Seagate ST340005LSA10G-RK 4TB (2 x 2TB) BlackArmor NAS 220

Pros: Low cost and easy to maintain, it simply uses 7200rpm Barracuda internal drives. No need for a special firmware like other NAS out there. (ie: WD sentinel, Iomega)

Acronis backup software is bundle with it for easy system imaging. MAC users can use time machine.

VMware, iSCSI, Active directory support.

Hardware encryption

Cons: Not the fastest NAS but not atrociously slow like some are complaining about here. Obviously backing up over wireless will be slower no matter what NAS you use.

Some patience required to setup, make sure you have the latest software update.

Other Thoughts: Once again a great value for the money with lots of features.

Pros: I had this device over 3 months, this NAS is solid and work well. I use it in RAID 1 for backup, in this configuration, everything works perfectly.

Cons: slow alittle noisy but acceptable!

Pros: None.

Cons: DO NOT BUY THIS NAS. Let save you countless wasted hours. After buying this and a *terrible* GoFlex, I'm done with Seagate.
GARBAGE:
1. The installer disc corrupted the MBR on my machine not once but twice. It installs a dual-boot option, but if your machine has hidden partitions, it will corrupt them or delete them.
2. You can't set an admin password over 12 characters. The system will allow you to, but it won't give you an error for trying.
3. Discovery software simply does not work.
4. Cannot do simple incremental backups with Seagate software.
5. NAS displayed "hidden" folder names to an external device. Unacceptable.
6. NAS suddently disappears from view on other machines.BA 220 disappears randomly and will only reappear after re-boot.
7. Documentation is useless for critical functions.
8. Encryption process is undocumented.
9. Support does not exist. I contacted support and tried to interact with support three times. NO reply, no nothing.
10. Buggy/unclear function sta

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Dee,

This reply is from Seagate Support. We noticed your review and wanted to apologize for the problems experienced with your BlackArmor NAS 220 drive. Certainly it is not typical or expected for these drives to behave this way. We would like to talk by phone with you to help resolve the problems you have been experiencing and to get the drive working for you as expected. We have created case #02765526 to use when contacting us that will show your review and our response. If from the US or Canada our contact number for free 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: The unit Works

Cons: Slightly slow but expected.

Other Thoughts: This product is not designed for speed on transfering files. Does it get the job done, sure does. Did transfering over 1.5TB worth of data take a while. Sure did.

Pros: Price, decent amount of features. Good UI/Support from Seagate

Cons: As others mention network performance is the real issue, specifically NFS. Using the CIFS protocol (Windows) speeds seem normal but moving to NFS backup times tripled when pushing to this device. There is also a reported issue with Seagate NAS devices forcing master browser elections if joined to a Windows domain.

Manufacturer Response:

The NFS and CIFS issues were addressed in a firmware upgrade completed on 11.15.2010. Please to to the below link to download the latest firmware upgrade.

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ba-nas-downloads&vgnextoid=c75246ee20114210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

Pros: Price is good, easy to connect.

Cons: We got one of these units and they are very cumbersome to setup. They have a default partition that is fine but if you want to setup user permissions and partitions it is like carving granite with a wet noodle. Worst of all is the backup feature. Lower price Seagate hard drives allow for incremental backups but this unit does not. I even contacted Seagate to confirm and they said that it only performs full backups. This is useless as a practical means of backing up daily data. Do they really think we want to copy 4 terabytes to a USB back up drive every night???? All in all it is lots of drive for little money but you definitely ONLY get what you pay for. Buy something else.

Other Thoughts: Get something else

Manufacturer Response:

Seagate recommends using RAID1 for this product as it allows for internal drive backup, so you do not have to backup to a USB Hard Drive. For those who need a larger capacity, we recommend our NAS 440 products where you can backup-internally up to 8.6TB of data depending on the product you use.

Pros: 4TB storage

Cons: Can only access it with their strange interface.
The USB ports on it are for backing up this unit only, not for copying to it as the sales people had told I'd be able to do.

It is EXTREMELY SLOW!!! It is useless to me because it takes hours to transfer what will transfer in minutes to/from an external USB drive. I'm buying two 2TB USB drives today and will sell this piece of garbage when I move my files off of it. (Yeah, I considered external cases and stuff, but I can't just move the drives since I'm using the SPAN setup so I can have 4TB of space instead of 2TB).

Manufacturer Response:

NAS Products do have slower transfer speeds than USB drives. The reason for this is that the NAS sits on the network so network traffic and the speed of the router the NAS is attached to can greatly impact performance. We typically do not recommend Spanning on NAS devices and instead suggest utilizing RAID/Internal Backup of data so all the data and backup is done within a single device.

Pros: The device was very quite, it functioned as a NAS very well, the Management interface was very user friendly that a novice could use it and under stand it

Cons: It was very slow on a 100Mbs connection it ran at 2-3 MBs and on a 1000Mbs connection it hit a high of 25MBs but avg. 10MBs,

The DLNA/Media server function work half way, I say this because it would turn on my PS3 and other media devices could see it but half the files didnt show after adding a new files had to turn the device off and on and some times the service its self.
Most of the files i was trying to steam would not as the DLNA service on this device didnt support the file format

Other Thoughts: It worked as a slow NAS device
I would recommend getting another device then this one as it is slow
And if you are look to get a NAS for a Media storage i would look else were

Seagate really needs to keep this the firmware updated and have a list posted of the files formats it suppots

Manufacturer Response:

The NAS should be running around 9-10 MB/s. It is recommended you use the latest BlackArmor firmware upgrades for optimal performance. Seagate continuously provides enhancements and new features to this product line with complimentary firmware updates available for download at www.seagate.com The latest firmware upgrade (published 11/15/10) has enhanced DLNA support with a broader range of media file formats supported. Seagate will update its support web pages so the list of media files supported with the latest firmware is more readily available.

To download the latest firmware upgrade, please go to http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ba-nas-downloads&vgnextoid=c75246ee20114210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

Pros: Many good features for a good price if it worked. Seagate's tech support and warranty support is very good (except for the refurb issue, see Cons below).

Cons: I shouldn't have to use their warranty support so much. I've had lots of problems with these things. I had 2 hard drives fail in the first unit so they replaced the entire thing. The replacement they sent me wouldn't even power up and had a "Certified Seagate Repair" sticker on the back so I think they sent me a refurbed unit as a replacement. Unacceptable! Even when the first one worked it was extremely slow moving large files over USB or LAN. If the next replacement unit is defective in any way (or is another refurb) I'm going to try to get my money back.

Other Thoughts: This could be a great device if it was faster and more reliable. Unfortunately, it's just another example of how everything is made today: cheap, cheap, cheap. The only emphasis is on cutting cost. What a shame.

Manufacturer Response:

It is important to note that NAS devices are on the network and will result in slower transfer speeds than direct USB backup. The slower backup is for two reasons. The first is network traffic, so we typically recommend running backups at night when networks typically have less traffic. The second is the wireless router being used. Routers that routinely clock out and/or are older 10/100 routers, will negatively impact performance.

Pros: quick setup, quiet unit, looks good

Cons: tendency to not work...

Other Thoughts: I like a lot about this unit in terms of specifications, particularly the security I felt in terms of copying the files onto both hard drives (RAID). This way if one drive fails, you should have access to your data from the other. Unfortunately it didn't really work out that way as the unit constantly disappeared from the network and was completely inaccessible. Multiple resets and various other approaches could not rectify the problem. Seagate's troubleshooting webpage was not helpful. The one saving grace is that Newegg.ca has been really easy to deal with.

Manufacturer Response:

Discovery problems are often the result of users having problems with their network switch and/or wireless router. It is not typical for BlackArmor products to have troubles with discovery. Contact Seagate Support for additional network trouble shooting assistance at (800) SEAGATE.