Comments for NAS Drives

Comment on Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 by AP

AP — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:49:31 +0000

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

Terrific, fast, very quiet, February 12, 2011

AP -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 (Personal Computers)

I purchased four of these to replace four 500gb SATA 2 drives by the same manufacturer in a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ machine. While I cannot attest to the new SATA 3 (6 gb/sec) speeds (the ReadyNAS is SATA 2), the new firmware from Netgear required me to do a factory reset on the device, and upon boot it recognized the new 4k format being used by this drive. After the drives were striped and the volume redundant, I was able to copy about a terabyte of data off my local machine in about 12 hours (with breaks in between).

The new drives run cooler than the old 500's, are amazingly quiet, and fast-- so far I'm quite impressed with their performance (especially with the 64mb cache). While I haven't seen their long-term viability yet, I'm pleasantly surprised by how well they work.

Bjorn3d has a good review of the drive here:

[...]

Recommended.

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Comment on Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 by Mark James

Mark James — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:47:14 +0000

77 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

Caution on Seagate drives lifespan, September 18, 2011

Mark James -

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 (Personal Computers)

I have bought/sold Seagate drives for 25 years. I have recommended Seagate for most of those years. I am in the storage business and have a lot of direct experience with drives.

The problem I am discovering is a greatly reduced reliability in Seagate 1.5 and 2TB disks. I currently have about a dozen 2TB Seagates in active use. 7 of them are beginning to fail, in under 4,000 hours of use. These are disks which were burned in by certifying them for about 3 days with an intensive read/write pattern, to eliminate early failure disks. In the general disk population, I have also seen a high failure rate. This is unacceptable.

Google performed a study using over 100,000 disks a few years back. Google found statistical differences in failure rates between manufacturers, that they did not publish. They also noted that "enterprise" drives did not result in longer lifespans. They found NO correlation between heavy duty or light duty use in failure. What Google did report was that a handful of SMART parameters could be used to predict drives that would soon fail. Among these are reallocated sectors. Once a drive begins reallocating, they generally fail within 6 months or less. There are SMART utilities which are starting to implement this knowledge and alerting users to predicted failures.

For a long time, Seagate was the premium brand of hard drives, along with Hitachi. They may still be. However, this failure rate on the 1.5 and 2TB drives, in addition to the major firmware flaw on the 1.5TB drives (Many customers lost data on the 1.5TB drives, where drives suddenly failed from a firmware flaw), makes me very cautious on Seagate now.

I am recommending Hitachi for now, they will cost a little more, but until more data is in, be alert if Seagates are installed and perhaps avoid them in servers and mission critical installations. I have no data yet on the 3TB drives.

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Comment on Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 by ShopperGuy1234 "ShopperGuy1234"

ShopperGuy1234 "ShopperGuy1234" — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:00:28 +0000

78 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

Great Drive, Great Performance, But......Watch out......, March 26, 2011

ShopperGuy1234 "ShopperGuy1234" (Virginia Beach, VA) -

This review is from: Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST2000DL003 (Personal Computers)

In my server, I have 6 2TB drives installed, in 3 sets of RAID 1 configuration. I wanted to replace 2 of the old drives with these ones.
I purchased and installed and immediately noticed that on Power ON, it would take few seconds for my Server to reach POST screen, which is surprising. I have 850W power supply, and 2 video cards, but still have plenty of spare power capacity left.
So I disconnected these 2 new drives, and guess what, system immediately comes to POST on power up.
I did some research and found that this model drives draws more power on start up. Once started, they behave nicely, just the initial power ON current draw is higher than other drives. Long story short, I swapped the drives from my NAS enclosure to my server and installed these 2 drives in my NAS.

PROS:
1) whopping 64MB cache....!!!!
2) Fast SATA 6Gb/s interface
3) Sustained high data transfer rate, (recreating RAID was much faster on these drives)
4) Light weight since it has only 3 platters
5) Runs cool, even with sustained data in/out operation
6) Quiet, even when transferring, reading/writing data
7) Cheap

CONS:
1) Higher start-up current draw
2) 4K sector size, which may or may not be a problem for you, depending on your application, OS etc.
3) Only 3 year warranty

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Comment on Synology DiskStation 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS110j (White) by InfectedAirsoft

InfectedAirsoft — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 09:57:05 +0000

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Great, but make sure to update firmware, November 23, 2010

InfectedAirsoft -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

Recently picked this up as I needed a place to store backups for my pc's. I also liked the fact that it would interface with my PS3 (Playstation 3) and act as a media server. What I didn't know is that it comes with an older version of the firmware on it. Once updated to the newest firmware the interface improved a lot, and features were added, such as the ability to stream pictures and music to Android devices. That was a huge plus to me.

I will say that while the installation is pretty easy for the experienced, the instructions it comes with are pretty bare bones. It does come with an install disc (which you must use initially to set it up), but even then you're guessing what you need to install from that disc.

Overall, I really like it, and had it been in the budget I would have purchased the 2 bay version which has a faster processor in it.

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Comment on Synology DiskStation 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS110j (White) by J. Hicks

J. Hicks — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 09:43:16 +0000

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Just what I needed, July 19, 2010

J. Hicks (Queensbury NY, United States) -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

I was looking for a NAS/Media server, and this turned out to be the best solution overall. I tried a Hackintosh first, and that was fine, but a bit of overkill, and I I wanted minimal power draw so that I would feel OK about leaving it on all the time.

Set up is very easy. The Synology Assistant helped with drive formatting (ext2 I think) and getting your administration account going. It took a bit for me to implement all the settings I wanted, but they are very clearly explained in the management screen, and easily changed. The interface is browser based and accessible from all modern browsers regardless of platform. I access it a lot from my iPad.

So what can it do? I use it primarily as a media server. It has worked extremely well in this regard. It has UPnP which is picked up by the PS3, Xbox360, and the WDTVLive as just another media server. Streaming is fine without stutter (on a wired network). It has an itunes server, which I use for a large library of Apple Lossless files. This can be served to iTunes (obviously) but Synology has a nifty iPhone/iPad app that will pick up the library as well and transcode just fine. The Audio Station web interface however will only play mp3's, so it isn't as practical to stream to another computer in the absence of iTunes.

The file manager software is easy to set up with a Public folder if you want to share stuff with friends. It is equally easy to set up a photo gallery and slideshow.

The Download Station bittorrent client is fantastic. Seems fast, and can be set to stop seeding automagically. The great thing about it is that you can either browse to the torrent from the client to the .torrent on your pc, or if you are remote, or on a smartphone or iPad, just paste the file into the client. No need to be at your home pc.

Lastly, I use it as remote storage. On a Mac it will appear as a share point, and can mount on your desktop as a volume, which makes it nice to drag and drop files. I've had no trouble at all with read/write permissiony things. I use it as a tertiary back up for movies, photos, and docs. I don't use it as a Time Machine disk.

It's very quiet. Once in a while you can hear the hard drive spin up, but that's about it.

The Synology forums are great. I haven't had to deal with the company yet.

Just a lovely product, very well thought out, relatively easy to use, though with a lot of settings for experts if desired. Great interface, platform independent, quiet. I can't think of any particular downside to the unit as it has done everything I wanted from it.

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Comment on Synology DiskStation 1-Bay (Diskless) Network Attached Storage DS110j (White) by dabbuman

dabbuman — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 08:45:16 +0000

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

Extremely Satisfied, Great Support from User Community, May 11, 2010

dabbuman -

I convinced myself I needed a NAS to centralize the family's exponential growth of media files if nothing else and also the need to keep backups of home computers. At first I thought I would go what I call the "Apple" route - try to find a device that is idiot proof,provides a great UI, and set it up without having to go into details about NASes. The nearest counterpart would have been the HP MediaSmart line. In fact I actually purchased the HP LX195. Indeed setup etc was great. But very soon, I realized that there was very little customer support, and figuring out how to access the server from online with a VOIP also installed at my home was going to be a pain. Plus everytime it ran the daily backup, the HP would freeze up my home computers (all of which have state of the art processors and 4gb of RAM)

So I dumped it and decided to get the Synology DS110j. Installing the hard drive was quite painless (no tools needed). The setup process was also quite easy.

The UI is much more bare-bones but it is actually very user friendly in the following sense - There is a wizard that guides you through the basic installation process so that your computer and the NAS device see each other. After that you are kind of on your own- in terms of user accounts, backup choices, etc. At the same time for everything that you would like to do, the options are presented in very simple English and the Help tool on the right bar of the menu system is actually helpful. Everything is reduced to a few sentences and the choices that you need to make are quite clear cut.

Finally, i realized I had the same problem as I had with the LX195- how to access the server when you also have a VOIP connection at home (that sits between your cable modem and your router). And here was the difference - with Synology there is a huge community in its support forum who are more than happy to help. As a result what was a hurdle with both Synology and HP MediaSmart was actually easier to cross with the former.

So now some of the Pros and Cons

Other Pros:
- Supports immediate sync (ie it can monitor your home PC/laptops folders and can backup files instantaneously when the file changes)
- Logitech Squeezebox support.
- very active facebook page! (they are really into keeping their customers updated)
- fast!

Cons
- For some reason my unit is quite noisy. I have a Samsung 1TB inside. I am not sure whats going on since other users seem to indicate it is not noisy. Anyways, I locked up mine in a closet so I dont hear the noise.

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Comment on Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:44:54 +0000

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

Storage solutions -A Mac perspective, November 25, 2010

G. Ware Cornell Jr. "anotherlawyer" (Weston FL) -

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive (Personal Computers)

Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices mimic file servers on a network. However instead of a big computer, the NAS is roughly the size of a trade paperback. They are preferable to portable hard drives because multiple computers can access and save to them.

This WD device is easy to set up, and you can be registered, configured, and otherwise up and running in just a few minutes. I gave my assistant partial access to the drive, and password protected the rest. I also downloaded all the photos from my MacBook Pro onto it, which allowed me to use a free app for my iPhone and iPad to remotely access all of my pictures. Since those files are substantially more than carry around on either the phone or pad, this is a space savings bonanza.

The drive also works with Time Machine, a Leopard and Snow Leopard application that protects your Mac's data. Because I already have a Apple Time Capsule MC343LL/A 1TB Sim DualBand, it is a feature I am not using (Time Machine) only automatically synchs to one source).

The price is right and this NAS will not disappoint.

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Comment on Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 21:11:01 +0000

85 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

Reliable and fast, November 16, 2010

Richard C. Drew "Anaal Nathra/Uthe vas Bethod... (Oak Lawn, IL USA) -

This review is from: Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive (Personal Computers)

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

These devices are one of the "must-haves" for the modern home entertainment center or home networks. They can perform multiple tasks - from backups to media streaming. If you have a network, and just want a common place to store files, this will do it. Need a streaming media server for your new TV or networked media player? Ditto. Automatic network backup? Check.

I'm using it for storing photos and videos. Since digital photos are only virtual (no more negatives for safety!), backups are a must. I keep several backups, as photography is a hobby and a job. I also have media streaming devices hooked up to my TV's, and they can play video, audio and show photos from the web and attached network devices. This device shows up on the list of network devices, and it's a few clicks to navigate to the media desired. Streaming works perfectly.

Everything you need is in the box. A short networking cable, power supply, the network drive and installation CD. Installation is easy and straight forward. Attach the power and network cables, sit down at your PC, drop in the install CD, and follow the steps. You can't just plug in and go - you need to run the install CD. This is not just a drive - it's also a mini file server. You need to set up permissions and user accounts.

The first thing the installer did was check for an update. One was available, so I let it install it. This took about 25 minutes. This step can be skipped, but it's always a good idea to install updates. After that was completed I created a couple of user accounts - quick and easy. You can create private storage accounts, public, and pick who has access to what accounts. So little Billy can't see his sister's stuff, or each employee can have a private and public storage area. Really handy and well executed.

Also included is backup software - PC, Mac and automatic network. I did not install the software. I've used it in the past, and prefer manual backups.

Case: If you know WD products, you'll notice that they all have the same look. Their media streamer looks like a miniature version of this unit. It's identical to their external drives.

The user interface is browser based, so is accessible to anyone on the network with admin access.

I've been using it for a couple of weeks now, and have not encountered any issues. Only one caveat - when the drive arrives, you have 900 gig of storage. It may be a one TB drive, but only 900 gig is available.

Warnings:

1) When you setup the drive, make a note of the IP address. The instructions for accessing via the network in "My Computer" in the manual don't work in Windows 7. You need to use the browser and enter the IP address. The shortcut also works differently in different OS. Windows 7 - double clicking on the icon opens the shared folder. On XP it opens the dashboard / control panel for the mybook.

2) The only interface is the network port. Don't expect to attach anything to the device except the network cable and power.

Comments: The interface, although web based, is a little clunky. For the price, you can't go wrong - great bang for the buck.

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Comment on Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:50:50 +0000

Comment on Western Digital My Book Live 1 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive by G. Ware Cornell Jr. "anotherlawyer"

G. Ware Cornell Jr. "anotherlawyer" — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:58:20 +0000

The manufacturer commented on this review(What's this?)

Posted on Nov 7, 2010 11:27:27 AM PST

Tony Andrews "WD Branded Products... says:

Hello Thomas -

Glad to hear you are enjoying your new My Book Live as a companion for your Sonos system.

For remote access, you can actually set up a free Mionet account that lets you access your My Book Live from any Web browser.

To set up the account, simply type "MybookLive" into your browser and you will open up the Dashboard for the device. Within the Dashboard, select Settings / Remote Access / Mionet and click on "Create new account" to set up a free username and password. This free Mionet account will then let you access the contents of your drive from any Internet Connected PC or Mac.

Simply go to Mionet.com, type in your user name and password and you can access . You can also share specific folders or the entire drive secure. If you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android phone, you can also access all your photos in a cool viewer app (also for free) called WD Photos.

The PC application that you discovered on mionet.com lets you access your PC as well as the drive, but that does involve an annual fee. Thanks for your feedback. We will try to make this clearer so other users will not be confused about how to use our free remote access service.

WD Branded Products Team