LaCie 301270U 1TB Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition
From Lacie
Centrally store your shared digital entertainment on the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini ¿ Home Edition. Easily find your photos, music, and video thanks to the predefined shares. Drag and drop your photos for easily uploading them so they are accessible to your relatives and friends no matter where they are. Setup is complete in minutes, providing home and remote access. Use the LaCie Ethernet Disk mini as a simple, cost-effective personal media server via Gigabit Ethernet. Stream videos to your TV with the broadest range of digital media players supporting uPnP AV, Windows Connect, and DLNA certified devices, plus game stations like PS3 or Xbox 360. At the same time, you can listen to music through a networked sound system and with the internal iTunes server, it can stream to any Mac or PC. Keep digital photos safe and organized in the family library or view them on your TV or compatible digital picture frame and edit from any computer with your favorite software. It¿s never been so easy to organize, edit and enjoy your photos.Your household¿s digital content is always accessible wherever you go via the HomeLaCie.com media portal. Access personal media and files from anywhere via an Internet web browser. Share with friends and family by sending email invitations. Just log on to your LaCie Media Portal to get to your customized menu. Upload photos directly to your Ethernet Disk mini while you are on vacation. With the Desktop software for Windows and Mac OS X, back up your home computer to your Ethernet Disk mini - Home Edition automatically. Synchronize your music library between your laptop and the Home Edition.
Amazon Sales Rank: #14097 in Consumer Electronics Size: 1TB Brand: LaCie Model: 301270U Platform: Windows Format: CD Original language: English Dimensions: 6.30" h x 1.70" w x 6.80" l, 3.50 pounds Hard Disk: 1TB
Works Well First, be aware that the "Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition" and "Etherenet Disk Mini" are different products with different features. This information is related to the Home Edition. It works very well for me, although a little slow when accessed through the web interface. After opening the necessary ports in my DSL router, I had to reboot the whole setup (edminihome, dsl, router) a few times before things worked. Not sure if that is needed, or if it just took some time for things to propagate through. When you ask it to share a folder through the internet, it emails the receipient an URL pointing to the shared folder. The URL contains a long random string (I guess it's some kind of a cookie), but no password is required to sign in. So anybody who gets a copy of that URL (eg. if the email is forwarded to someone else) will have access to the shared folder, and I don't see a way to log who are actually accessing the files. You can plug in multiple USB drives into the edminihome using a usb hub, and they are all visible to the edminihome. However you can select only one of them at any time to serve as MySafe. The remaining USB drives will be dormant. When selected as MySafe, the USB drive can be accessed through the web interface, but cannot be mounted as a network drive (FamilyLibrary, MyLibrary, and MyBackup can each be mounted as a network drive). Good consumer NAS, but no speed demon to be sure I worked in IT in the past, so I wouldn't consider myself new to setting up networks or NAS devices. I have set lots of them up, this LaCie Home Edition wasn't too difficult, but I can see how some people would be frustrated too as its not very well thought out. That said, I have got it delivering files to a Windows XP desktop, Windows Vista laptop and a MacBook Pro. As per usual, the Mac is the easiest, their is something called the HipServ which shows up in your shared devices and then you click on Family Library or My Library. I have set it up with a static IP address and have shortcuts to folders on the NAS, so it looks and works as if it were the same as an internal drive. Bad news though, it is slow, even by consumer NAS standards. Using my 802.11n network, I get 4.5MBps and through a gig LAN connection I get about 8MBps. Silver lining, its a stable connection so you can start copying things and come back to it later - much later. I threw about 350GB on it immediately off an older USB drive that was dying and it took over 24hours. Talking of USB, forget the USB port on the back for adding additional storage, its just for backing up what you have on the NAS which is helpful, but it would be nice to use it for other things too. I have also connected to it whilst away from home and it works well enough once you've set everything up - again though, helps to know a little about network setup. Bad news is that its very slow, like topping out at 20kbps so downloading a movie or something is going to take a long time. OK to use for grabbing a Word file or something that you forgot to transfer to your laptop before leaving on a business trip! You get what you pay for, for the money its not a bad NAS. It does what it says and its fast enough to stream movies/music - standard def at least. It is relatively inexpensive and fast enough for backups from multiple computers - as long as you stagger the backups. To give an idea of speed, its roughly 25-35% as fast as a typical USB2 drive. I'm Impressed yes, it was a pain to setup - but I'm very impressed with what its letting me do right now... Access my entire iTunes library wirelessly over my Airport Express (over multiple machines at once!) For just over $100?! Wow.
