LaCie Big Disk Network Storage Server - 301156U
LaCie Ethernet Big Disk - 1TB Network Hard Drive - Gigabit Ethernet & USB 2.0, 7200RPM, 16MB

I have had this NAS for almost a year and it works great! It could be a hastle to set up, but if you follow the manual, it's not so hard at all. I do not know what I did before NAS drives were available. I connect it to my gigabit router (you really need one of those) and all the files that are on that drive are instantly accessable to all connected computers at the same time. In my case, this NAS works with Windows XP, Mac OS X, PS3 and popcorn hour at the same time!! Truly awesome. At first I had problems with the drive freezing up on me, but after I installed the latest drivers/firmware from lacie website, it works without any problems. Expansion USB port work with FAT drives only, so I haven't tried to expand yet, but definetely looking to buy another Lacie drive because I already filled up 1TB! PS: Do not confuse this drive with just a USB drive. Connecting this drive through USB will make it behave exactly the same, just like NAS (Network Attached Storage).
 
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I was concern about the noise decibles of hard drive or fan spinning but I am amazed how quiet it is. The performance is better than I anticipated so overall, I am quite happy with this product. One thing I would like to see is this to support RAID1 (MIRROR) instead of RAID0. Not having this redundancy make me think twice storing files on it. It definately work best as a secondary backup. Hopefully Lacie future product will include disk mirroring for redundancy. Another thing I like to see change is more uniform power adapter. It will be nicer if it uses a standard cord instead of some sort of proprietary power adapter.
 
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Recently I bought two Lacie 1TB Ethernet disks thru Buy.com. We use it in my workplace as an additional backup to the NAS we have. Connected directly to NAS thru USB port. Installation went fine. But could not find it in the list of drives. You have to add this by mapping the drive in your network place. Once the mapping is done correctly it works superb. It's slower than NAS. But 22 hrs faster than my HP tape deck. I have bought two. I swap them every day and take one home as part of a disater recovery plan. Hope this will help!
 
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I was looking for an economic home/SOHO NAS solution and I study about 40 products... I read reviews and spend like 5 days on the net seeing differences between manufacturers. Let's be honest: 1 TB = 1024 GB's, that is a lot of space. You can create users/shares and assign permission combinations to everything. FTP and HTTP (Web) Server. You can even have access to your files if you are traveling around the world. There is only one thins I will add to this product: It does not have an auto turn-off/turn-on feature like the Buffalo Units we have here, BUT, for the price, there is no problem if you don't mind to go into the Web interface to turn if off/on or leave it ON all day if your people need 24x7 access.
 
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I don't know why my first review of this was deleted, and that kind of ticks me off. I really don't want' anybody else to be caught unawares by this. First, this is probably a very good ethernet ONLY network storage device, and it might even allow you to do amazing things across the internet for storage. However... You will have less nightmares if you are a seasoned network professional (the instructions with this unit are not in any way for novices, and are confusing even for someone who has grown up working on computers), and... Second, it is in no way able to be used as a storage device via the USB connection. I don't even know what the connection is actually for, if you can't use it for local non-network storage (I wanted to go to several computers which were not networked, yet, backup their video and project data, and then have this as a network drive when those were networked together after the start of the new year - this would allow for sharing and unattended backups). Unfortunately, without the network this product is useless, and I had to find that out by calling LaCie. I basically wasted 2 weeks of my time on this thing for no purpose -- Instead I went for a Maxtor 1TB unit, and though the network isn't fully up, yet, all the data is in it, and it will share out from one of the less utilized computers, on the USB interface and if we need to take it somewhere else, we don't have to build a network for it first. So, in all, my review is based on what the Listing is, for this unit, and what that implies. And again, it probably is a very good Ethernet only drive, but I would have had to have waited more than 3 months to determine that, and the drive cannot live up to the versatility implied by the supposed USB interface. In the end, I had to return this to buy.com, and I noticed that they still have not modifed the USB tag, or added a warning that is clear, about this. Unless the drive interface has been changed, but I do not see that listed either.
 
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I don't know what unit the other reviewer received, but this NAS drive works perfectly? I have a Mac, and couldn't find a compatible network drive until I found this one. Got it, hooked it up, and it works, and you can't beat the price. It's quiet and works perfectly. The only downside is I do run wireless and my router really limits my data capacity. If you are running wirless you better have a fast router, or hard wire to your network. But that is not a fault of the drive. Price and performance can't be beat.
 
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Excellent network drive. Not the easiest to use with a Mac, but workable. Manuals could be written better for the Mac side. No automatic back-up utility to back-up the drive directly from it's USB port as Buffalo Technologies have. This could be improved by Iomega. Overall, I like the drive and on an Airport Extreme gigabit network it streams video and music extremely well!
 
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I'm no expert with networks, and personally had no trouble at all getting the LaCie Ethernet Big Disk set up and running, just following the instructions to the letter. I can access the control page just like you do for a router and it does everything as advertised. I combined the Big Disk with a Roku Wireless Soundbridge M1001 and ripped my 500+ disc CD collection to MP3. Now I can access all my music and video as easily as lifting a finger, and I can easily back up all my computers, too. In the five months I've had the drive it has only dropped out of view on my home network twice and a simple cycle of the power brought it back 100%. I've only used about 1/3 of the capacity so far, and plan to get another eventually. It's great how it hooks directly to the router or network switch and that it allows you complete control over what is shared on the network and what is private. It also serves Std. Def. video beautifully via my DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router at 300mbps wirelss, if you want another recommendation. The only reason I don't give 5 stars is because it's a bit more work than would be ideal to set up, but then what network product isn't? And the reward far outweighs the effort.
 
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I fried 3 of my USB drives - USB interface is not truly hot pluggable. So, I decided to switch to "network drives", which are much safer but a lot more complicated to set up. The LaCie ethernet big disk turns out to be a lot easier to set up than I expected - but still a pretty daunting task to take on at the beginning. On my giga ethernet network, its performance is about half of USB 2.0 data rate. This is truly amazing to me. Network drives are not for everybody. But, if you know how to work a network drive, this is a great bargain. For me personally, now I don't have to worry about frying another external hard drive.
 
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I just hooked up this drive through an Air Port Extreme AP (If you don't have one of these APs, may want to seriously think about it - I have played with many APs and this one is GREAT). Back to the drive... Setup was not too bad at all - yes, the HTTP interface was slow, but you use it once and then more or less forget about it. Had to quickly glance through the manual/PDF however... Within a short while, I was able to access it via a hard wired PC and wirelessly from a MAC - simply follow the bouncing ball to set up. Performance looks fine. However, this baby is NOISY. Sitting in my study, the hum is continuous. The hard drive access also gives out additional noise. Prior to this unit I tried a Maxtor drive and while it did not have GigE (just USB and FW), it was very quiet.
 
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Wow 1TB for $269 on a network, you can't beat it. Only thing is the address does drift a little between 2 addresses. Just have to remap network drive occasionally.
 
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This CANNOT be used as a USB hard drive!! According to LaCie tech, the partitioning scheme on this device prevents it from being recognized (confirmed by my experience). This must be used as an ethernet device ONLY! I bought this to back up digital video clips from four 300GB drives on various computers -- to eventurally be shared across a LAN. However, I cannot even find out what format the drive is because it cannot be recognized. So, assuming this would even work, I cannot find that out until our computers are all networked together properly (that's next month's project).. Sadly, none of this is clearly stated anywhere within the ads, hard-print or electronic manuals. Setting up is confusing even for hardened professionals (use almost seems counter-intuitive), and for my needs, the disc is NOT by any means portable -- you cannot just go to another computer, plug it in, and access a file. The value on this device would be a "5" if I could use it, but I can't. Bizzarely, I could have bought 3 separate 500GB drives for the same price... I would have at least had the backups, if not the ease of a single shareable drive. However, now my money is tied up for several weeks waiting for this to be returned. Definitely not worth the hassel -- mainly because it fits such a tiny little niche. Easier to buy a regular FW or USB HD and hook it to a networked computer, and share from there.
 
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I have the 250GB version, and I hate it. The networking feature is an absolute nightmare, and now I can't even log in to reformat the POS. Avoid this thing.
 
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