LaCie 301156U 1 TB Ethernet Big Disk Network Attached Storage Hard Drive

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review




Don't Do It, November 29, 2008
By Omar Sultan (Elk Grove, CA USA)
Died within three months of light usage. Furthermore, customer service, while helpful, was slow and understaffed. I have had poor experience with LaCie in general--4 of the 5 drive I have bought in the last year have died--and I use G-Tech instead.



Frustrating product, November 24, 2008
By L. Jaszczak (williston, nd United States)
Slow. I can't use this as a 1TB drive because I can't transfer that quantity of data, it starts slow and slows with time. I purchased this to move a TB of data from one system to another. After a lot of time and hassle it simply did not work. When transfer dropped to below 1mbit, I gave up. I tried plugging into one switch, another switch, tried the USB port.
On the plus side the media server works at least nominally. I suppose this product would work ok with small nightly backups or light media server work.
A lot of people claim network bottlenecks but I finally spent more money for a Thecus 5200n. Excellent, great speed. Did in under a day what this thing failed to do in a week+.
Lot of frustration and waste of time for me. Almost converted to a doorstop. I'll try it as a media server at home I suppose.



NOT VISTA READY, October 24, 2008
By Dennis J. Christie (Burlington, WI United States)
At the time of writing this the 2 TB version does not play well with Vista. If you have XP and below you're fine. But Vista is another issue. Perhaps sometime soon they MAY decide to get with the program and do something about it, but as of 10-24-08 Vista compatibility is still only a pipe dream.



Junk. Class action waiting to happen., October 5, 2008
By J. Edgington (Florida, USA)
First, for everyone saying "it's cheap!": The Buffalo Linkstation Pro 1TB is exactly the same price and is much more highly rated.

Google this item and you'll find no end of stories about people losing data on this device. The PCB (circuit board inside this device) has a very high failure rate. Here were my problems BEFORE mine failed completely:

- No power switch! This is just silly. And the AC plug is very difficult to pull out and plug back in. This sounds like a minor gripe, but since this unit needs to be cold rebooted constantly, dealing with the plug gets to be VERY annoying quickly.
- The tiny fan is totally insufficient to cool the unit. This is probably part of the reason that they fail so often.
- The drives never spin down. This generates tons of heat (see above) and also reduces the drive lifetimes by a huge amount.
- Network file transfers are SLOW. The gigabit port doesn't mean much when it can't even approach 100 Mbit transfers.
- The media servers (iTunes and uPnP) are totally unreliable. They go offline frequently and for no reason, necessitating a reboot of the device since restarting them from the web interface doesn't help.
- The web interface is clunky and slow.
- The SMB authentication doesn't work correctly which means if you're running Vista you have to disconnect and re-map the network drive every time you reboot your PC.
- Etc., etc.

I regretted buying this thing immediately. I should have listened to my gut feeling, but I didn't, and 6 months later the PCB burned out and I was facing 800GB of lost data. Luckily I know my way around Linux and I was able to take the drives out, attach them to a PC, reassemble the software RAID array and get my data back since the drives were still OK. I can't imagine how I would have felt if I didn't know how to do that. The cost of data recovery by a lab for that amount of data would be very high.

Stay FAR AWAY from this box if you value your data.



Died after 9 months, September 23, 2008
By Manny (Redondo Beach, CA United States)
Do not buy this item if you value your data. Mine died after 9 months. Reliability is the most important feature of a NAS, and this fails in that regard. Now I've lost all the data I had stored on it, and I'm left debating whether or not I send it back for the replacement I'm entitled to. I'm hesitant to hand over a dead drive with all the data still on the hard drive plates (including backups of financial information). Although I can't get to it, it wouldn't be too difficult for someone with recovery tools (e.g., hard drive refurbishers/repair technicians) to get at it. I've asked to remove the drive before I send the unit back, but I doubt that'll be acceptable ( violates the return conditions).