Synology DiskStation 4-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS411J (White) Review

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(More customer reviews)OK, my review might be biased. Coming from the Drobo, which was absolutely terrible, to this Synology unit was the best technological move I've made since I switched to OSX 10.1 all those years ago. Speeds are fantastic, built-in server features are excellent, and aesthetically the unit is very pleasing.
Unboxing/Installation/Initial Setup:
The unit arrived from Amazon in a large cardboard box along with the two SATA drives that I ordered for it (Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EARS). The box for the 411j was very sleek and easy to unpack. No weird seals or wire ties to deal with. The unit itself fits well with the IKEA-assisted look of my office. To install the drives, you remove some handscrews off the back and the top/sides of the unit will come off (in the stock photo, the aluminum piece with the logo on it). The drive trays are plastic and slide out of the back of the unit. You just sit the drives into the unit and use the included screws to mount the drive in place. Then, just push the tray back in and the drive will be connected. No cables to connect was a big plus here. After the drives are all installed, push screw the back on and plug in the power and network cables.
One thing that was unexpected was that the unit has no software installed on it initially. Not a bad concept though..it forces you to load the most current version this way. The software from the CD happened to be the current version (major revision in December I think) but that might not always be the case, you it might be better to just download the latest Synology Assistant and DSM software from the company website before you begin. The Synology assistant recognizes the unit on the network and allows you to install the DSM (operating system) onto the unit. This process is pretty quick, and the unit will automatically restart when it's done.
Disk Allocation and Backups:
The recommended data allocation that the Synology makes is to use all the drives that are available, and in the hybrid RAID format. This will allow for one drive to fail (assuming you have more than one in it) and all the data will still be fine. It also lets the drives to be different models/sizes, which isn't compatible with regular RAID. You don't get the full drive size available to you. You actually lose the space of one of the biggest drives in the unit for redundancy. Plus a small formatting loss. The wizard makes the partitioning very simple; you can have multiple volumes if you want. I just went with one and have multiple folders. You can also have USB drives plugged in (and printers too I think, but my AIO HP is already networked) that are treated as an additional volume. One nice feature here is that the device will backup to the external drive on a defined schedule. So actually, the Synology can fail and the data would still be safe on the backup drive.
Shared Folders:
The device is capable of creating multiple shared folders. You can create a very complex multi-user system with individual shared folders if you want to. Or you can go the simple route like I did and just have a couple including the app-generated music and video folders. I also have a Time Machine folder that has the sparsebundle images that I use to backup my two Macs. Only one user with full access rights, and read-only access to everything for guests. In my home setup, this is plenty because the computers are the only devices that write data, and my jailbroken AppleTv2 is the only device that reads from it (for XBMC). As far as allowing guests read-only access to everything, my WiFi is WPA2-encrypted, so only those select few people have access. And those that do I couldn't care less about what data of mine they see.
Applications:
I haven't explored the apps very much aside from the media server. It will create a DLNA environment that allows the PS3 and also some TVs (I think) to play movies directly from the drive. For those of you that use PS3MediaServer for this purpose, it's not foolproof. PS3MediaServer trans codes on the fly those file formats that the PS3 can't naively play. The Synology, however, plays the files directly. This is a hardware restriction. Putting a CPU and enough memory into the unit to handle video transcoding would raise the price to about $1K. You can still use PS3MediaServer and map the videos folder as a file location, but be aware that if you do this wireless there will be bumps. If the computer is plugged directly into the router that the NAS is plugged into, it should be fine.
Misc:
The unit is surprisingly quiet. My old Drobo was too loud to keep on my desk (and ended up on a table in the corner). It's also very fast compared to the Drobo. On this unit, I average ~30Mbps write and up to ~45Mbps read. I use Aperture and have my entire library stored on the unit. It handles this fine and suffers no lag issues. One computer is directly connected to the router where the NAS is. The unit has gigabit ethernet on it, so that's great. Speed from laptops will obviously be slower. Even wireless N speed can only sustain about 15MB from what I've noticed, but that has nothing to do with the unit. On the Drobo, the fan at the back was behind a plate that couldn't be removed. I like to be able to open the unit and clean it if I have to. My home is near an airport, so it can sometimes be quite dusty during the warm months of the year. Overall, I couldn't be more happy with this purchase. The performance improvements over my Drobo were enormous. It's UI is great and has many features that I hope to someday experiment and explore.
Edit: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - When I purchased the unit, I put the two mentioned drives above into the unit, but I also put two 1TB Green drives from my old Drobo into it. One of those two drives failed last week. The unit sent me an email notification and set off on its warning beeps that the volume was degraded. I immediately Teamviewered into my desktop from my iPhone, and logged into the Synology UI. I was able to discover the serial number of the disabled hard drive and request an RMA from WD. Credit card was authorized for the replacement price, received the new one via UPS 2-Day Air, and returned the old one via UPS ground. For anyone that hasn't done this, you get charged the price of the replacement unit, you buy a discounted UPS shipping label ($6), and send the old one back in the replacement's box. When they receive it, you get refunded the replacement price.
The NAS allowed me to "repair" the volume with the new drive, and a few hours later the unit was back to operating at 100%. Flawless :-D

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Synology DiskStation DS411j is designed to provide a cost-effective file storage and backup solution with RAID protection for multi-user home environments. The operating system, Synology DiskStation Manager, delivers rich features for multimedia enjoyments, worry-free backup, Internet sharing, and energy-saving options.

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Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 2-Bay 4 TB (2 x 2 TB) Network Attached Storage ST340005LSA10G-RK Review

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(More customer reviews)I feel like I'm in a good place to review this item because I own both the Seagate 220 and also the Western Digital MyBook World Edition, and they are competitors. Both are inexpensive network attached storage appropriate for a home office or for home use. For both machines the only feature I use is reading and writing to the hard drive through windows sharing (from either a windows computer or a linux computer). For that reason I will not comment too much on some of the features like automatic backups, media sharing, etc. For the most part on machines of this level those features are gimmicks. They don't work very well and they degrade overall performance of the NAS, as you will be able to read from other people's reviews. When I want to play media from my NAS, I just mount the drive through windows sharing and play what I want. When I want to back up my computer, I copy stuff myself. For the reason I have a generally more favourable view of both of these machines than other people.
Anyway, on with the review. First I will mention two issues I had to overcome before this NAS was reasonably functional for me.
1. This is the big issue I had to fix: This Seagate NAS does not work well with just any gigabit switch. I originally had it plugged in to a TP-Link switch. I could write to the NAS at full speed, but when I wanted to read from it, the speed was horrible. Maybe 1/20th the speed at which I could write to the NAS. After spending a good deal of time researching the issue online I found out the NAS doesn't play well with some routers and switches. Notably it does not work with D-Link switches. Well, I will add TP-Link to the list it doesn't work with. If I plugged the NAS directly into my Linksys router, the problem went away, but that's only a 100-megabit connection. The funny thing is that the traffic still had to go through the TP-Link switch. In other words, the device this is directly plugged into matters, the rest of the network really doesn't. Anyway I tried various solutions (changing the frame size and so forth). They don't work. The only solution was to buy a netgear switch. If your network has a TP-Link or D-Link switch or router that you'd like to plug this into, budget for a netgear gigabit switch. They aren't real expensive, but I was very annoyed at this problem.
2. This is a small issue, and partly windows' fault: If you create a shortcut to this shared drive in windows and then play a movie from the NAS, it will disconnect 20 minutes into the movie. I originally thought this had to do with the NAS going into sleep mode, but I disabled that feature and it didn't change anything. I didn't notice the problem when playing from my linux machine, and the WD NAS doesn't do this. Anyway, the solution is to actually map the drive in "My Computer" instead of just using a shortcut to get to it. You'd think there would be no difference between those two, but the former works and the latter disconnects after 20 minutes.
Having overcome those two problems, the NAS now functions very nicely for me. The main thing I use this NAS for is to play movies that I have ripped from my DVD collection. They play perfectly on any computer in the house and I can even play two movies on two different computers. Actually I'm not sure how many movies I can play at a time. Nor have I tried playing any HD movies yet, so I can't comment on that, but the speed over my gigabit network seems more than adequate for that.
A couple of comparisons with the Western Digital:
1. This machine is significantly faster than the Western Digital. When I upload to this machine from my Linux box I sustain about 18 or 19 megabytes per second. On the Western Digital I get about 11. This may not sound like a big difference here, but when copying a large file or backing up a whole computer, it makes a very noticeable difference. I don't pay a lot of attention to my download copy speed, but it is above 30 MB per second, whereas I get more like 19 from the Western Digital. I am running this in a RAID 0 configuration. However, I also did a speed test using JBOD and the speeds were exactly the same, so the gain is not really from the RAID (the WD I use has only one HD in it, so there's no RAID option).
2. The Seagate is significantly louder than the Western Digital. It's not loud compared to most hardware, but you can hear the drives spinning if you get close and listen, and when they start up or go to sleep you can hear a click that is pretty noticeable. Sometimes it clicks when no one is using it and you would think it would just be sleeping peacefully. At first I thought this was a hardware problem but it turns out that my NAS is fine. It's just louder than expected. Of course, WD sets the bar high for silence. It is almost impossible to tell if the WD machine is on or doing anything if you ignore the lights on the front (or disable them, as I have).
3. The Seagate is much larger physically. It's not big on an absolute scale, and I don't keep it on my desktop, so it's not a problem, but it's much larger than the WD. The WD is just a hair larger than the actual drive inside it. The Seagate looks like a UPS or something. Anyway I think it looks nice, but one should be aware that it's not as minimalist as some others.
4. The Seagate doesn't try to accommodate tweaks from expert users as much, and it has a much smaller and less active user base. Both machines run Linux under the hood, so if there's a problem with them an experienced user could get in and change things up. On the Western Digital you can enable ssh access through the web interface. And there are bunches of tutorials online about how to fix the technical glitches this comes with and even install new hardware on it. Personally I went in and disabled their media playing software and the software that runs an apple network. Apparently on the WD these things run even though you disabled them and they mess the machine up. Anyway, there is no ssh option on the seagate, so in principle you can't go in and change things. There aren't really help pages for experts. However, recently a user did figure out a way to enable ssh. He wrote an update to the firmware. I used it and it works great, but I can see how some users may not feel comfortable upgrading their firmware in order to get ssh access. Anyway after ssh'ing in, I found that there is one windows bug that the NAS wasn't dealing with well. That is, windows clients delete the last character of the share when they are reading and it causes a bunch of errors to the log, though it still seems to work ok. The workaround is to create another share on the NAS that is not visible, called "Publi", which refers to the same directory. So I'm glad to be ssh'ing in now. Still, for tweaking, it's a better bet to go with the WD. It's been vetted by more linux people.
Anyway, this drive works very well for me. It's my larger and higher performance network attached storage and it is quite reliable for me. When I purchased it, this was cheaper than the equivalent capacity in WD (I use the 4 TB version). In part I believe I'm happy with it because I don't try and use the features that get touted in ads. I just use it as network attached storage. That's true of both drives, and it's what I recommend. The forums for both these machines are full of people ranting about how their device doesn't do what they want and that no one at the company seems to care about them---that's why I say just use it as a remote hard drive. Based on my perusal of the forums, Seagate seems to support their NAS customers less (at least on the forums), though neither company is real great in that respect.
I love both of my network storage devices and I use them both all the time. This seagate is a great buy. When I bought it, at least, it was the cheapest NAS available with this capacity and it turns out to be a very good performer. It's really nice to be able to back things up or store all my large files in one place and be able to access them from any computer in my house. If I were to buy a third NAS, it would probably be another Seagate, just because it's cheaper and faster than the competition.
But make sure you plug it into a NETGEAR device, not a TP-Link or D-Link. I'm not sure about other brands.

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4TB Blackarmor NAS220

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Western Digital My Book World Edition 1 TB Network Attached Storage Review

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(More customer reviews)When I saw this, I got pretty excited because I'd been looking for these features and they all came together in one drive.
Setup: The setup was easy and quick. Not a lengthy user manual but enough to get you going and more info on the disc. It asks for a driver update when introduced to new machines but I haven't seen a need for it after connecting through Windows Network (although it works with Macs as well, not just Windows). I haven't done much with the remote access but it looks easy to use so far.
Capabilities: It does everything I needed (i.e. let me get to my music, movies and pictures in one place). I watch a lot of downloaded movies on my Xbox 360 so it's nice to be able to put them on the big screen in the living room or open one from a laptop in bed without having to move the file or drive or have it take up space on both machines.
One of the big pluses beyond having your music/ movies available from any computer in the house is that you also improve your computers by freeing up that space - especially with desktops. I used to have gigabytes full of music on my desktop and laptop but now I have a lot more free space on my desktop so I don't need a new internal drive for that to keep it fresh.
Performance: It runs on ethernet and wifi so be careful with reviews on speed. USB connections run about the same on every machine but networking depends on your computer, your wifi standard and your router. If you have a fast machine, a good router and preferably N-WiFi, you'll get good speed. Of course, ethernet connection is really fast but I use wireless N and it's not quite the same but it gets the job done. Speed is only an issue for large file transfer but not actual usage. I haven't seen any hiccups streaming and watching movies (~700MB each) or listening to music.
Price: Some of my friends have NAS systems that house up to 8TB and run about $1,000+ but I'm not there yet. This one is great for the money - especially considering the price of a 1TB alone and the additional features.
Improvements: I wish file transfers were a little faster - I know that that depends on my router and computer as much as the drive, but you can't blame a guy for wanting a little more!
The write up covers a lot of the specs and details on what it can/can't do. This is just my view of the product. Hope it helps!

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Simplified set up and best-in-class performance make My Bookq World Edition Home Network Storage the easy choice for centralizing data and backing up your home computers. Connect the drive to your network router and you¿re up and running in minutes. Use the included back up software to protect your family¿s PCs with automatic and continuous backup plans. Store all your digital media in one central location so everyone in the family can have access to it. Compatible with both Mac and Windows files.

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LaCie Network Space 2 1TB Ethernet Network Attached Storage Desktop Hard Drive 301515KUA Review

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(More customer reviews)This is our 2nd Lacie NAS drive (1st we had the LaCie Home). This one is better! I like the fact that this drive is dead easy to set up, interesting interface to manage your settings, and it is 1TB. As others have written, it looks stylish and is very quiet.
Some things to be aware of:
1. Technical support on this is not offered by phone (you have to post a query on their site then they reply. If it is not resolved, then you can phone). I did not really like this option, but it did solve my little initial problem I had due to Windows Vista and passwords. By the way, once on the phone, the LaCie team are GREAT!
2. There is no web-interface to access the drive from the internet (if say you are traveling). You need to FTP into the drive, which is fine for me, but I am sure some maybe put off by this. The older LaCie Home version had an easy web-interface.
3. Fantastic that it has the Media Server option built in. Once I had it up and running ALL of my wireless media players (DLink, BlueRay player, etc), all found the drive and would play films or music from it. This is the best advantage as we store all music and films there for easy access.
Overall, very happy with this device!

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With the LaCie Network Space 2, you're not simply storing files from your computer; you're storing files from all over your home. Connect the Network Space 2 through the Ethernet port to a computer or to a router, and share and store all of your media files from anywhere in your house, with the read and write speeds that you need. You can even back up multiple computers to ensure that your files are safe. The included LaCie Network Assistant allows you to quickly start using your product after completing a few short steps. This helps the Network Space 2 to be user–friendly and incredibly easy to use – just like a classic LaCie hard disk. It's easy to access the LaCie Network Space 2 from any computer connected on the local network or any networked equipment that's UPnP/DLNAcertified (like your PlayStation 3 or Xbox). At home, networked computers can access the iTunes library or stored photos and everyone can stream music or videos to a networked UPnP AV-certified player or adapter. The Network Space 2 even comes with built–in private and public shares. The remote access feature means that your files are always accessible, even if you aren’t around. You can even access your torrent downloads, or automatically import pictures when your computer is switched off! Box Content: Lacie Network Space 2, Ethernet cable, USB cable, External power supply, Utilities CD-ROM including LaCie Network Assistant, Quick Install Guide.

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Buffalo Technology TeraStation III 8.0 TB (4 x 2 TB) Network Attached Storage TS-X8.0TL/R5 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the first time I've ever taken the time to write a review, but I'm here to buy yet another one of these units, and I felt compelled to respond to a couple of the negative reviews here.
First off, this is the Terastation III, not the Pro as referenced in another review. Additionally, I own a medium sized video and animation facility, with up to 7 artists accessing one of our three Terastation IIIs at all times for video, animation, and rendering, and this unit IS compatible with Apple OS. Configuration is done via a web browser, not a PC. We're cross platform here, and PC vs. Mac has nothing to do with this unit. As for Mac, since it doesn't use drive lettering, you do have to know how to set it up as a server, by IP address, in MAC OS. PC is much easier in terms of mapping the drive, but either way it works fine regardless of platform.
These drives are fast, particularly if you set up port trunking, which is a very high end feature for a NAS in this price range. By using port trunking (which uses 2 network ports to effectively double the network connection speed), we have been able to eliminate several of our NAS units in favor of just a few Terastation IIIs. Multiple users can access the drive simultaneously with no problems.
As for reliability, we did have one DOA unit, which Amazon promptly replaced at no cost (not even shipping). Other than that, we've had absolutely no problems. Having said that, we ALWAYS back up nightly (that's an easy thing to set up in the web browser based config panel), and there's no substitute for that no matter what kind of NAS you buy.
As for Buffalo in general, we have used several different models of Terastations and Linkstations, some of which ran continuously for 4 and 5 years without failing before we removed them from service. In fact, the only Terastation that has failed on us, wasn't even the unit itself; it was one of the drives. 5 years isn't an unusual life span for a hard drive that runs day and night.
So I give this 5 stars, and Buffalo tech support is pretty much the best I've experienced. When you call, the phone is answered by a real person at Buffalo's service center (in Texas, I believe), and they always know pretty much everything about their products without having to read it from a computer screen. Hold times vary, but support is top notch.

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Buffalo's TeraStation III Series is the ideal choice for businesses or demanding users looking to implement a RAID based Network Attached Storage solution. As Buffalo’s flagship NAS product the TeraStation III includes all firmware features presently found in the Buffalo lineup of NAS products. Especially, business oriented features, such Active Directory support, DFS support, disk quota support, a share level replication feature and port trunking make the TeraStation III a top choice for small to medium sized businesses. Hardware features like hot swap and dual Ethernet ports add to the list of new features. Reliability and performance are again the key design criteria for the TeraStaion III. A heavy-duty power supply and oversized cooling system, as well as vastly improved CPU speed guarantee excellent and reliable performance. It is the clear choice for those users who desire maximum reliability and robust features.

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Verbatim MediaShare 1 TB Home Network Storage 97159 (Silver) Review

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(More customer reviews)To start out I am a System Administrator, technology is what I do while at work and when I get home I want something that's going to be easy to use and that works. I've had the Verbatim MediaShare 1tb home network storage server up and running for only a couple days but so far I am very happy with it.
I have used the media server in 3 different roles so far as I try to figure out exactly the right role for this device in my home.
I started out using it as a share point to store files I needed to get access to everywhere. On the side of being a Sys Admin I also fix computers on the side so it's great having all my files in one location so when I am at a clients house I can connect to the drive and retrieve any files I am needing to fix their computer. The Storage server worked great in this area and it felt very secure, however I seemed to have better performance using my current web storage service I subscribe to so for me this wasn't the optimal role as most my files are very large. This did work great with smaller files like word documents and spreadsheets.
Next I tried using the media network storage server as an Apple Time Machine backup drive. Previously I was using a local USB drive; the thought of a network storage device was appealing. It didn't take much to get apple to see the device and prep it to be used as a time machine backup drive, very simple setup. And the response time was pretty snappy when browsing the time machine backup. Granted, i only had a few hours of backups on the drive and I am curious as the backups go from hours to months if the drive will still be as quick, but so far I am impressed. But since I already had an exteranl drive I was using this didn't seem like the optimal fit.
The last thing I tried is what I think this box will truly be in my house. A media server to share videos. On initial tests I ripped a few DVD's and put the video files on the media server and did a few tests. First I tried streaming to an Xbox 360 on my network and it had some issues initially connecting however once the connection was established it performed better then I expected. Next I tried to stream to a PC on my network, that to worked perfectly. The third test was the real external test. I fired up my laptop, jumped on my verizon wireless aircard and attempted to stream a movie, at first I wasn't sure if it was working as designed as the video appeared to buffer for a very long time, however I also noticed I had issues connecting to websites so I disconnected from verizon and reconnected and attempted the stream again, this time it started playing very quickly, I believe this was an issue with the verizon network and not so much the media share server.
overall I am very pleased with this storage server. With my different tests I was able to see how it would work best for me and I think I'm going to use this primarily as a Video streaming server and free up a lot of room on my other computers. This drive operated very quietly and over the last few days hasn't heated up to the touch as much as I thought it would. I am happy with this and would recommend it for anyone looking for a network storage server. This is a very universal product and for me has plenty of ways to utilize it.
I will mention, performance of your network will determine the quality of the server, time it takes to move file etc. For external access you really need a high speed broadband internet connection. If your connection is slow or unreliable your performance of accessing files externally will be significantly impacted.
***********UPDATED 7/15/2010*************
FYI, I just found out that there IS a iphone app to allow you to access your media content on your iphone and ipad! Simply go to the apple app store and download HipServ. Now it's not the best app, but it is the official app for accessing your MediaShare server. Please note you will need to sign up for the premium subscription which they do give you 30 days free to use this app. But the app itself is free, the 30 days trial is free then I think it's like $20 a year which isn't bad. Because the app doesn't have good directions on how to configure it, below is a copy/paste of the review I wrote about the app in the apple app store telling you how to configure it.
-----
I love this app. It is NOT the easiest thing to configure... Well it is, but they don't explain anything about it.
So, in my use I have a Verbatim MediaShare server. You MUST have the premium subscription to use this app with your mediaserver, if you look at the comparison chart between free and premium you'll see mobile access is only available on premium. Good news you get 30 days free at least through [...]
To configure the app do the following:
1. Launch the app
2. Click "Add Account"
3. for Portal Name put in [...] (if you are using [...] to access it remotely from a browser)
4. HipServ name is the name of your device. I called mine "MediaBox" so that's what I entered.
5. UserName is your username you configured to log into the box
6. Password is your password for your username you configured to log into the box.
7. Click "Save"
As long as you are a premium member you can now access your media share via your iphone anywhere you are.
I am having issues watching some videos, but they do show in my catalog. So I may have some video conversion settings wrong and I will be playing with that, but I can access pictures, music, etc. Videos are listed, they just don't play yet...
Anyways, this is a good app, wish they would write some instructions for it!***********UPDATED 1/8/2011*************After many months of use the Verbatim MediaShare is still doing pretty good. Although I found that I had some issues with it.
1. Every morning around 5am I noticed a lot of network and disc activity from the box. I had cancelled my Pro membership so I wasn't backing up to the MediaShare backup servers anymore, and didn't have any external drives connected. I did some network sniffing and couldn't identify what or where that activity was coming from. It concerned me a bit as the box would be quiet all day and then at 5am just come to life. If anyone knows what it is doing let me know!
2. I don't use the mediashare as much as I originally thought I would. I still use it as a remote FTP drive that I can access from work, my ipad, anywhere I go. I constantly am putting files on it to retrieve later. Works great for that.
3. I don't use it to stream movies anymore. As I mentioned I cancelled my pro membership so I no longer can use the mobile client. So I have moved all the movies to an external drive on my mac and am using pyTivoX (free mac app) to stream movies to the TiVo and then to stream to the iPad I am using Air Video Server and bought the app for the ipad which was like $5. Now I can stream any movie any time for free with no monthly fees. If Verbatim MediaShare included streaming for free I would still use it, but I can't justify paying when I get get another option for free.
4. Backing up computers, I don't use this for that. I did for a while but Remembered the 3-2-1 rule. You should have a total of 3 backups, on two different medias and 1 of those should be off-site. Now I could use it as one of the media types but I don't, mainly because around 5am the drive goes crazy and I don't know what it's doing with my data. So I don't store anything personal on it. What I use is a Western Digital passport (1tb) and I partitioned several drives. I made one 500gb parition for backups. So this gives me 2 of the 3 backups for a file. The one on my local computer, the one on the passport drive (using time machine on the mac to manage) and then I also subscribe to BackBlaze online backup which is $5 per computer, a great deal. This means I now have 3 backups of all my files, 2 different medias (1 external drive, 1 internal) and one of those is off-site so should my house get broken into and my backup disc and computer get stolen I still can get my data back.
5. But how did the media share do with streaming? It did good. Of course it all depends on your network. I tried both wireless and wired configurations and found that if the media share was connected to the same wired network I had zero issues with buffering, when I tried a wifi mix occasionally depending on what else my family was doing on the network at the time there was some slight issues. But nothing major.
6. The media share it does work, but I've found for my personal uses I was able to get the same results using other options that I have more control over. Now I am a total tech. I like to play and tinker and a lot of people wouldn't want to mess with my current setup. If you are one of those people the mediashare is still in my eyes an excellent option for non-techs to use. It works and it works well. But for me I can't customize or control it as much as I would like. It is still powered on and used as a file dump for me like I said, but in reality I use Box.net, dropbox, or my apple iDisk when I need to keep a file. If the file is to large then I fire up the mediashare connection. Other then that it looks cool sitting on my rack at home.

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Simply share, store and stream with the Verbatim MediaShare server. The MediaShare offers up to 1 TB of storage and allows you to share photos, save and protect files, stream media and even access your content-from anywhere. Use your MediaShare to create photo albums and send them to friends and family or upload your photos directly to Facebook. Back-up home laptops and automatically save important files directly to your MediaShare so they are in one centralized location. Stream music and photos through Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 or other DNLA compliant devices. Lastly, quickly upload, download and manage your files via remote access by simply connecting to myverbatim.com from any internet connection.

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Seagate Maxtor Central Axis 1 TB Network Storage Server STM310005CAA00G-RK Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've just purchased this device to backup my Macbook because of a hard drive crash.
I specifically bought the device because it would work with a Mac and I've met all of their minimum requirements.
So I hook up the thing, and their software doesn't find the drive as it's supposed to. I think, oh that'll be okay, I'll just configure the IP in the device and it'll be good from here on out.
Nope, It *must* run through the detect phase of the program every time. After a lot of trial and error, I got the thing to detect, but not reliably. This means backups don't happen as scheduled. Pretty much making the product worthless to me.
I spoke with their tech. support, when I told them I was using with a mac they actually said "you're killing me"
I recommend against this product if you have a mac.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Seagate Maxtor Central Axis 1 TB Network Storage Server STM310005CAA00G-RK

Digital videos of your children taking their first steps. The music library you\'ve built. The 15 years of personal financial data you\'ve compiled. They\'re highly valuable—if not irreplaceable—but when stored on your home computers they\'re also vulnerable to system failures and viruses, loss and theft.
Automatic data backup, secure web access and sharing, and convenient media access and streaming for your home network Central Axis storage server delivers a smart, simple way to automatically back up the valuable digital content on all the computers in your home network. Backups happen automatically—a welcome change from the tedious chore of copying your content to discs and thumb drives.
You can securely access and share your content via any web browser, too, so it\'s a snap to grab a file from any computer in your home or on the road, and you can easily share content with friends and family everywhere. And for a rich home entertainment experience, you can create a centralized library of household photos, videos, and music that offers anytime access and streaming to your networked TVs, digital music players, and computers.
With automated data protection, you can automatically back up all your network-connected computers to one central, safe location. The Maxtor Central Axis can securely access your stored content and can view images and slideshows from any Internet-connected PC, Mac, or laptop while keeping your firewall intact. Easy file sharing allows you to invite friends and family to view and download select photos and other files via the web. You can even authorize guests to upload their own content. The convenient media access and streaming will let you enjoy the convenience of a centralized, always-accessible library of your household\'s digital music, videos, and photos, and stream media from your Central Axis to any networked computer or home entertainment device. (Requires a UPnP AV-compatible player.)
Printer sharing allows you to print from anywhere on your network. Most importantly, Maxtor Central Axis Network Storage Server is easy to use. Plug your Central Axis into your router and it automatically configures to your network. The server quickly loads and organizes your content by file type, provides at-a-glance storage and backup status, and notifies you via email of system events.
The stylish design of this hard drive--only measures 6.8 x 2.5 x 5.9-inches (H x D x W). All that is required is a wired or wireless router with an available 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, an Internet connection (for system updates and web access), and a UPnP AV 1.0 certified Digital Media Adapter if media streaming is desired.
System Requirements - Windows - Pentium III, 500Mhz equivalent processor or higher, Windows Vista or Windows XP, 128MB RAM, and Internet Explorer 6.0 or later, or Firefox 2.X or later for management interface of or web access to Central Access - Macs - Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, Safari 3.1 or later, and 128 MB of RAM.
Product Highlights What's in the BoxMaxtor Central Axis storage server, Maxtor installation CD, quick start guide, Maxtor manager software, Ethernet cable, AC power adapter, user guide on CD, and a 5-year limited warranty.

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Cisco-Linksys 1 TB Media Hub with LCD Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Everything you read about the features and setup of the LinkSys by Cisco NMH410 MediaHub is true: it is very easy to set up and to configure other computers and it does offer a browser-based way to access your media.
The problem is that most of it doesn't work. The lion's share of the software is broken, buggy, or simply incapable of doing what it is supposed to be doing. A quick glance at the support forums will confirm this, and unfortunately it appears to be endemic for many of the models of MediaHub, not just the NMH410. The problems that you will encounter are:
1) The Media Hub Online tool will not "see" all of your files. They will be physically visible when you use a computer to browse folders, but they will not properly share or index, even if they meet the stringent requirements (no long names, no special characters in the names, must be in one of the supported file formats, etc.).
2) The Hub will continually rebuild its index of your files. In other words, "now you see some files, now you don't". It regularly "forgets" what's on the hub and starts over, one by one, re-reading every file. You have no control over when it does this.
3) The Media Hub will not respond when it is busy. I can play an album that I manually launched from the folder, but if I try to open the File Browser, look at Configuration, or even just click a bit too fast browsing the media, the MediaHub Online will throw me "MediaHub is Disconnected or not Responding" errors and stop taking any commands. I have to randomly try again and hope to get lucky and get in.
4) The website for Remote Sharing (in other words, logging in to your device through the Internet from another location) regularly has Server Timeouts. You never know when it will let you in or when you will just get a dead white page.
5) Some features reboot the hub without warning. You choose the option, it says, "Resetting the MediaHub" and the next thing you know, the browser interface fails, the hub loses all of its indexes, and it starts all over again crawling through your files and not responding to your clicks.
It's very distressing to see aggressive releases of software and firmware updates, whose release notes claim to have solved these problems...only to find that all the "fixed in this version" problems are still there. If these issues really were considered fixed by the company, then Linksys/Cisco's problems are much larger--they may need to consider a recall. Thus far, the only features that truly work are the ability to view files and folders on a computer and the optional computer backup program (which should only be used for files and not as a full system backup).
It should tell you a lot that there are actually two pieces of software embedded in this hub: the Linksys by Cisco software, and a third party tool called "Twonky Media Server". Twonky is better, but still not what this product promises above. Both have really bizarre problems that should never have made it to the sales floor.
I'm reaching the point of complete surrender. I managed to get indirectly engaged with the hardware/software development team and have offered them access to my hub to try whatever it takes to solve the problem.
As of October 19, 2009, my unit was used for the Beta and the new Firmware was released. If you own an NMH and are having the above problems, you should give it a try. Unfortunately for me, the best I have seen with this new firmware is that the fixes are spotty: almost seems to mostly-work one day, then it's back to completely acting up the next. The cruel part is that one day I'll discover an amazing new feature or two that I'd never seen before...and the next day it's gone again. Content appears and disappears, and the system is always rebuilding itself. I have spent many, many hours on and off support calls struggling with this device and I'm sorry I bought it. It's November 19th, 2009, and my NMH410 Media Hub is now back in the original packaging waiting to go out the door back to LinkSys. I've lost over 4 months trying to get this to work and I can't recommend it to anyone.

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Enjoy your digital music, photos, and videos throughout your home! The Linksys Media Hub stores your favorite media files, and lets you view and listen to them on any PC, laptop, or TV¹ in the house, or through the Internet anywhere in the world! The pre-installed hard drive holds thousands of photos or songs, or hundreds of hours of DVD quality video, and the empty second drive bay and two USB ports let you add even more storage as your collection grows.The Media Hub presents your music, photo, and video collections in an attractive "catalog view" from most web browsers. There are no confusing network addresses to remember; give your Media Hub a personalized "name" (i.e., "Smith-Media"), and just type it into your browser to view the catalog. Use the same name to log in to your Media Hub from a web browser anywhere, and get the same easy-to-use access to your media.³

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Buffalo LinkStation Live 500 GB Multimedia Storage Server HS-DH500GL Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I'm just writing this review because I believe this product and the company are dealt with a bit unfair in other reviews.
I just installed this device - I own a older Linkstation which works without any problems for non-stop 3 years now - and I would like to mention a few points. I also talked to Buffalo support before buying it (which yes, has a long waiting time on the phone but very compentent people, I believe, that answer at the end, and got clarification on a few points.
The good:
+ fast, just copying 75 GB in around 90 minutes on a 100 MBit network, and the speed is just fine
+ good looking, this device looks great
+ easy to install
The bad:
not much really
- if you enable the media server it reads/writes constantly, the reason is it indexes the disk for new files all the time - buffalo support is aware of this and will release a new firmware which allows you to index manually with a button on demand, this is a good solution for me
- no more bad, sorry ;-)
I find many of the reviews here a bit strange, lets talk about some examples:
- Scanner does not work (well, ALL these devices dont support Multifunction printers, because they technically can't, this is not Buffalos fault
- I put a new firmware on my device and now it's broken - well, apparently, earlier firmwares where different for the Pro and Live model, if you put the wrong firmware on it can't boot anymore, is this Buffalos fault??
- noisy hmmhh, mine is SUPER quiet - actually quieter than the old modell, how quiet do you expect a harddisk to be??
- web interface slow, that's true and I find it a bit strange, but how often are you changing parameters over the Web gui? It's a bit strange, but only a very minor nuissance.
I get the feeling that many users buying a media server are a bit novice at IT devices. Also because the PRO line gets better reviews.
Anyway, I nearly would not have bought this device because of all the bad reviews. But it would have been a mistake. I love it. It's not expensive and I personally recommend it!
Hope this helps.
Armin

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LinkStation Live 500GB Shared Network Storage

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Iomega Home Media 2 TB Network Attached Storage 34571 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been using the 1TB media drive for about a month and a half now and have had a very positive experience. I set it up on an XP machine and had little problem connecting to it from my Vista laptop and XP netbook without installing any software. The only feature I haven't used is the USB print server (my printer is located in my office and the hard drive is connected in the living room next to the router and haven't wanted to move either one so they could be physically connected).
My PS3 automatically found the device on the network, and I use the PS3 to watch TV shows stored on the hard drive on my HDTV. This works great. I can't edit files using the PS3, but I can play AVI and MP3 files (I sometimes play music through my stereo system this way as well as TV shows). Formats like .mkv files won't play this way, but that's a function of the PS3 rather than a limitation of the hard drive.
I'm not using the backup software that comes with it; I manually load files to the device from any of my computers. I store my business files, writing, music, etc. on the drive and thus can, for instance, sit outside with my netbook while still accessing all my files (which is handy since the netbook has very little local storage). All my files are in one place and it doesn't matter which computer I'm using.
Uploading files is not much, if any, faster than a USB 2.0 drive in my experience, but download speeds seem very snappy and even very high resolution video files play back over the network with no delay.
For me, this HD solved a lot of problems. I highly recommend it if you have multiple PCs in your house and a collection of media or data files that you want to share, especially if you have a supported device like a PS3 connected to your TV. If you only have one PC and don't want to play media on your TV, you're better off with a 1 TB USB drive since that will be cheaper.Pros
* Decent transfer performance over my network (via both wired and wireless connections)
* Can connect to it via PS3 or Xbox 360 to view/listen to media files
* Pretty painless setup
* Takes up very little space
* Works exactly as advertised and I'm in no danger of filling up the huge 1 TB drive
Cons
* Drive is a little noisy
* Whether it's a factor of my router or the net drive, sometimes my netbook (wireless) and PS3 (wired) lose connection temporarily. I think this is something happening on my network rather than the drive though.
* If I rename a file on the drive using my PC while a file is playing back on my PS3, there is a hiccup on playback: I lose sound for a second, then sound resumes but video playback lags for a few seconds before resuming. Audio and video remain synced when this happens, though.

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Enjoy your digital life! Easily share and access files, photos, videos, and music between all your computers, with friends and with family using the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive.Powerful and fast, the three-step set-up is very simple, even if you've never used a network drive before.Ideal for centrally storing and sharing all your media files, the Home Media Network Hard Drive has a built in UPnP AV Media Server (DLNA certified) and iTunes Server so that content can be easily shared between computers and any other digital media adapters such as game consoles, digital picture frames or networked TVs.Simple 1-click sharing automatically posts files to your Facebook, YouTube and Flickr accounts.A photo slideshow can be created instantly, for online sharing with friends and family - updated by simply dropping files into an Active Folder.Remote access allows you to access your files securely from anywhere in the world via the internet.Torrent download allows you to take advantage of the new standard in file sharing, and other features allow you to share a printer and control which family members have access to certain folders.Automatically back up all your computers to the network drive with award winning EMC Retrospect Express backup software for PC and Mac (included), or virtually any backup application, including Time Machine.For extra protection, back up online with MozyHome Online Backup service - 2GB included free.Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities.

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Buffalo Technology LinkStation Quad 4 TB (4 X 1 TB) Network Attached Storage LS-Q4.0TL/R5(Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Good product for the price (paid $404 from Amazon). The price attracted me to this, since the "real" RAID 5 solution w/o performance issues are around ~$600~$800 w/o the hard drives. Bought it to protect my distributed data around 5 computers, and enough performance to keep all the files from the computers on the networked NAS drive, and protected.
RAID 1 (mirroring) was not my preference, and RAID 5 (parity, N+1 protection) was, which limited my choices to quad drive models.
Positives
- Easy management via browser, reasonable security and read/write privilege settings, even without setting up SMB server or equivalent (did not test the SMB server authentication yet).
- DLNA - for those who have DLNA TV, and TV connected to home network, the expected DLNA functions (content discovery, streaming, etc) worked well.
- Worked well with other SATA drives. Originally came w/ 4 x 250 G WD drives, and I put 500 G Maxtor, Seagate, WD, and Samsung drives, and all got recognized and ran without any issues.
- USB expansion -- I have a few of USB drives, that got instantly upgrade to NAS operation by connecting them (2) to this unit. Seems to handle mixed file systems fine: at least for NTFS and FAT32. Power on/off the external units as I need them.
Neutral
- Performance is reasonable -- works near 100% bandwidth in peaks over Fast Ethernet (100 Mb/s), but at Gigabit Ethernet speeds, it only peaks around 150~220 Mb/s. In human perception terms, no noticeable delay using files on NAS for editing or streaming music or video, but copy (e.g. back up) of 500 G data takes about 7~8 hours (compared to local disk to disk copy taking about 1~1.5 hrs).
- Performance during disk fault recovery operation is very good -- When fully operating, I removed a drive (simulated disk fault), and added a different drive (500G). The file server (access, copy from and copy to NAS) degraded performance was NOT noticeable during the fault recovery (as it shouldn't). A large directory copy (~20 G) was measurably noticeable (about 20~25% longer copy time).
- Performance per price point is reasonable that is.
Negatives
- RAID 5 should work on 3 or more drives. LinkStation Quad only supports RAID 5 on 4 drives. So, my original plan of using 3 drives for protected (and recoverable) data (e.g. family photo, work files), and 1 drive for bulk storage media (e.g. mp3 music, family video, etc) is not an option. So I configured RAID 5 over 4 internal drives, and put external USB drive for unprotected bulk storage.
- RAID initialization takes several days, YES, SEVERAL DAYS!. Manual warns about this, and it is true. I had several extra 500G drives, and had uses for 250G drives, so I bought the cheapest LinkStation Quad (1 TB model), and replaced it w/ 500G drives to get 2 TB (raw, before RAID). This replacement forced me to do format and the RAID initialization -- in my case, it took 2.5 days straight. The break down is about 1.5 days for individual drives to be low-level formatted to XFS (for 500G), and about 1 day to get RAID initialized (for 4 x 500 G) RAID 5 mode.
- Major ISSUE for Power users, but minor for casual users: Tested the gradual upgrade of the system capacity -- meaning start w/ 4 x 250 G, and start replacing each drive with 500 G, allowing to recover each time. When all 4 drives are replaced higher capacity drives, the unit SHOULD use higher capacity automatically, but it DID NOT. Had to remove all data, re-init the RAID 5 array (again 1 day), at which time the system reported higher capacity, and then put back the data (again about 1 day for 500 G).
Short Recommendation on selecting models (circa 01/2009) based on Price and Time only:
I bought 1 TB model, because I could use 4 x 250 G on my desktop PCs. But all the headaches and time does not justify the price difference. The 2 TB model is the best option (price, capacity, and upgrading w/ your own drives, all considered) if you have no use for the 4 x 250 G drives. 4 TB model seems to be the same price as if you bought 1 TB model plus 4 separate 1 TB drives (and you end up w/ "free" 4 x 250 GB drives. Again valuable only if you have use for those).
Not yet tested but will test:
- Access to this NAS storage behind home router from my work that has both firewall (incoming and outgoing), using both Buffalo's portal as well as fixed IP configuration. If this works well, my extended family could pull family photos directly from my home server, and I could access my personal documents on this NAS from work!


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Linkstaton Quad Nas 4tb 4x1tbPerpsata Raid Gbe 5 Web Access Dlna

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Iomega 1 TB Home Media Network Hard Drive Cloud Edition 34763 (Gray) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought the 2 TB version. It's great having our photos and music online so we can use our Sony Bravia and Blu Ray player to browse photos or play music through our sound system. And my Grace Digital internet radio now has access to 4000 tracks on our local network. So, I like it. But...
I hooked it up as instructed to our network and installed the Iomega management software. The manager could not discover the drive as it was supposed to. I logged onto our router to find the IP address and added the device manually. That did it. Minor inconvenience. Then I noticed that the NAS device advertised its capacity as 1.8 TB, not 2 TB. OK, 1.8 TB is still a whale of a lot of storage, but it's not 2 TB. Now that I've got 8000 photos and 4000 audio tracks on the drive, there's still 1.78 TB of free space. So, not a big deal.
All the folders on the NAS showed up in my Windows Explorer folder list so I figured I could just copy all music and photos directly to the mapped drives. It seemed to work with the music - never mind that it took 15 hours to copy 18 GB - but the photos didn't copy well at all. Some files were just missing and most of the others were corrupt. I tried recopying them with a direct wired network connection instead of a wireless connection, but still no joy. What finally did work was to enable the FTP server on the NAS and use a FTP client (Filezilla in my case) to upload the photos. Not only did it work with no corrupt files, it took a fraction of the time that the file copy took. It worked so well that I deleted all the music and uploaded it a second time using FTP. Why take chances? It took 2 hours instead of 15. Nowhere could I find in the user's manual any tips on adding content to the drive. That would have been useful.
I tried enabling the personal cloud function. The NAS is supposed to configure the router automatically but it failed to do so. I was unable to figure out how to configure the port forwarding function on the router to make this work, trying every combination of IP address and port suggested. Now, my router is about 6 years old, which is 2 centuries in router years, so I bought a new router. It was less than $40 and I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know.
Still all minor inconveniences, right? But what I can't abide is the darn thing seems to take itself offline from time to time. I can't get to it with the manager or it's web page. I have to reboot it to get it to work, and it take seven forevers to reboot.
Summary: great concept, great result when it works, but in a world where nothing is easy anymore, what gets me excited is a product that does what it's supposed to without sucking up hours of my time. This one's not quite there yet.
UPDATE:
The new router wasn't by itself sufficient to enable my personal cloud, but once I enabled the UPnP function on the router, the NAS was able to configure its ports. STILL no joy. I chatted up Iomega's tech support and they led me through their checklist, most of which I had already tried, but when they're running out of ROM you don't push the interrupt button. Everything at my end seemed copacetic so my next call was to my ISP, CenturyLink. I've called CenturyLink's tech support before and they are AWESOME. Dave the Tech Support Guy suggested that I needed to "bridge my modem" and took me through the process step by step. In two minutes it was done and the NAS synched up and made the connection. Yay! But I'm, still trying to figure out the personal cloud and it seems to be hit or miss when I try to connect. It's always something.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Iomega 1 TB Home Media Network Hard Drive Cloud Edition 34763 (Gray)

Get high-capacity, reliable home network storage with the Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive, Cloud Edition. Easily share and access files, photos, videos, and music between computers and with friends and family. It's powerful and fast, plus the three-step set-up is very simple, even if you're never used a network drive before. This feature-rich drive has a built-in UPnP AV Media Server (DLNA certified) and iTunes Server so content can easily be shared between computers and any other digital media adapters such as game consoles, digital picture frames, or networked TVs. Plus, automatically post files to your Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr accounts. Availalbe in 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB capacities.

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Hitachi SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle SNET (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Hatachi SimpleNet NAS USB to Ethernet promises a truly simple way to connect a USB storage device to your home network via wired Ethernet connected to your home router. Setup and control is managed through an internal web server accessible through Apple's Bonjour (zero configuration networking) software. No MAC (Media Access Control) address in included on the box so installation of Bonjour for windows ([...]) is mandatory. Apple Mac users have Bonjour built-in to OS X through Safari.
All of this innovation as well as the small form factor induced me to purchase the device and set it up for use with both USB thumb drives as well as a Western Digital external USB storage device.
As promised SimpleNet connected to the disk / flash subsystems and made the storage accessible over my home network via Bonjour. However in about 10 minutes the plastic box housing SimpleNet became very warm. At that time the disk / flash subsystems were no longer network accessible. The internal web broswer's setup pages then became blank and no longer displayed information.
Removing the power (supplied through an included 5 volt adapter) for twenty minutes to permit the device to cool again allowed me to connect to my storage, but only after repeating the setup process. Clearly this became tedious.
Note that no paper manual is provided and the mini disk containing the manual and Bonjour for Windows software is only compatible with tray drives CD readers.
Sadly it's back to the store with this device. It would have been a great way to create a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system to a home or small business network. I hope they try again, but first do the beta testing in the lab.

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SimpleNET is the easiest way to make your existing USB drive even more valuable!Share its contents across your network, quickly and easily!SimpleNET is a small network adapter that enables you to share and access existing USB hard drives over a network.Simply plug a USB hard drive into SimpleNET and then plug SimpleNet into an Ethernet network. The drive then appears as a network drive on the network.Easy to install, easy to use! SimpleNet is extremely cost effective too!Why pay more for a new hard disk drive?Make your investments pay off by sharing music, photos, videos or documents in minutes!No configuration necessary, no additional drives to buy.

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Buffalo LinkStation Live LS-CH500L - NAS - 500 GB - Serial ATA-150 - HD 500 GB x 1 - Gigabit Ethernet Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Bought one for home and found out it does such an excellent job, I bought one for my small office as well.
For home, i needed a NAS to store media on an always on device to stream to PS3 and XBox 360. This Buffalo device does this very well, with hardly any set-up at all on these two DLNA devices. Just enable 'Media Server' from the very easy to use browser based admin utility and your set.
Other great features: web access is a very simple page to access (buffalonas.com), combined with comprehensive, but easy to use user management. Also the Bittorrent feature is so easy and so convenient, you'll use it even if you dont know at the moment what this does. It works while the computer is off - obviously, and works quietly - actually silently, because this device is so quiet even while accessing files.
Not 5 stars because: silly really - on PS3, Photos are selected as Videos, and Videos are selected as Photos. But you get used to that. The web access could have slightly easier interfaces that dont return you to the home directory, and easier tools to save the files rather than viewing pictures in web pages.

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LinkStation is a single-drive NAS that makes it easy to add shared storage space to your network. All of your computers and network devices can access files from a LinkStation connected to your network. Ideal for homes and small offices that want easy to use easy to manage centralized network storage.

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Netgear Stora 2-Bay 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage MS2110 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)What's not to love about the Netgear Stora? On description alone, this sounds like a great product for home users to back up their computers and store their music and picture libraries. Perfect, right?
Although this is marketed for the non-technical user, after my experiences, I don't thing Grandma would ever figure this one out.
When I first installed the Stora I thought everything was going to work just like indicated. I had the stora set up, registered, password created, and had even added a couple of music files to test it out. Music was streaming perfectly. Then.. I tried to go online to read the owners manual and that is where the fun began. I found when the Stora was turned on that it hijacked my router and blocked Internet access from any other device in the house. Even computers that had never even accessed the Stora or had the Stora desktop applications installed were blocked as well as my squeezebox.
I turned off the Stora and cleared the cookies from my computers and restarted them, and I was able to get back onto the Internet. Then I turned the Stora on and it immediately blocked Internet access. I worked for a few hours on my own trying to diagnose the problem and find a workaround. Having no luck, I contacted technical support.
I found that Netgear surprisingly had 24/7 technical support, which was excellent at 2:30 am, except for the forty minutes of hold time. The first tech support specialist was a joy to work with. He was patient beyond what could be expected of saints. He went through every troubleshooting idea he could come up with. After spending two hours with me, at my suggestion he agreed I should try to assign an IP address to the Stora rather than allowing my router to auto-assign an IP address. I knew the IP address should be along the lines of 192.168.1.1xx but the tech support specialist told me to set it to 192.168.1.1, and against my better judgement, I put that in. At that point, my router decided he'd had enough and flipped out and kept flashing lights non-stop. My Internet AND Stora access were blocked. The tech support specialist set up a time for a higher level tech support specialist to call me back, and right on schedule I was contacted by Patrick. Patrick quickly ran through the notes and tried a few more things to help me, but finally ascertained that he couldn't fix the problem and suggested I either RMA it or return it to Amazon. He also understood that the Stora and the last tech support specialist made the problem worse so he tried to help me get my network working again even after we had taken the Stora off of the network. It didn't work, but I did appreciate his willingness to help.
The technical support specialists we talked to never addressed the issue of a possible hardware conflict, such as my router, but I got to thinking that might be the problem. We run a home business and in a fret of worry about not being able to print out and access tomorrows business I had my husband run to Sam's Club and purchase a new router. I did a system restore on all of the computers in the house to three days prior (and made sure the Stora was not connected in any way to my network, lol). I then installed the new router and my network was resurrected.
That got me to thinking.. maybe my router was not compatible with the Stora. Making a leap of faith I printed out tomorrows business and reconnected the Stora. Like magic, I did not get kicked off the Internet. The Stora was still working. I uploaded dozens of albums to the Stora and started streaming music around the house. I finally figured out that my router was incompatible with the Stora. Others on forums have complained that the Stora running blocks their http access. I would suspect that the problem lies in the router, how it assigns IP addresses, and that interacts with the Stora.
I don't feel that this product was ready for prime time. I did some backups, but found they did not create what I consider to be a mirror backup. I couldn't scroll through the hierarchy of drives and files like on my Seagate replica, but instead it's the type of backup you would use to restore a system. I also found the backup on this product to be incredibly slow compared to other competing products I've used.
I still like using it for streaming music and will probably add another 1TB drive to safeguard my files, but I don't know if the average person would persist through the many hours it took me to get this working correctly.
My other complaint is that the PDF user manual was "included" on the setup CD, but in fact it needed to be online to read. In other words, when they say the user manual is on CD, you have to be connected to the Internet to read the manual at their web site. It's not a stand alone PDF accessible straight from the CD. That REALLY frustrated me when I was having problems.
One more complaint, if the music folder is a folder within a folder it won't play. For example, if you have eight Michael Jackson albums contained within a folder called "Michael Jackson" and click "autoplay" it won't play any music. You have to manually drill down to get to the album you want.
Some reviewers have reported having to open ports on their firewall. I suppose experiences will vary. I set up my Stora using a Windows 7 64-bit operating system with Windows firewall and MSSE. I never had to adjust anything to complete the setup and my network is still secured. Perhaps there are compatibility factors that cause workarounds like disabling your firewall or opening ports.
I haven't yet set up the remote access free trial, but plan to give it a try once I have more loaded onto the Stora. I'll update my review and experiences after I try it out.
I hope that Netgear improves the Stora software because it has a lot of potential, but in it's current state it has basic functionality, basic storage, basic backup, with remote and network access. With better firmware and software, this product could be a must-have.
Pros:
Inexpensive
90 days free phone support
3 year warranty parts & labor
1TB storage
Remote access for only $20 per year
Ability to add another 3.5" SATA drive and utilize RAID feature
No need to install the desktop apps on additional computers, just access it's assigned IP on your network (192.168.1.?)
Can use this as a network printer server by connecting the printer through USB
File upload is very easy - just drag and drop
Cons:
Mirror backup is not a mirror- it's just a backup
Incompatibility with some routers
Folder management is pretty basic
Slow backups
I feel the 90 day free phone support should be longer, at least six months

Click Here to see more reviews about: Netgear Stora 2-Bay 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage MS2110

Includes one 3.5-Inch SATA drive and one open hot-swap bay. Add a spare disk drive at your convenience for automatic data mirroring. Acts as a multimedia hub that serves music, video, photos and files to any device on your home network. High-speed network connection for fast data transfers and streaming performance. Access files and play or view content at home and over the Internet. Integrates with Facebook, iTunes, Picasa2 and Web-enabled phones2

Click here for more information about Netgear Stora 2-Bay 1 TB (1 x 1 TB) Network Attached Storage MS2110

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LaCie Network Space Max 2 TB Gigabit Ethernet USB 2.0 Network Attached Storage 301519KUA Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Got it from Amazon. I don't live in the US so this was a gamble. Connected it to my router - and that's it! All three Macs in the house recognized it immediately, setting it up for Time Machine was instant. VERY quiet.I am VERY happy with it. Since allows RAID 1, I would recommend getting the 4GB version when available. I also called Lacie tech support and got immediate useful help. This is not trivial - it comes after much grief with the Iomega home netwrok drive which didn't work, was not supported for Macs in my country, and the guy on Iomega tech support chat admitted after an hour that their software was not ready for Mac...Highly recommend
UPDATE - turned out the drive had a software problem. This was identified during an online chat with a Lacie representative. I had to send Lacie my drive, the problem was corrected, the drive was sent back, now works OK. So, despite the initial disappointment with the drive arriving defective, I can now recommend not only the drive but the service as well.

Click Here to see more reviews about: LaCie Network Space Max 2 TB Gigabit Ethernet USB 2.0 Network Attached Storage 301519KUA

With the LaCie Network Space MAX, you're not simply storing files from your computer, you're storing files from all over your home. Imagine all of the data spread across your home computers now stored safely in one place. Connect the Network Space MAX through the Ethernet port to a computer or to a router, and share and store all of your media files from anywhere in your house with the fastest speeds. You can even back up multiple computers to ensure that your files are safe. For Mac users, it's Time Machine compatible. The Network Space MAX includes two large-capacity hard drives that can be configured for maximum security (RAID 1) or maximum capacity (RAID 0). If protecting your data is a priority, the RAID 1 mode will ensure automatic disk mirroring - meaning all files will be copied onto each of the disks. If one drive fails, data will not be lost. The Network Space MAX is designed for ultimate usability. LaCie Network Assistant software helps you set up the product within a few minutes. It provides the best user experience for quick detection and access to the Network Space MAX. LaCie's user-friendly dashboard allows you to easily manage files, backups, private accounts, and download torrents. Additionally, with the Network Space MAX, the files stored on the hard drive are fully accessible outside your home from any connected computer using the remote access service. The Network Space MAX features a media server, making it easy to stream files to any connected computer or any UPnPTM/DLNA compliant device (such as a PlayStation 3 or Xbox ). Computers with iTunes installed can also stream the music stored on the Network Space MAX.

Get 17% OFF

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NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Well I purchased 4 of these units, hoping to make this stack of 40GB, 80GB and 120GB drives I have laying around the house useful again. So far, buying these was not a good idea. I attribute most of my problems to there not being enough real technical review of the product available, and all documentation simply glosses over technical details in exchange for sales-speak. First, I'll say these are niftily crafted units that might have been pretty slick if they'd worked the way I expected them to. Problems encountered and gripes mounted include:
* These are not NAS devices, as some of the documentation might lead you to believe. A NAS device (network attached storage) typically offers clients the ability to connect to the device, using it's native fileshare method. CIFS for Windows, NFS for Linux/Unix, etc. These devices offer none of that.
* Device is available to Windows clients on the network only. If that's not bad enough, check the following gripe.
* Every PC that wants to access the device needs to have the software CD installed. Usually a NAS device will offer a shared filesystem that can be mounted in the OS's native method. With this box, all the PCs need to have a driver installed in order to see the device.
* DHCP only. There is no option to have a static IP address on the device. It is DHCP only.
* On first install, lamely worded error message hindered the install. After installing the device and the driver, it kept failing with the error "Unable to enumerate drive". The help file was useless. After an hour of messing with it and finally deleting all of my mapped drives, the installation suceeded and I was able to use the device.
* You MUST use the included software. Although the device seems to be listening on port 80, there is no web interface to configure it. The included software, running on Windows is the only way.
* Non-Windows systems are out of luck. This is a Windows only device. Do not try to connect to it with Mac OSX or Linux (both of which I have). The device can be connected and re-shared by a Windows PC, allowing Macs and Linux to get to it, but this has proved painstakingly slow.
* Painstakingly slow. I connected the device to an older Windows PC and the best sustained data transfer I could get (read or write) was around 3MB/s. Hardly a speed demon. My linux fileserver on the same network can easily sustain 10MB/s. I am going to connect the device to a faster Xeon based system and see how speedy it is then.
* Simple security. I saw no method of creating usernames or any kind of security on the device other than the single password that can be setup to access the device. Probably because this is designed for the home where there are not a bunch of users and passwords to manage.
Now this is a pretty new product, so hopefully it will get better with time. It seemed like such a good idea (obviously, I bought 4 of them), but I'm not convinced it was the best execution. Buyer beware.

Click Here to see more reviews about: NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central

The NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central is an expandable storage system that allows shared access by all computers on your network. With space for two IDE hard drives, you can set the device up to mirror each other so you have a backup of all your files in case either one fails.
Excellent Value and Easy Setup Unlike other network-attached storage (NAS) devices, the SC101 does not come with any drives but requires you to purchase your own. This allows for considerable cost savings. Opening up the SC101 only requires turning a latch that can be done with a quarter; no tools are needed. Attach the power connectors and IDE cables, set the jumpers, and slide the drive into place, and that's it.
After the hard drives are installed, plug the device in, attach it to the network, and install the included software. The software guides you through setup step by step. When everything is ready to go, it looks like a new hard drive has been installed on your PC and you use it just as you would any other hard drive. Backup software is included for users who don't already have their own preferred software. Please note that the SC101 is only compatible with Windows machines and won't work with Macs or Linux.
Outstanding Performance with Various Storage Options The SC101 connects to your network via a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet connection for fast data transfers. When you connect two drives to the device, you have the option of having them "mirrored" or "spanned." Mirrored storage lets you keep two copies of every file, one on each drive, so that everything is backed up in case of drive failure. When two drives are set to span, they appear as one volume so they are easy to work with and the device will automatically find your data across both drives.
The front panel has three LEDs to let you know the status of the power, hard disk and network at a glance. The NETGEAR SC101 Storage Central is backed by a 1-year warranty.
What's in the Box SC101 Storage Central, resource CD, power adapter, Ethernet cable, installation guide, SmartSync Pro Backup Software CD, and warranty/support information card.

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