Seagate ST320005LSA10G-RK 2TB (2 x 1TB) BlackArmor NAS 220

Pros: Reliable, fairly easy to set up and work with, good capacity, good value

Cons: DLNA could be better, some stuff in setup could be improved

Other Thoughts: I've had a 220 for a number of years now, I've got it running RAID0 and it's mirrored by an Iomega NAS. Good box for backups, media storage, archives, and video surveillance data recording. Totally reliable, and works fine with the latest firmware. Currently supporting ~10 PC's and dozens of media devices, tablets, and phones in my house. I'd buy another one for sure.

Pros: I have had this NAS for over 2 years now. It has served my purpose as being a central storage for my media for Plex and my DLNA bluray player to pull media from and it has been my iTunes library with over 23,000 songs albeit it could use some more cache with that many.

Cons: I recently had a drive fail after over 2 years of use. Since this is marketed towards business use you would think they would use enterprise drives but they don't. Regardless the issue is when the drive failed I lost complete access to management console of the NAS. At first I had no idea why I lost all connectivity. It wasn't until I took the failed drive out then I could access the system with one drive. With a failed drive in the system the NAS boots up, I can hear the bad drive spin up and start clicking and then the NAS powercycles itself. It does this continuously and it is never up long enough to login to it. This should not work like that. If a drive fails I would expect access to the management console to see which drive is failing etc and see if I can run any S.M.A.R.T. checks on it. I will search around Seagate forums to see if this is normal behavior.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Seagate Customer,

This reply is from Seagate Support. We noticed your review and wanted to apologize for the problems experienced with your BlackArmor NAS 220 drive. We would like to talk with you in greater detail to determine the root cause and available resolution to the problem with the clicking and power cycling BlackArmor 220. We have created case #03127857 for your reference. Both your review and our response will be listed under this case number. If from the US or Canada our contact number for technical support is 800-732-4283. If outside of the US or Canada please try us here under Technical Support (choose your region):
http://www.seagate.com/support/contact-support/

Best Regards,
Seagate Support

Pros: Makes a great door stop.

Cons: This is my 2nd Black Armor NAS 220. Access is sporatic, one second you can access it and the next second you cant. My backups start and then fail somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes. Checkout other reviews before you purchase I found hundreds of reviews with the same problem.
Active directory integration worked for about a day. After rebooting the NAS (because it lost network connectivity again) I could not authenticate using AD username and password.

Other Thoughts: This is device is junk. Hey Segate NAS is NETWORK attached storage, if you can't make the NETWORK part work go back to selling stand alone hard drives.

Pros: Easy setup, so far works solidly. Cheap.

Cons: Trying to reconfigure from one static IP to another, the device wouldn't allow access to the file shares over the network, even with a system reboot.. so I had to use the original static IP. Not a big deal, just annoying.

Other Thoughts: Ive bought and installed 5 of these so far (only one through newegg). Havent had a problem with a single one of them so far, other than the static IP glitch mentioned above.

Pros: 1.9 tb of storage: check; so far - no errors after 2 or so years of near constant, 24h/day use.

Cons: Very bad at deleting files. First, deletion takes time equal to copying, but worse, the built-in software if poor/bugged. The deleted files are only hidden, not saved, and one has to used the control software to truly delete them. The option to delete them all after 3 days or so (there's no way to do it sooner!) often does not work, so every now and then I find myself deleting hundreds or thousands of files manually through select all in a 20 or so view, delete, rinse and repeat... aaargh. Whoever designed the interface should be fired.

Other Thoughts: Overall, it does its job of 2 tb storage well, BUT the deletion bug makes it a bad choice if you plan to use it for moving files around. I am not looking forward to having to repurpose it... sigh.

Pros: good network drive
As a backup device pricy but ok ... the usb ports work for data on external drives but the media share option is disabled.
An external drive plugged into a cheap epson network printer works better than this

Cons: good network drive but does not serve properly, Seagate is aware of this but continue to lie to people as if it is compliant.
With the june 2012 firmware installed, I got the DLNA to work by creating a new share called video, disabling media share on all shares and then enabling it on video (which is a public share)
items added to video, however, never showed up rebooting etc didnt work except now after 15 minutes the server disappears from the dlna list,
I have a mybook live that seves flawlessly and a pc that wors as a server too. I have tried everything suggested... a search of the forums will let you know the BlackArmor NAS 220 is not able to serve media reliably and seagate tech support are jerking everybody around.
As a backup device pricy but ok ... the usb ports work for data on external drives but the media share option is disabled.

Other Thoughts: I have Seagate media players as well as WD live and LG smart tv upgrader, and a Toshiba and LG smart TV, several android devices, a 360 and PS3, used several routers, 2 sdifferent switches, network hub, direct connections the DLNA disappeared after a few minutes regardless of the network setuo the WD and PC servers worked in all configurations.... Come on Seagate stop saying this thing is a media sever
I was unable to give it zero eggs

Pros: Cheap network storage backed up in RAID 1.
Not too loud.
Relatively easy to configure shares/volumes.
Easy to access and mount drives via PC.
DNLA access working via PC and XBOX 360.

Cons: Blue power/HDD light is bright an somewhat annoying.
Remote file access is accessed by logging into Seagate's web portal then accessing the drive. Not sure I like that. Didn't work that well anyway.

Other Thoughts: Good NAS with RAID for the money. Wished I'd gotten the higher capacity model. Read/write speed is usually around 6mb/sec regardless of connection type (direct connection, Wi-Fi via router, or wired via power-line Ethernet).

Pros: Pretty fast NAS for price allowing Raid 0 or Raid 1 configuration.

Cons: I was looking for inexpensive NAS supporting Active Directory and Seagate claims "BlackArmor 220" as such device. In reality it does NOT support NTFS at all (this is by design) and AD support is very limited only to the level of shares. However the worst thing: if after device was configured for AD and then shut down (properly through WEB-interface) - all shares become unavailable with AD credentials. The only way to fix it is removing device from domain then adding back and MANUALLY setting all domain permissions on all shares from scratch. This has been discussed on multiple forums and there is no existing fix. I wish I knew that "feature" BEFORE I purchased it. In this case I would NEVER buy it.

I have the latest firmware and it doesn't look that Seagate is going to fix this AD bug.

Other Thoughts: I would strongly discourage those who is looking for AD support from buying this device!!!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Seagate Customer,

This reply is from Seagate Support. We noticed your review and wanted to comment on your experience with your BlackArmor Nas 220 drive. We would like to confirm that Active Directory (AD) was setup properly for the NAS 220. Please use the following support article for a reference on how to properly setup and troubleshoot issues with Active Directory:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/209391en

If the above troubleshooting does not help or you have any remaining questions or concerns, we would be happy to help further. If from the US or Canada our contact number for technical support is 800-732-4283. If outside of the US or Canada please try us here under Technical Support (choose your region):
http://seagate.com/support/contact-support/

Best Regards,
Seagate Support

Pros: When it works, it does exactly what it needs to. When it works.

Cons: Just refused to communicate with the router. Pulled up Wireshark and the box just sits there. I was able to successfully use it very sporadically but after updating firmware (I naively thought that might help), device does not show up on the network at all. Doesn't send DHCP requests. Doesn't send any sort of network packets anymore. It's an eleven pound shiny box.

Other Thoughts: Really costly to send back for a refund.

Pros: I bought this device in June of 2010 and have been using it since then to back up a small business server and several workstations on a daily basis. It is easy to set up and has worked flawlessly since it came out of the box. Not long ago, a hard drive on one of my workstations crashed and since I had a stored image on the NAS, I inserted a spare drive, restored the image from the NAS, and the machine was up and running in only one hour. I would recommend this NAS to anyone.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Think ahead about how much storage space you will need in the future. I thought that 2 TB would be plenty, but I was wrong. I need more space, so I am now ordering the 4 TB unit (Seagate ST340005LSA10G-RK 4TB BlackArmor NAS 220). Regarding speed, it is a NAS unit after all and it is only as fast as your network.