LaCie 5big Network Five-bay RAID with 7.5TB of storage
Filed under: Computers, Storage | By: Peter Chubb
Posted on: October 13, 2008 | 1 Comment
When it comes to hard drives one of the top brands has to be LaCie, that is because they perform well as well as look stylish. That is something that you do not normally find with a storage device. The LaCie 5big Network is a new hard drive, which has a storage capacity from 2.5TB up to 7.5TB.
The one that we want to let you know about today is the LaCie 5big Network Five-bay RAID with 7.5TB of storage. The storage device has an Active Directory; the gigabit Ethernet-friendly drive supports many RAID configurations for up to five hot-swappable hard drives.
The 7.5TB offers you more than enough storage for most people’s and businesses needs; however you will need some deep pockets. The LaCie 5big Network Five-bay RAID with 7.5TB of storage will cost $1,899, for that though you do get a storage device that has some design features of the HAL 9000.
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I have recently purchased a LaCie 5big 5TB and my happiness is very limited.
It looks nice, it works but I have experienced some strange behaviours with the product. I’m using a MacBook Pro 15” (latest version) with a wireless communication over my network and a Mac Mini which is wired to my network (Ethernet). Both Macs run Mac OS X 10.5.6 (all updates done).
1. When receiving the box there was no installation CD in the package.
Fine, I can live with that and before using it I downloaded the latest patches and software updates and applied them to the unit. I chose to format the 5big in RAID 5 + spare.
2. When connecting via FTP to the 5big there is a strange mixup. Assume I have 2 folders A and B. When browsing to see the content of folder A, I see the content of folder B.
I’ve tried with 2 FTP clients (Cyberduck and Transmit). Both FTP clients give the same result.
3. There is a utility called LaCie Network Assistant. When running this software both Macs produce Kernel Panics when resuming from sleep.
I’ve contacted LaCie support in Belgium on points 2 and 3. What can I say…the helpdesk wasn’t very helpful….their advice was limited to “reformat the NAS”, “reset the NAS”, “apply the latest patches”, “try it on another network”. Great.
Nobody took into account the fact that when NOT running LaCie Network Assistant, I could put the computer to sleep without having a Kernel Panic on wake.
After that you’re on your own, literally. So as a rule of thumb I’d suggest NOT to run LaCie Network Assistant. I had set it to open at login and the application just quit after opening like 3 times out of 4.
4. AFP communication broke down, but that’s a “known issue” and I can’t judge if this is LaCie’s fault or a poor implementation by Apple Inc. But the steps mentioned here (http://www.burchwords.com/archives/99) can give you AFP back.
A consumer product of more than 1.000 EUR should be of better quality IMHO.
I can only hope that LaCie will push out updates for this thing.
R.