

Front

Rear Click to enlarge



Web Interface - Status

Web Interface - Disks Click to enlarge

Simple interface



Decent performance



Quiet



No RAID/Data protection



No Redundant Power or NIC



No SMB features like DHCP Server, Print Server, AD integration, Alerts, etc.



The LaCie Ethernet Disk 1TB is a different type of NAS product. It is targeted at SMB/SOHO as a secondary storage device for holding backups and sharing temporary data. It is power by an 800Mhz VIA C3 processor running Windows XP Embedded, 256MB RAM, four USB 2.0 ports, one VGA port, two PS/2 ports, and one 10/100/1000 Network port. All drives are internal to the unit which cannot be opened. Features include FTP and HTTP accessible shares, onboard firewall, and backup scheduler. Client support includes Windows, Linux, Mac, and UNIX up to 25 users. Protocol support includes CIFS/SMB, AppleTalk/AFP, FTP, and HTTP.Additional research revealed that there are four 250GB IDE hard drives configured using Windows Dynamic Volume in a span of all four drives. This gives you roughly 930GB of usable space, but with. Additional storage space can be added through the USB 2.0 ports in the back of the unit.Some of you may be wondering why we included it in this NAS review. Technically speaking it is a NAS device; it just doesn't have any redundancy built into. From a backup perspective, it will work just fine, providing you use it as a secondary storage device. It gives you with a lot of space, performs fairly well, and fits nicely in a rack. There really are a lot of scenarios you can use it in, but it would have been nice if we had the option to reconfigure the drives into a RAID 1 or RAID 5 since Dynamic Volumes supports this via software.The unit is closed in a standard 19" 1U chassis with front mounting brackets only. Dimensions measure 430mm (W) x 45mm (H) x 430mm (D), and it weighs 9.3Kg. The front includes an illuminated power button as well as two LEDs indicating current disk/network activity. The rear includes connections for the power supply, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, video, serial, four USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit networking. It also has what looks like audio jacks, but we were unable to verify their function.The management interface for the LaCie is primarily web based, with most of the supported features and options available through a browser. However, LaCie also included the ability to use Remote Desktop to log into the unit and run additional tasks such as backup and restore, firewall configuration, and additional diagnostics.