LACIE 2000385 Diskless System 5big Network 2

Pros: Attractive exterior

Cons: Everything about this NAS is slow and unreliable. I tried to use it as a Time Machine backup server but after only a month the backup DMGs were corrupted. I tried to use it as a regular file server but its performance was incredibly slow. We're talking write speeds of 5MB/s over gig ethernet from the SSD drive of a modern unix machine. The integrated media server is also slow. The software has a ton of really gaping security holes, so don't let it anywhere near the Internet. The first RAID-6 sync took 2+ days. I recently installed a NAS OS update; it blew away the entire config including shares, quotas, user accounts, service settings, everything. It dumped all my data into a "Recovery" folder on a new share. After restoring settings and shares, it took the better part of a day to put the data back where it belongs. The tech support was also slow to respond. The device itself it intermittently noisy.

Other Thoughts: I've had the device for 3 months now. I really regret buying this NAS. I don't feel like my data is even remotely safe on it. I bought based on the features list, but the hardware isn't up to the job. Buying from this big well-known company has so far yielded no benefit over building my own NAS or buying from a less known company.

Pros: Raid 5.Quiet. Runs cool. This is not a beginner device, and their tech support assumes you are a novice at most things. I can't complain, I had problems setting it up initially. I popped in 5 1tb drives and set it to Raid5. It built the array, then 10 hours later found a fault issue with ID 03. I replaced it and let it rebuild and didn't loose any data.

Cons: However, Lacie pushed an update that I think p_ssed a lot of people off. I should have known better than to just update right off the cuff and wait till I checked their boards for complaints. As a result, I lost the web file browser function for more than a week. When I contacted their tech support, I was outraged to find you could not roll the update back like a regular bios flash, so I went without being able to do remote access through web. I hope they don't do that again. I'd sell the thing in a heartbeat to go through that a second time.

Other Thoughts: Since the initial pain the device has worked flawlessly. I won't let it sleep just because I don't trust it enough to do that. I find web browsing sluggish, but it will stream my music collection remotely. I have gotten wiser and have a backup that does incremental. The blue light up front is bright, but you can go to the power config and turn it off. Once you get it up and going, I think you would be happy with it, but it is not for newbies.

Pros: Couldn't tell you

Cons: Doesn't connect to the network, can't use it at all

Other Thoughts: It's supposed to DHCP an IP for itself and then have you browse to configure it. Well I've tried it on 3 different routers that do DHCP and it never pulls an IP. I've done all the steps outlined in the getting started guide, and I've even tried using their diagnostic tools, but none of them find the device. I'm going to have to return it.

Pros: NAS. Raid 5 redundancy. UPNP. In their defense, I have to say "Jon" was very patient, but totally useless.

Cons: I can't tell you how much frustration I am having with this company. If you are totally in Linux of Mac, you will have better luck, but if you are a total win dependent user this is totally ugly.
Bought this "thing" when my external raid5 (Venus T5... don't buy) totally puked the stripe so bad I could not recover 2.8TB of media files. Everything was just dandy at first. Then came the update. Not only did it kill my access to managing my content, tech support said the firmware was not reversible and there was no ETA on a fix. It's been over a week now.
Before they knew it was a firmware problem, they had me back up my entire collection (1.2TB that I re-uploaded fresh from my DVD collection) to an external drive. I went through their procedure to "reset" the device... which was totally ineffective. Then they notified me there were "issues" with the last firmware update and that they were working on a fix.... but they could not give me a time line. When the last firmware was applied, I lost access to all my audio file (56gb). Video files were still accessible. I could add files, but recently when trying to do an incremental back up, I was unable to. Wrote tech support, and they had the audacity to tell me NOW (which is not in their documentation) that incremental was only supported "incremental backup function will only work with external drives that are formatted for EXT3, EXT4, or XFS".

Other Thoughts: I can't tell you how at every turn of this adventure has turned into a total management nightmare. Do NOT purchase this thing if you run anything Microsoft.... it is just totally useless. I am so done with this. I'm sending it back.