Customer Reviews

Iomega StorCenter 1 TB (2 HD x 500 GB) USB 2.0/Ethernet Network Storage 33872

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I bought the StorCenter as an archival drive and found it fairly easy to set up on my Macs. I am quite happy given the price and the large amount of storage. I do find that it is not the fastest drive out there and is not the best for remote video storage and editing. It is excellent as an archive or back up drive.

I do use my music library across several computers with no problems. I do not know if tools for Windows are more robust, but tools for Macs are lacking... fortunately, my main purpose is archiving.

This drive is worse than useless. Your computer must run Iomega network software to find and mount the drive, every time that you need to mount it. You have to re-mount the drive every time that you eject the drive or reboot your computer. If the power fails you also have to manually turn the drive back on, which is not easy as the power switch is a tiny button on the back of the drive in a hard to locate position. My drives USB connection was also dead on arrival, so I couldn't even use it as a USB drive. All in all a very bad design. Drive speed is good, when you have it mounted over 1 GB ethernet. And the drive is quiet enough to have sitting next to you. But these features do not outweigh the flaws.

I can't say it's really bad NAS but it really not good :)


Problems:

1. It's advertised as 1TB NAS but when I connected it (empty) I saw 908GB of free space, where is 92GB gone ? I was ready that it will miss couple of gigabytes but 92 ... It's not that small , you can still buy 80GB HDD and it still will be more.

2. Nosy , I believe it's not HDDs but fan , but anyway it's really noisy I can hear it the moment I enter the room.

3. VERY SLOW , it's supposed to be 1Gb networking NAS but it gives about 6MBps over 1Gb network and 4.5-5Mbps transfer speed over 100T network. I can't understand how this can happen on device with 400Mhz CPU , 64MB of RAM and 1Gb network card but it is. Probably software issue.

4. No firmware updates for this model, you can't even find original firmware at IOmega site.

5. Had a UPnP problems listing the AVI files - when trying to list video files it just shows MPGs , I contacted Iomega TS but they refused to support UPnP at all (actually I had a feeling that they had no idea what is it :)) so I found that UPnP server in NAS made by MediaTomb and contacted them, according to them it's a simple configuration issue all I need is to change config.xml a bit, but the problem is that you can't access/see system folders (etc, root, bin and so on on this NAS).

6. When set to static IP address NAS still take DNSs from the DHCP server if one exist on network.

7. Tried to create user called "root" - got a whole world of problems, after some error messages I was unable to share any folder on NAS - the folders tree just was empty. Reseting the firmware did not helped, but full reformat did (However it took me two days given the device speed to retrieve all the data ~600GB I already had put on it and after format to put it back).

8. Impossible to delete "guest" user. Attempt to do saw causes something that feels like "reset to factory defaults" - all settings get lost.

9. Sometimes (was not able to pinpoint exact reason) when changing something in settings the network group get reseted to WORKGROUP.

10. Had a problem with my Ziova CS505 player. the player can access network shares using SMB , all it's need is a "guest" account without password. I cleared the password on the "guest" account in NAS , player sees the shares but can't browse them. Works OK with a lot of other NAS and PC devices.

11. UPnP server inside NAS has an option to monitor event's (file added/removed etc) to update database (other options is manual "force update" and timed scan) called "inotify" , well this option never worked, any attempt to enable it caused error message and UPnP server restarted.



Good things:

1. Small
2. Very cool , it does not get hot even when coping files continuesly for 2 days.


So it does main thing stores my files but it's not the device I would recommend to anyone.

1. Very Noisy - it is louder that two PC together working in the same room. I don't think anyone wants this working in close proximity from the sleeping area.

2 The print server capability is not able to be accessed from the Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Even so theier spec stated - "........

* Mac OS X 10.2.7 or higher ......"

Tech support when I called them admitted that they dodn't know how to deploy the priner access from Leopard and consider it is not computable with Leopard. (contrary to the info in the spec)

3. Useless documentation - the only one way to get some help is to search their website FQA. And as a fact, the latest Mac OS they mentioning is "Tiger".- version prior to "Leopard".


I have returned this product - that was the most successful and happy step in this purchase. Thanks to Amazon great service.

I first tried a Buffalo NAS but it wouldn't work on Vista, even though the box said it would.

I tried the Iomega StorCenter NAS 1TB and got it going right away. For me, it works much better than the normal Windows networking, especially XP Home.

I have PCs with 1 Gbps LAN cards connected to a 1 Gbps switch and find it to be faster than going directly from one PC to the other. I think it is quite fast compared to USB2 or ESATA external drives.

It could be a bit quieter, but it is something you can get used to.

After considering the option of leaving it as a 1 TB RAID 0 drive and having to back it up, I will probably reconfigure it as 1 500 GB RAID 1. I am finding that hard disks don't last forever and having 100% redundancy without backing up over the network sounds good to me.

For those who complain about not seeing a full 1 TB need to talk with someone who knows something about computers or get a dummies book. Or look at how much formatted space you have on other drives compared to the specification.

I'm very pleased having a file server that will fit in the palm of my hand.

If you're only looking for basic NAS functionality, then this unit will do the job. However, don't be surprised by the following:

1. The web interface is clunky and sparse. There aren't many functions to use or settings to change. For example, you can't browse the device contents from the web interface.
2. A lot of space is chewed up by the system. For the pair of 500GB drives, I have them in Raid 1 (mirrored) and have only 454GB available.
3. Gigabit is in name only. Don't expect to get more than 130Mbps, not 1000Mbps.
4. Support on the device is horrible. I tried working with them to get the network speed issue figured out, and they were terrible. There is also a sparse amount of documentation and no revised firmware.

That said, if you're looking to back up a bunch of stuff at home and want a very basic device to do it, then this will be OK. I bet there are other units out there that offer more, and don't even think about it if you have a small business.

UPDATE: After a horrific experience with IOMEGA support, they sent me an email follow-up that was partly apologetic and explains the network speed. Here's an excerpt from the note:

"...this particular device does not have a extremely fast processor or large amount of RAM because these are designed for a specific market, and will not get the same speed you would get transferring to a full server. The types of speeds are you seeing are common for the environment you are working in. The Gigabit speed is only the the theorhetical speed and in reality, speeds such as you are getting are common for a gigabit connection with this device."

In other words, 130 MBps is about all you will get out of the unit by design. I'm going to leave my rating at 3 stars, since it's a reasonable amount of mirrored storage for the price, but I doubt I'll be shopping IOMEGA in the future.

I have had this drive for about a week now. Contrary to the CNET review, very easy initial setup with the assistance of the iomega online chat help (the written and online documentation are awful). I used them 4 or 5 times for questions. There was little to no wait and they were very helpful. I am accessing the drive over my home network from a mac desktop, a windows XP laptop and a windows vista laptop without any real problems. The only issue I have is that vista does not remember the logon password so it prompts you for this everytime you log into the computer - and this is a vista issue not an issue with the drive. Also, the print server does not support multifunction machines so if you intend on using it with a printer-fax-copier then you are out of luck. Finally, the blue light on the front of the drive is very bright and annoying - for the life of me I can't figure out why this is necessary. It is not noisy and does not run hot (I coppied 30GB from a non-network external USB drive to the Iomega drive and it was barely warm after writing for several hours straight). This external drive is connected directly to the Iomega drive BTW and is therefore also accessable over my network - a really nice feature.

Bottom line - this is a relatively inexpensive network storage solution that works as advertised. So far I am very happy with it.

I bought this drive and it worked great for just over a year and then it started to have problems. It would get into a cycle of going to sleep after being on for about 60 seconds. Then it would wake up, only to fall asleep again within moments, then repeat the cycle again within 40 seconds this time, then repeat it within 20 seconds... eventually settling into an endless cycle of clicking off and on over and over again about every 10 seconds.

At first I though one of the two drives was failing so I opened up the back of the unit to see if I could determine which drive might be the problem, only to discover how poorly this unit was made. There is no easy way to replace a drive, I would have to destroy the unit to get at the individual drives. So I put it back together and plugged it in again. I noticed that I could access the data when the drive was powered up initially, but once the sleep/wakeup cycle began they were useless. So I have determined the drives are probably OK and it's the Iomega box that is the problem. SO I went to the Iomega website.. there is nothing that provides any help there. I couldn't believe how useless there site is. The support their products, they abandon them! At some point in the future I will buy a different companies empty net drive box, rip apart the Iomega box and salvage the drives. So, my advice to all who are curious about this drive... avoid it like the plague.

I set the box for mirroring. My drive failed within the warranty period. Iomega was willing to replace the drive as long as I did not attempt to recover the data (by placing the individual drives in a computer). So its a matter of choosing my data or a replacement drive. I don't think it is a valid choice.

This is a great drive for it's capacity and functionality, especially if you can find it on sale. I haven't tested all of it's functionality such as security or UPnP because I returned it back for the problematic issue you can read about below.

It has integrated print server functionality and all of the settings can be configured through the web interface. Setup of the drive, it's printer service, setting up user accounts and general configuration was a snap.

Contrary to some other reviews here you don't need to run Iomega software every time you reboot your computer to access the drive, nor do you even need to have it installed on your computer.

The one great problem with the drive is that is supposed to be constantly on (that' the whole point of having networked storage such as this), otherwise you could just as well designate any of your standalone computer to perform the same functionality. And here where the problem was - just like the other reviews had mentioned the drive was very very noisy. Did I mention it was noisy? Let me do it again.

This minuscule drive was generating so much noise it easily drowned two other computer mid-towers I had running at the same time. And my other two computers had multiple hard-drives and dvd/cd-rom drives each, 400W power supplies, and at least 3 fans to each computer. I had to shut it down at night, because I could hear it work in the office room across from our bedroom.

And the drive was also running hot regularly even though it was not doing much. Even though it had an option to power down the drives on inactivity this didn't seem to reflect much on the level of noise it was still generating. In the end, I returned it back.