SimpleShare 500 GB Network Attached Storage with iShare Remote Access

by SimpleTech

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000G18NRA
• Item model number: STI-NAS/500
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 14, 2006

Product Description

SimpleShare 500GB Network Attached Storage with iShare Remote Access

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect performance, February 9, 2007

By 

Dr. Seuss "the mac daddy" (Charleston, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SimpleShare 500 GB Network Attached Storage with iShare Remote Access (Personal Computers)

All in all, the drive works great. As with any browser based setup, you need to adjust to the interface, but once you have things set up, it works without a hitch. We will see what kind of life expectancy we have; I cannot testify as to longevity.

I have a hardware VPN set up, and give the SimpleShare a static IP address. I can read and write to the drive all day long. Very nice.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bad software, low power consumption saves money., October 2, 2007

By 

T. Garrison "TG" (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: SimpleShare 500 GB Network Attached Storage with iShare Remote Access (Personal Computers)

This is a very simple device, with less features than many other NAS systems, but what could be expected for a price so low?

I have a few gripes:

1) The help refers to a different version of the software that isn't loaded on the device, and features that don't exist.
2) All the folks getting error 53 on Windows (and cannot connect via the MAC) need to format (by erasing) their drives and reboot the system--the services won't start until there is a filesystem on the disk. Of course there is nothing in the help about this.
3) NFS doesn't work correctly, the daemon is enabled but security not configured--so you cannot mount via NFS on Mac or Linux.
4) The vendor website is a joke. I hope I never need their help. All the links to their website on the device lead to missing pages, likewise with the documentation.
5) The software version is listed as a release candidate from 2006, and the downloads on the website are an even earlier version. I get the feeling this is an abandoned software project.

Why did I still rate the drive four stars? Well, despite all the shortcomings the thing works, and has a few features I like:

External drive support, and the power saving features--some of the NAS devices don't allow you to park the drives when not in use.

The main reason I bought this was to save money. I have been storing all my files on an old computer running Linux. I bought a kill-a-watt and measured the power usage and discovered that it was using 150 watts!

At 9 cents a kilowatt hour that comes out to $118.26 a year to keep my file server turned on. Replacing the file server with this device will save me roughly $100/year. It will pay for itself very quickly. I haven't measured this device yet, but it is rated for a maximum usage of 36 watts (actual usage should be much lower after initial startup) and with the power saving features it should only use a couple of watts while not being actively used.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good home NAS, good value. Workarount available for Mac OS X setup., July 19, 2007

By 

serious driver - See all my reviews

This review is from: SimpleShare 500 GB Network Attached Storage with iShare Remote Access (Personal Computers)

For a good price, I got a large-capacity shared storage at home. Set-up from Windows XP PC was pretty straightforward and easy, and network drive was assigned to the PC almost automatically as far as I can remember.

Once set up, it can be accessed from all computers at home, but the access from Mac was a bit tricky (going to Finder menu, "connect to server", select workgroup, etc., etc.), so I decided to run the setup CD on Intel-based iMac to have a shortcut installed.

Here's the only glitch that I've found so far. The setup is apparently written in Javascript so the setup program is a local file in HTML. Safari, the standard web browser for Mac OS X, seems to be case sensitive when referring to other files. So the setup did NOT run off of the CD supplied, saying "error in finding file *&*&.htm" or somesuch, whereas *&*&.HTM is indeed on the CD. I copied the content of the CD to HDD, and changed the filenames to lowercase, which seemed to be the way they refer each other. In fact, all it took was to change "*.HTM" to "*.htm".

After starting the setup from the HDD, the setup ran on Mac without a problem. Now the shortcut is installed on the desktop of the Mac for convenient access.

One thing to remember... 100Base-TX.

While it is fast enough for everyday use for most people, can be painful for transferring large amount of data.

When I first installed, I copied ~170GB of data from the PC.

It was before I realized that 100Mbits/s gives 30~40GBytes/hr.

It took a long time to complete the move of data, but it had been done when I woke up in the morning. (Therefore I was not able to measure the average throughput.)

I can play .mpg movies smoothly from both PC and Mac, so the transfer rate is not my complaint, but if you are planning on many tens of GB of transfer daily, consider one with faster network port. (and make sure your PC has one.)

My box did not come with the "User's Guide", although the QuickGuide mentions it to be included. The User's Guide can be downloaded from the mfr's site anyway, so I'm ok with it.