notification area). It looks out on the network and finds the drive. It also provides access to configuration pages. Web page access to the configuration is also possible.

I tested speeds across my network. I have a Dell Dimension 8400 running XP SP3. I use a Linksys WRT54G2 (upgraded after the drive wouldn't work with my old router). I left this web page open in the background during the tests, but no other applications were up. I had no other machines on the network at the time. The PC was wired to the router along with the Home Media Network Hard Drive, and the internet connection was on.

Test file size: a modest video file (.avi) 1.013 GB size indicated under Windows Explorer

I timed four cases, two on my Iomega Prestige 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34275 (not networked, but I'm loving that drive), and two on my Iomega 1TB Home Media Network Hard Drive.

PC --> Prestige: 42 sec.
Prestige --> PC: 34 sec.
PC --> Home Media Network: 128 sec.
Home Media Network --> PC: 112 sec.

I'll let you construct GB/s, Mb/s, or whatever units you would like from those numbers. Longer files may be a bit better, but the status bar seemed to settle into a regular progress rather quickly, so the gains may be small.

Treat these times as ballpark estimates. No attempt was made to explore their sensitivity to various factors. They represent what I experienced if I simply sat down and started using the drive under typical circumstances.

I was unsuccessful getting the print server function to work through the router, even after time with both Iomega and Linksys support. Everything about printer setup seems to work, up until I click the "print" button from an application and nothing happens. I got it to work work when the unit was plugged directly into the computer ethernet port, which demonstrates I am able to correctly set up the printer.

Because of the printer problem, along with the disappointing speeds from my tests, I decided to network my Iomega Prestige 1TB Drive and printer through my desktop PC using the ability within the XP operating system. If you don't know how, a book like Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual (2nd Edition) explains it very well. Everything works great now, but I have to have the desktop on. The Iomega Media Network Hard Drive was sent back.

Note the user manual, specs, and quick start guide may be found at the Iomega website. Amazon deletes the link if I add it here.

In response to a comment, I checked to see the drive comes formatted NTFS.