Customer Reviews

LaCie 301257U 1 TB 2big Network Attached Storage Hard Drive with 2-disk RAID

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Pros: Good network hard drive if you are looking for something that mirrors automatically.

Cons:

It is possible to bypass all security permissions on this LaCie 2Big Network hard drive via FTP. The default `admin' password will not change on the FTP side of the user login even after changing the admin login password. This allows full access to the hard drive via the administrators login to the FTP.

I have contacted LaCie regarding this issue only to be told that this is a 'feature' of the product not a defect.

Steps to verify.

1. Setup a LaCie 2Big Network Hard drive with FTP access as per the manufacture instructions.

2. Change the `Admin' password anything you like.

3. Using an FTP client, log in to the LaCie 2Big Network hard drive using the 'admin' log in and your password.

4. You will not be able to log in using the new password

5. Using an FTP client, log in to the LaCie 2Big Network hard drive using the `admin' log in the default `admin' password.

6. You have full access to all folders and documents in the hard drive.

Do NOT buy this product if you are planning on using it for an FTP.

I purchased this so a few people could store their music, photos, etc., in a single place. Using it with 3 Apple computers and an Airport Extreme in RAID mode, so the data is all backed up. Feel completely nerdy but it is easy to set up and use, and works as advertised. Do NOT purchase this unit unless you definitely intend to connect it to a router via ethernet, it will not connect straight to a computer as far as I can tell. They make the same thing in triple interface format for that purpose. This unit is not what I would call quiet. If your router's in a room that's not where you sleep or relax it won't make the least bit of difference. It gets hot, too. I had in an enclosed cabinet and it got hot beyond what I was comfortable with, so now it's out in the open, which considering its size and rather clunky appearance (and huge blue light) is a little funky, but again, if you're connecting it to a router somewhere out of the way, again it won't make a difference. Setting up accounts to access are via a web interface, and while fairly straightforward, I would say if you're a tech newbie this may not be great for you unless someone can help you set it up.

This is a warning for Mac users. Though I've seen that there is a review from a Mac owner on this page who's not complaining about my problems.

I wanted to use the drive as backup device for my macs (leopards and tigers). Unfortunately it seems that the LaCies AFP implementation has some serious problems. One of them leads to setting the invisible attribute switched on for every transferred file. Which forces you to use some developer tool (SetFile) to switch it back. This does not happen for every app but one is rsync an for that matter every backup solution I know.

The problem seems to exist for a couple of other apps too. Google for "Lacie afp invisible". Customer support in germany confirmed the problem saying that there is no workaround.

Since I'm a developper I might come up with a patched version of rsync but thats probably not your thing. Actually its not mine either and it frankly puzzles me that such a thing went through LaCies quality assurance.

Anyways that problem is Mac only. Can't say anything about other environments.

While this product advertises a 1 gigabit network card, it actually has a throughput equivalent to a 100 megabit network card, which was the standard about ten years ago. I spoke with customer service and they said 6 to 12 megabytes per second is the normal write speed. Your internal hard drive is probably running at 400 megabytes per second.

Why worry? Because when I use it for backup, it is not unusual for me to see an elapsed time of 4 or 5 HOURS. I have a 1 gigabit network because I need it. But this drive does not operate at that speed.

And not only that, it seems to have a problem with writing the date created for the new file, and instead uses the date modified for the old file in both the date modified and date created. Again I talked to customer service for the limit of my patience and got nowhere. My usual backup software was rewriting every file every time because of this. I did find something different to use, but should not have had to do this.

The LaCie 2big Network was easy to install. I am using the RAID feature, which cut the 1 TB in half, so I have a little under 500 GB of usable space. Setting up the RAID took a couple of hours for the disks to sync. It is a quiet unit and the casing doesn't get too hot.

The security setup is easy to use and is robust. I am currently accessing the 2big from XP and Win ME machines. I have only run into one issue, a deletion command that did not finish correctly. It required the system to resync (which took a couple of hours), but I lost no data.

After about 3 months of usage I haven't had to test the hotswap feature of the disks (and hope I don't have to), but I did remove a disk and plug it back in without any problems.

got this for backups as well as for an itunes repository. initial transfer of that 80gb repository took almost three hours, but the guilty party was probably the now replaced d-link gigabit switch switch. on balance, it's a pretty good nas device. however there are a few annoyances:

* it's not possible to reset the unit to its factory defaults.

* designating users, groups, & shares is awkward. it's also not possible to map my existing users from osx directly to the lacie.

* it uses xfs as its native file system format. xfs is case-sensitive. this can cause issues with filename collisions when the host filesystem is only case-aware.

* the unit is quite noisy & doesn't sleep or power down its fans.

recently i updated the imac on the other end to 10.5.2 & enabled jumbo frames on both devices. my current switch is a netgear gs105 & transfers are now much faster.

NOTE: this review replaces my original, less favourable review ...

ANOTHER UPDATE: recently asked lacie support about the throughput issues with this device. their answer was decidedly disappointing:

"'Gigabit' is really a theoretical maximum transfer speed, not an expectation of specific throughput performance.

There are a variety of factors, from hardware and firewall configurations to operating system configurations, that can cause a slowdown in optimal performance. In our benchmarking, with jumbo frames supported and enabled on a gigabit setup, the devices will average from 10MB/s to 15MB/s."

what's the point of providing a gigabit connector on hardware that can't otherwise support it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: lacie support is pretty pathetic. something went wrong with the netgear gs105 switch & the ethernet interfaces of both the lacie & my imac were hosed. a reset revived the imac. same for the lacie. only one of its ethernet link lights is red & the support droids have yet to answer why that is - network connectivity is there but regardless red means problems & so far they've been unable to even understand what lights i'm asking about let alone provide a solution. my guess is the driver needs to be reset but how do you do that? stay tuned ...

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: the lacie support droids failed to provide any answer. they said if the device is working, it doesn't matter what the led is doing. phew! am i going to replace this gadget with something that works real damn soon! you bet!

AND YET ANOTHER UPDATE: found my own answer to the red led issue above. it's a d'oh! back when it failed, i'd swapped out the netgear gs105 switch & put in a linksys 10/100 switch i'd kicking around. recently acquired an apple time capsule & connected it directly to the lacie. the top led turned green. d'oh! the top led indicates the link is (green) or isn't (red) gigabit ...

FINAL UPDATE: tried to upgrade this unit to their firmware release 2.2.3. TOTAL FAILURE! couldn't get it to work from my new imac. fail. fired up an ancient ibook running tiger. fail. tried it from a winxp guest o/s. semi-fail: apparently got it to 2.2.3 but no matter what i did from its administrator interface, the imac was no longer able to mount its shares. gave up & disconnected the unit, removed its disks (sadly hitachi deathstars) for alternate use, & am taking the carcass to goodwill ...

lacie tech support was spit worthless, not that it's surprising.

I bought the LaCie 2big Network Ethernet 2-Disk RAID system to provide a common repository for company files for a small business (<10 employees). The intent was to allow employees in the office and those working remotely to have access to the same set of files, while at the same time using the RAID feature to provide a backup of the company files in case of a drive failure (scheduled system backups are also performed on a weekly basis).

The experience for workers on the same internal network as the drive is great as they can map the shares to drives and the performance is fast.

However, the experience for remote users is poor. The accessible shares are listed in the order created, and cannot be changed. Thus, users must search through the list of shares to find the desired share. The directories in each share only appear after selecting the share title. This is true of every sub-directory, as well. To make things worse, after uploading a file, the directory tree disappears and you have to work your way back through the tree again (many clicks). Finally, the delete file feature does not appear to work for remote users. So if you load the wrong file or load it to the wrong directory, you have to have someone else clean up your error. Basically, the ethernet agent software provided with the drive is crap. Finally, upload and download times are slow for remote users.

An alternative for small businesses looking to provide remote users access to a common repository of company files would be a software product like Microsoft Groove. Unfortunately, like most Microsoft products, it's priced for companies making billions of dollars a year and not small businesses.

I needed a drive that would serve as a backup for my most important files, and also allow me access to important files from abroad. This does both.

I originally purchased a WD World Edition, but returned it immediately after I discovered that WD places a restriction on certain file types, and also requires the use of third-party software in order to remotely control it.

The Lacie drive as compatible with FTP, AFP, and SMB, so I can access it from anywhere using an Apple or Microsoft machine. Transfer speeds are exactly what I expected: Extremely fast when accessed from my internal network, and understandably slow when pulling files from outside the network (speed when downloading from abroad will be dictated by your home's upload speed).

the RAID configuration is simple: just specify (when you setup the drive initially) that you want to run it in SAFE mode. This way you'll have roughly 732 GB of space, with an automatic backup in case of drive failure.

A few minor downsides that I can think of: 1) The drive is pretty bulky 2) It is also somewhat loud 3) If a drive fails, I think you need to get a replacement direct from Lacie, as opposed to simply going out and buying a new drive. (That might be Lacie trying to get more money out of us, not necessarily a restriction).

I highly recommend this great drive!

This is the most disappointing piece of hardware I've bought in a long time. I'm have many Lacie drives that has always served me well, so I guess I just made the wrong choice for my needs this time... I seriously needed the drive to be faster and I was under the impression that the '1000' in 10/100/1000 Gigabit ethernet = fast. I actually thought it would be faster than firewire, oops, $500 later I realized its not. Well, I know its meant for specifically setting it up services like ftp through the network, but in my case, working with animation and video projects, if its not directly plugged in to the computers ethernet cable it unpractical as it is terribly slow. I think it would be better to just get a USB or Firewire drive and keep it attached to one of your machines on the network.

Installation happened to be very straightforward. Setup was tricker, but doable. The user's manual as all manuals written poorly. The worst part of it is the backup software. If you want to use it as a backup drive, beware.

Ideally, the backup shall run in the background, constantly backing up your files to the drive and you shall not be concerned about specific setup. LaCie offers a backup where you have to manually initiate it, manually select files and folders and manually select target. Or you can leave it with the default backup of entire "My Documents" directory to the external drive and still you will have to start it manually. With this software we are back in early DOS times when XCOPY command was not yet invented, let alone luxuries like incremental backup (which came as standard software with my first tape backup long time ago). No optional software upgrade is available. You may elect to buy a backup software additionally on the market (allegedly any of them will work with this drive), but most of these backup programs are using proprietary file format and that makes the backup files not accessible directly from the Explorer. Therefore, if your computer fails and you hope that your backup files will be readily available from another computer, you are wrong!

Last but not least matter is price. With the package, you will receive an offer of Advance Replacement. If your unit happen to fail, LaCie will send you a replacement before you return failed product or part, shipping paid. The cost of this offer is about $115, i.e. about 1/3 of the Amazon price! Of course, you don't have to buy it, but then you have to ship the unit/part, pay the cost of shipment and LaCie will send you replacement unit within undisclosed period of time, while you are entirely unprotected, although you did pay the money. This situation dictates practically buying this option, but the final price is radically higher than the advertised one. On top of it, LaCie will not protect your data whatsoever! If you loose a drive, you have to take care on your own for data recovery, prior to shipping it for replacement, since even if the drive happen to be repairable, LaCie will re-format it (data loss!) even if the data would be recoverable. Think twice before you go for it. It sounds like you are dealing with a proverbial used car dealer.

The standard manufacturer's warranty provides technical support. At first you will see no other options but web-based e-mail service, which if you try, you will be waiting for the TS response a week or more. Deeper in the LaCie web site guts there is a telephone number buried.

If disaster happens you will have to send back faulty unit at your cost to the manufacturer and they will attempt to repair and eventually send you back refurbished unit. Your data will be lost, since they do not attempt recovery; they will wipe out the disk.

The manufacturer offers extended warranty plan under which, they will send substitute and return label first and then you may try to recover the data, but it is available only if the extended warranty is purchased within 30 days from the unit shipment from the factory. But shipped not to YOU but to the reseller. The chances are that the unit will be shipped to you AFTER the 30-day period expired (and that happened to me)and you will not be able to purchase the extended warranty.

The Amazon-offered extended warranty service is not even near to the one offered by the manufacturer, actually it is an equivalent of the manufacturer's standard warranty (thus completely unneeded), and available only at the moment when you buy the unit. It is not so obvious, you have to scroll down and read all stories before you get to this information, therefore beware, it is easy to overlook it.

Solution? Buy second drive to your computer and a decent backup software. This way you are to be better protected than with LaCie.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Undoubtedly both Amazon and LaCie wanted to provide us with a superior product, but in it's stead we are getting standard product with less than standard service and inferior software.

Don't buy it! Save these $300+ since it is not worthy.