Let me first say that I am a big "bang for the buck" consumer and so far this puppy does not disappoint. Heck it actually over delivers which id unusual these days.
I bought this USED here at Amazon for $200.00 and quite frankly, after reading most of the reviews, I thought I was essentially buying it JUST for the drives at worst, or as a big dumb network attached drive to dump back ups into at best. I mean, clearly the last user has likely posted a less than stellar review here and decided to cut his/her losses.
When it arrived, I took heed of the comments I read here regarding the less than eloquent set up instructions and took my time reading the sparse documentation (definitely not average consumer friendly). So this, and only this, is why I am not giving it a 5 star rating.
First thing I did was update to the latest firmware. Straight forward to the average computer hack like me - but again, I could see how the average consumer could get wrapped around the axle as the TWO file, two step operation is not intuitive.
Changing up the Raid from 0 to 1 was surprisingly slow. I had just done the same to a 5 year old 1TB linkstation in a matter of 10 minutes, so imagine my surprise when it took 9 (NINE) hours to complete on this puppy. “Here we go…” I thought. However, after all was said and done, I was ready to put it through a few paces. Setting up the shares, media server, web access function was simple. Again from an average consumer perspective (remember that Seagate advertises this as a NAS you don’t need IT folks to help you set up) there is not enough information to guide you and you have to rely on either your own knowledge of networking/storage terms or good googling skills or both.
Anywho…all set up, I threw 4 or five dvd’s at it to transfer from a computer on the network and bam…36mb/sec. Nice….yea, yea, many faster ones out there, but did I mention I got this for $200 bucks? I threw 60 GB of mixed photo, mp3, large and small video files and the speed came down to a VERY respectable 27mb/sec. I then had it stream 3 different movies to 3 different wireless devices and it didn’t miss a beat. This had brought that 5 year old linkstation to its knees just minutes before.
Let’s see…web access works just fine…I mean it’s no dropbox in the looks department but works nicely from mobile devices…not a fan of having to d/l a tappin agent for accessing through pc’s … but no real big deal. Web GUI is nice, LOTS of “server like” features – user accounts, permissions, groups, system status and alerts at the raid, HDD, even fan and cpu temp. level. definitely not just a big dumb networked attached drive. Was not clear from the documentation if the drives were or were not hot swappable (one place said yes, another no). So, I yanked one…. Dashboard said I was missing a drive…put it back in …dashboard said it was rebuilding raid…Yup they are hot swappable ….very cool. Did I mention I paid $200 bucks for it? USM drive slot is cool. Transfer rates are VERY COOL. Dual Ethernet plugs you can set to dual networks or fail over one to another for redundancy…are you serious? Have not tested the b/u software but if in fact it does system image backups…WAY cool.
So far, I am ecstatic with my purchase, AND all the bells, whistles and the technology packed into this innocuous package. Oh yea, I almost forgot…the fan IS a bit loud during boot up and while under load, but nothing obnoxious…I don’t think. Even the wife said “nice little package” ….oh geez I hope she was still talking about the NAS ; - )
In Summary….it’s hard to knock anything about this thing other than documentation and MAYBE the loud-ish fan… So I think Seagate should poach a technical writer from IKEA (here you go Seagate…some free consulting avise) to redo their setup documentation, knock their dev guys around the head for putting out stuff like multi-file/step firmware updates that kind of thing….and whamo…5 star ratings everytime.
I reserve the right to repost if it craps out in 2 weeks. :- )
| Hard Drive | 6 TB Desktop |
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