Iomega Home Network Hard Drive - 33455 - Performs as a USB direct attached device or a NAS (shared storage) device
Iomega 500GB Home Network Hard Drive (NAS)

All the drivers and added software are on the included CD. Installs in seconds and ready to use either USB or networked. Can't wait until they add a 10/100/1000 NIC interface.
 
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This is a nice network drive. Saves fast. Price was the best I could find for a 500GB Network drive. $25 less than a 250GB. The delivery was quick, and fortuately one of my HONEST neighbors delivered it to me. UPS delivered it to the wrong address. The only complaint I have is with the software. It updates just about every day and requires a restart. When the restart is finished I have to log the drive in again in order to use it. Maybe after I READ the complete instruction manual this won't be needed. You know the expression if at first you don't succeed try again and if it still doesn't work READ THE DIRECTIONS!!! Thanks............Alan
 
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My only issue was the initial setup. The written instructions, even if written in probably 10 different languages left detail to be desired, such as how to find/mount/map the drive, what the default password is to log into it the first time so you can setup and so on. The html help files on the software CD weren't much better but I did find out both userid and password are 'admin' until you reset them. After some fumbling around, no thanks to the instructions, I got it working just fine. I bought this drive because I was trying to solve a shared drive problem between my desktop and wireless laptop (both running Vista; never had this problem with XP) and Linksys wireless router; Vista network connections always disconnected/locked up at inopurtune times such as viewing/copying my photos back and forth. This new drive seems to have completely solved that problem and I will no longer need to access the hard drive on my PC from my laptop. Still...setup instructions could have been much easier to follow beyond physically connecting the cables. Good deal for the price...probably the best value out there is right here at Buy.com. I'm surprised they aren't easier to find for sale in local stores such as Best Buy.
 
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It took little time to have this running on my home network. (One XP, two Win2k, and one Vista Home connected with a Linksys 54G wireless router.) Once mapped on the different PCs, accessing common or personal directories is easy enough. I am currently using the backup software (Retrospect) in their "Backup" mode rather than "Copy" mode that allows you to confirm things are there with Windows Explorer. Since I don't want to send my computer back to an earlier version, I'll never know if the restore points being saved actually work unless I need them! I may buy a second NAS one of these days and configure it to keep copies of the newest files so that I know it is doing what I hope! Comments from my fellow Wisconsinite about the EMC Retrospect software concerns me, but I havn't had any trouble yet. (About 1 month in service.) And The review from Commerce GA is right on - I think, if you smoke, you could light a cigarette off the side of this thing it runs so hot!
 
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I bought this drive after reviewing price vs performance of network storage drives. This one works as a Windows shared drive for my home network. It can also be a stand alone FTP server for remote access. I have music and photos stored on the drive to replace an old PC that made a lot of noise and used much more power. The setup was easy on my home network. I tried out the FTP but don't really have a need for it. The sleep timer is a great idea to spin down the drive when inactive for a while. Drive is quiet even when in use.
 
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No problems at all, works as described. I was able to set up partitions for all of my home PCs to this HD in under 5 minutes. The only concern is that this drive runs a little too hot. It may be normal but I surely concerned to loose my backup data from this back up drive due to overheating. Have it for over one month and like it so far. Just remember that when you move large files over your LAN to this drive, it takes longer time than when using USB connection. Both USB & Firewire connections are at least 4 times faster than most LAN (100 Mbit/s for LAN vs. 480 Mbit/s for USB and 400/800/3200 Mbit/s for Firewire) so do not be surprised to wait a little…Thanks buy.com
 
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I too was a little disappointed that it was formatted FAT32 but contrary to what "A customer from Austin, Texas" said, you can save files larger than 4GB. The drive has some built-in software that will spilt the file up into 4GB chucks and save it. It still shows it to the user as one file when connected to the network. If you look at it while connected to USB you will see the file split up. The only way to get the large file back is to access if from the network. I also found the backup software included with the drive to be a little quirky. It worked for a while but then the catalog was corrputed and I was unable to fix it.
 
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If you want to go between the USB connection and the network connection, you must use the drive formatted in the FAT32 file system. This has a limitation of 4GB file sizes. The network software will not recognize the drive if formatted with the NTFS which can handle larger file sizes. If you want to backup DVD's or other large files then you can't use the networking capabilities.
 
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I bought this drive to use it as a backup device for multiple computers on my home network. There are a few details you need to know before considering this drive. The drive is formatted using FAT32. This is the only formatting that can be used if you want to use it as a NAS device. If you reformat it using NTFS you will need to use it as a USB drive. Because FAT32 can not handle files over 4GB Iomega uses software to break up files larger than 4GB into 4GB files for storage. This is all done transparently so the user doesn't know it's happening. The problem is that it is very SLOW. One other problem with FAT32 is that Vista's backup software will not use a drive using FAT32, so you cannot use this drive with Vista's backup software. My drive came with 2 licenses for EMC Retrospect but I have found this software to be terrible. It worked for a while and then the catalog got out of sync with the backup. When I followed EMC's instructions on how to fix it, it still didn't work. I tried to uninstall the software and start over but it leaves your settings somewhere on the PC and you can't get rid of them. I have given up on using this software because it is unreliable and that is a word that I do not want associated with my backup. At this point I just have a nice 500GB USB drive. It's too bad because it sounded so good. I'm just not sure why Iomega went with the FAT32 format, it just doesn't make sense.
 
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I used this to put mp4 video files on. fast, snappy and accessable through your xbox or media center. Iomega needs to advertise more.
 
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