Customer Reviews

SimpleTech 250GB SIMPLESHARE OFFICE SERVER ( STI-NAS/250 )

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The instant gratification aspect of this server paid off: plug it in, tell your computer to look for it, and it works. Novices could use this device easily. Although it wasn't necessary to use the setup web pages (it has a web site built in, the same as many network devices), I found they were clear, easy to use and fast.

Missing from the description is that this device also supports RAID and mirroring, though I didn't try these for more than about 10 minutes. In addition to Windows (SMB) and OSX (netatalk), it also supports NFS, a way to access disks used often by unix computers.

I had an obscure question about the way the NFS sharing worked, something missing from the manual, and I used the e-mail tech support. The answer came within 24 hours: clearly competent, well-explained, friendly.

I tested at the same time an alternative to this device, the "Buffalo Technology Linkstation", which is badly lacking in terms of ease of setup and configuration, but transfers data about 10% faster than the SimpleShare.

In my quest for a stable NAS solution that included redundancy, either in a scheduled backup onto a second disk or RAID, I tried a number of SAN products with horrifying disappointment. The D-Link DSW-G600 I thought had promise but was terrible. The Buffalo Tech Link Station was really slow. It almost went the route of building my own linux box to do the task, but decided to give The SimpleTech a try. To my delight, this thing is Fast! Sure it only has a 100MB/sec pipe but the lag I see is in the network, not the device. What turns this into a stellar product is the fact that with a 4 port usb2 powered hub, I was able to attach 4 additional drives to the SimpleShare. Not only was I able to attach the drives, this thing will actually do full on RAID 0 (Striping) and RAID 1 (Mirror), with Spare drive capabilities as well!! So after attaching 3 250GB Drives and a 120GB Drive to the Simpleshare, I created a mirror with the internal drive giving me a 250GB Redundant share for my wifes pictures, bbackups and etc. and I also created a concatenate share consisting of a 250GB drive and a 120GB drive which makes a 370GB share available for stuff like movies and garbage. Not to mention I have attached another 250GB "foreign" drive that has a regular fat32 partition on it. I have .75TB total shared storage on my Home network! Setup was also a breeze, and it has a logging facility what can email you if there's a drive problem. This is valuable if you want redundancy and want to know when a drive fails so you can take care of it before it becomes a majro problem. The admin utilities needs a little work, but functionally, the Simpleshare capabilities are well worth the price!

After struggling to put in a wireless LAN, I was quite nervous about adding a networked storage device. I was extremely pleased that I was storing photos onto my Simplshare storage device within 5 minutes of opening the box. It really is plug and play.

I own a Dell PC and an Apple iMac and both are connected to the storage device allowing me to save and swap files in a snap.

Given the time and money I have invested in my photos and MP3 files, I sleep well at night knowing I have additional back up and the investment is quite worth it. Given my past experiences installing a wireless LAN, it is even more satisfying that it was easy to install.

This NAS devices is easy to set up and seems to work well at first -- but it has several problems that may make you want to wait for the next firmware version.

The current version of SimpleShare changes the "last modified date" of backed up files to the current date and time whenever you copy a file off of the unit. In essence, the unit erroneously uses the "last accessed date" for the "last modified date", so if you are trying to restore files to another system, you will NOT get the same timestamps as the originals. For many purposes, this doesn't matter, but I use timestamps to help me distinguish old versions of documents from new versions.

SimpleTech's Support told me today that a firmware fix was coming for this problem, but with no known release date.

Another problem may not be completely a SimpleShare problem. My favorite synchronization program, BEYOND COMPARE (from http://www.scootersoftware.com), does not work properly with SimpleShare. Documents copied to SimpleShare are either given the current date and time, or are simply not copied correctly at all (they are copied to temporary files that should then be renamed to match the original file name, but they are not so renamed). Deleting from SimpleShare using BEYOND COMPARE doesn't work at the directory level -- you must select the files you want to delete, rather than selected the directory containing those files. I've discussed this problem with Scooter Software, and they say that BEYOND COMPARE works fine with Redhat Linux's version of SAMBA (which is likely being used as the OS and file system in the SimpleShare device).

Another backup-synchronization product, SYNCBACKSE (from http://www.2brightsparks.com) DOES copy properly to SimpleShare, and has an option to properly set the time stamp of files copied to SimpleShare, but has a more awkward interface compared to BEYOND COMPARE.

It's possible that the time stamp firmware fixed mentioned by SimpleTech will solve this set of problems as well.

John Land

The SimpleShare 250 Gbyte NAS is one of the more economical units on the market, especially considering its feature set (which includes a built-in print server, RAID capabilities and compatibility with Windoze, Mac and Linux systems right out of the box). Although software is included to help you "discover" the drive on your network, it isn't needed, and I never installed it. The SimpleShare includes a web interface for administration and a wizard to perform the basic setup if needed. If you already have a network (likely, since you're considering a network storage device! (:)), just plug in the SimpleShare and it will obtain an IP address from your dhcp server (typically, your router) and appear on your network. It runs quietly, if a bit warm to the touch, but according to SimpleTech, the case provides the cooling for the internal drive, and the warmth is both expected and desirable.

I am using firmware version 1.07 and the unit works as advertised. I currently have mine set up with an external 250 Gbyte drive in a RAID 1 (mirroring) configuration. All data on the drive are visible to my Windoze and Linux machines on the network. Transfer rates seem acceptable, although I have not taken direct measurements. I have not used the print server.

It's an open secret that this box runs Linux and that the firmware is customizable. You can add telnet, ftp and media server capabilities (for example) with only a little effort and some familiarity with Linux/Unix. There's a wealth of information online for anyone who wants to add capabilities.

There are a few negatives, however. The latest "official" firmware is version 1.09, but this is only available by request to SimpleTech. Their website advertises version 1.07 as the latest, even though their techs may recommend an "upgrade" (see below) and provide a URL to acquire the 1.09 version in a private email. Unfortunately, the 1.09 firmware removes features from the 1.07 firmware, including the RAID 0 option (striping). According to the SimpleTech engineers, the 1.09 firmware is intended for users who will use the device primarily as a backup/external storage device, and so features and interface have been designed accordingly. According to reports in various internet forums, the 1.09 firmware release "fixes" problems by removing features. My own experiments with the 1.09 firmware convinced me to return to 1.07.

Other items to note: SimpleTech has recently been acquired; product includes a 3-year warranty; 500 Gbyte and above models include iShare software to allow your device to be visible on the internet (I suspect this could also be accomplished with some judicious port forwarding, without any additional software); non-proprietary data format (FAT32, NTFS); supports both SMB/NetBios/Samba and NFS simultaneously.

Bottom line: good performance, great features, and an excellent value for the money.

This is a great product if you use it by itself, but once you start adding external usb drives, this nas has serious issues, especially with those drives greater than 300gb. It would crash while creating a disk pool, and when this happens, it doesn't gracefully recover--- if you power cycle it would crash again immediately on reset. The only way to get out of the loop is to hook the problematic drive to a different computer and have it reinitialized/formatted. When the pool creation finally succeeds, it wasn't reliable.. for example, shutting down the drives and re-plugging them into different usb ports would cause the nas to crash again and never boot unless the drives are reformatted on a different machine. It seems stable on smaller drives < 300gb, but still very questionable when it comes to reliability.

update:

This nas can't take a beating at all. Any heavy concurrent writing causes it to crash. It seems to work very well when the drives are empty, but once they're halfway full, the crash seems to occur more often -- especially when copying large files ( > 2 gig ).

Whenever I see reviews of a product that has lots of 4 and 5 stars and also a good number of single stars I figure that this is a product that only a techie could love. I am such an individual. The 4 or 5 star guys are the techies who figure out how the product works and take the time to test configure the product a couple of times and a couple of different ways. Then when they are finally satisfied that they know how the product actually works they go ahead and do a final setup. Again, I am one of those guys. The one star guys are on the opposite end of the techie spectrum and, unfortunately, this product is just not for someone who expects a seamless, painless out-of-box plug 'n play experience. So if you know what you are doing and are not fazed by words like 'router', 'ip address' and 'raid' then go ahead, buy this product and you will love it. This product cost me less than a 100 bucks. Setup was straightforward but I must admit that the documentation was sketchy, at best. I did not even bother with installing any of their software. Instead ,after connecting the unit to my home router I figured out the IP address by logging into my router and viewing the assigned IP address table. Then I went to the ip address of the Simpletech NAS/250 and was good to go. I highly recommend that you not install any of their software because it essentially gives you no added functionality over what you can do using the web interface into the Simpleshare NAS/250. Performance is very acceptable. The unit does run a little hot but they claim that the aluminum shell acts as a heat sink and judging by the temperature to the touch I believe it. I recommend that you place the unit where there is plenty of ambient air flow around it, just as an additional precaution. But because of the fanless design, the unit is really silent which I greatly appreciate. I took away one star from my rating due to poor documentation and the fact that they have crippled this unit by not offering iShare which allows web based access to the drive from anywhere in the world. I am sure that this is purely a marketing-driven decision designed to maximize bucks so in that sense it is understandable but, still, I hate it when they do this sort of thing. Incidently iShare is available with their NAS/500 product. I have not tried mirroring or striping but have ordered an external 250 Gig usb drive (again, Simpletech, since I love their quite, fan-less, design) and plan to use that as a mirror. They have an email alert capability but as far as I can tell it needs an open smtp relay for the mail and I don't know too many open relays around today. Bottom line, if you are comfortable with tech talk this drive will do the job and the price is great. But if you need some hand holding, either plan on getting the hand holding or stay away from this drive!!

this backup system does a very nice job of storing various media files (freeing up space on our desktops) and backing up document folders. the backup software takes a little time to navigate at setup, but once you're up and running it does a nice job.

Previous to purchasing the Simpleshare server, I'd bought an Iomega network drive at Fry's, which I returned because the fan emitted a high pitched squeal. The Simpleshare is mercifully silent. It installed easily and comes with software that automates backups. My only problem has been that the drive periodically "disappears" from my home network, requiring me to use the NASFinder CD that came with it to "find" the drive. This is simple enough to do, just annoying.

We bought one of these, and set it up with user based access on our home network. Windows TCP/IP network using workgroups. In this mode the drive causes problems where users on the network can not browse the workgroup.

We email tech support and got this reply:
"This is a problem we see a lot when User based is enabled."
but no solution was providfed other then to assign the drive to its own workgroup.