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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to set up and use, but expect continuous fan noise, April 21, 2005
I ordered the HNAS1 and had it up and running in relatively little time, considering that this was the first network file server I have ever installed.
The HNAS1 is an attractive little gizmo, only 9" deep by 5.25" high by 2.25" wide. It comes with rubber feet that let you mount it upright (9"x2.25" footprint) or on its side (9"x5.25" footprint).
With this device, you need to buy your own IDE hard drive (less than 250GB) separately, and install it in the drive bay of the HNAS1. The HD that I bought to put inside the HNAS1 was a Seagate 160GB Ultra ATA/100. All I had to do was set the jumper to "Master" on the HD, connect the HNAS1's hd-ribbon cable and hd-power connector to the HD, affix the HD with 4 screws, close the cover, and I was ready to configure the HNAS1.
I recommend skipping the Quick Setup Wizard (the one provided on the HNAS1 CD). Just use the HNAS1's HTML interface to perform set up functions. Power up the HNAS1 and connect your pc *only* to the HNAS1 using an ethernet switch. Visit the HNAS1 with your web browser; the default IP address at power-up is '192.168.1.1'. Enter the admin username and password as shown in HNAS1 manual. Using the HTML interface, set the IP address you want, set host name, set time zone, format the HD, and setup user accounts and folders. Put together your LAN the way you would like it, then make sure you can still connect to the HNAS1. On a PC, under windows explorer, goto "Tools...", "Map Network Drive..." and follow the instructions in the dialog box to mount the HNAS1 from your PC.
The HNAS1 works great, the only problem is the cooling fan, which runs continuously. The fan noise is faint, but if you are in a quiet room with it for a long time, it may drive you crazy after a while. The fan itself only uses 0.4 watts, which translates into about 30 cents' worth of electricity per year... so it is probably not worth trying to modify the HNAS1 (for example, with an Airpax 67L100 PCB Thermostat on the fan circuit). I measured the overall power consumption of the HNAS1 to be 9 watts while idle, which means it will add about $7 per year to your electric bill.
Remember, this is a network drive, so there is no reason for it to be located near your computer (or near you). Locate the HNAS1 in a far-flung corner of your house, attach it to your LAN, and enjoy.
I would give it 5 stars, but I am subtracting a star because of the continuous fan noise.
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not Reliable, November 29, 2005
I am a PC and network tech and I stay in touch with new technology. When this came out, I got one to try out and possibly start selling to customers.
Upon installing a hard drive that matched it's requirements, I went through all the setup screens to get it ready to use - then found it would not let me change the country code to the United States due to some internal program error. (it uses this setting to keep track of the date and time of files written to it). I emailed tech support at Hawking. After a week, I got an email with a file attached with no instructions. The file ended with the extension ".web" which meant nothing to my computer or me. I tried the update bios feature in the unit and it did use the file, updated it's bios - giving me the ability to change the date to U.S. timezone - finally it worked right...for about a month anyway. One day out of the blue, it reset the IP address I assigned it back to it's factory default - and it's default 192.168.1.1 address is the same as my linksys router - so neither would work until I figured out what was going on and turned it off. I wrote to tech support about it to ask about a fix and the only answer I got back was "we have one here that has been running 6 months." (that wasn't an especially helpful answer)
I logged in to the unit after moving it to a separate PC not on the network and then found it wouldn't keep any settings I entered. I wrote to tech support again and they told me to reset it by pushing a small recessed button. I did this and it erased all the user names and settings. I started over and set it to 192.168.1.200 where I had it originally and it worked normally again for about 3 weeks. This morning I couldn't access it. It was on - but my computer couldn't connect to it - but this time the internet was still working. I figured it had reset it's IP address again so I took it off the network to connect it directly to a PC so I could change the IP address back again. This time - I couldn't access the setup screens at all using any IP address nor it's install software. I pulled the power cord and put it back - and it woke up and was available again. This time, it had kept it's correct IP address and had just simply locked up. Restarting it got it up and running again - but for how long and what will it do next... I put in a top of the line IBM hard drive in this unit and the hard drive has worked flawlessly - but this network device is buggy and I feel I have to replace it if I want a reliable network attached storage device. Due to my frustration with non speedy tech support, and because I feel so little trust for this device and any replacement I might get that rather than ask for a warrantee repair or replacment, I will instead just throw it out to get rid of the problem. The replacement NAS device will NOT be this same brand.
Another comment: A quick look at their website revealed today that they still haven't posted the patch they sent me to correct the timezone problem so if you already have one of these and can't set it to a U.S. timezone - at least you know why and what you need to do.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Updated - This is a very nice product, but it needs better customer support, July 8, 2005
December 10, 2006 Update - The device is still running good after a year and half in service.
Reading other reviews about IP reset problems, I have 3 devices that default to 192.168.1.1. I leave the HNAS1 at this default, while the Linksys router and network printer were changed to other IPs. This has caused no problems.
I updgraded to V1.02 firmware and this corrected the date/time problem others reported, but this created another issue. On power up, if the time server takes too long to respond, the HNAS1 will time out, thereafter the Samba server will not accept logins leaving the disk un-mappable. The work-around is to select another time server to something other than the busy default time.nist.gov. Check either www.ntp.org or tf.nist.gov for a list of alternate servers. As long as the HNAS1 can reach a time server before it times out, the Samba login problem goes away.
I agree with others, the device is somewhat slow, but seemed faster when new. I haven't found a way to defrag the drive, as I believe this would help. I want to try the ancient method I once used back in the early 80s on DEC systems, which is to copy everything to another disk, delete all files, then copy the files back. However this is a time consuming and archaic method and I wish another method was available.
Original July 7, 2005 review - Michael Collins wrote a nice review, so I won't duplicate his product description details.
This is a high quality product, but getting various versions of Windows configured to use it takes some skill. I have limited networking skills and I really struggled to get this configured for my computers.
I bought the HNAS1 for use as a home network drive (100base-T Ethernet) for 2 new computers (Windows XP Home SP2) for my wife and I. We wanted to use a common mailbox, and we wanted a place to quickly backup user files. We also have a Windows 95 OS2 machine with a nice backup tape drive to use for backing up the HNAS1 data.
The HNAS1 unit looks nice and is well made. The nice thing about being able to add your own hard drive, is that you can use a high quality drive with this fairly low cost unit. So we bought a Maxtor 200GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA/133 drive on sale at Fry's and installed it. The HNAS1 recognized it and used it without issue.
The browser interface to the unit is clean and well organized. It's easy to use for formatting the drive, setting up users, passwords, user folders, changing the admin password, or changing the device IP.
The HNAS1 uses the wonderfully robust EXT3 journaling file system for the hardrive, which is highly regarded and commonly used in the Linux world. I think the unit might have a Linux core, as the security system behind the scene that's used for setting up the users, folders, and passwords appears very Unix like to me. The unit is also a SAMBA server, which is also common in the Unix/Linux world. It's an FTP server as well.
The struggles I had in setting up both WinXP Home SP2 and Win95 OSR2 to use the HNAS1 as a mapped drive, had nothing to do with the HNAS1. Once I got the software firewalls configured to allow access to the device, I struggled to get Windows to provide the necessary authentication. All this device wants for network authentication when trying to map it as a drive, is a simple login ID and password. The problem is getting the various versions of Windows to supply this simple requirement.
WinXP Home SP2 is purposely designed NOT to remember drive mapping passwords (a reason to buy XP Pro which does remember them, thanks Microsoft), so automatic mapping on reboot was a struggle. I finally used a batch file to solve this problem. For Win95 OSR2, "Network Client for Windows" and "File and Print Sharing" was required to be installed. Even so, when mapping a drive, Win95 can only supply the same login ID that's used to login to Win95. To solve this problem, a user with the same login name has to be setup on the HNAS1. But at least Win95 OSR2 can remember the password for automatic mapping at reboot.
All of this is where the customer service falls short in my view. The manual explains how to setup the HNAS1, but includes nothing on how to get the various versions of Windows to properly map to it. The support section of the Hawking Tech website provide no help at all on the Windows drive mapping issues. I did however get through to a tech support person who was helpful with the Win95 problems. These issues with Windows are the fault of Microsoft and not Hawking Tech, but in my view Hawking needs to provide better support by supplying users with the necessary details to allow all of the supported version of Windows to map to the drive.
Having said all of that, once the drive mapping issues are sorted out, the HNAS1 performs flawlessly. It's very fast over a 100base-T network and seems competely reliable. We have no problems with it at all. We also don't seem to have the noisy fan problem that Michael Collins reported.
I highly recommend the unit, but you may have to research the Internet and call customer support (as I had to) to get the needed details to sort out the drive mapping issues. The supplied install software wizard seems helpful in letting you know that your PC can "see" the drive over the network, but it doesn't seem useful for anything else.
I'm giving the Hawking Tech HNAS1 4 stars because it's a very well designed outstanding piece of equipment. But the poor customer support cost me a few grey hairs, and Hawking Tech 5 stars.
In the end, I love the unit.
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