Pros:

1. Small and fast (ethernet performance seems to be fine on my 802.11G network, but I will be testing it on gigabit network next week and will update)

2. No noise or too much heat!

3. Plug and play operation and an easy to use Web GUI

4. Great price!

Cons:

1. user manual!

Here is some more nuts and bolts on this product:

The setup CD that came with it is a little confusing. So here is how to set this up:

1. Connect the system to your Wireless/wired router, and power it on.

2. Use the included CD and run setup from one of the connected machines (no need to install on all the machines or no need to be connected by wire). Just set the IP address and name of the NAS BOX.

I set up a static IP address for this so that there are no issues of IP address changing over a period. (my wireless router’s DHCP server is setup such that it allocates 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.10 to any notebooks that use DHCP to connect to, and the rest for me to manually assign to devices such as my game box, blu-ray player, networked receiver and my wireless printer (and now this GigaNAS product).

The install program is only good for these 2 settings – IP address and the NAS box name. Quit this once you are done. (you can also change the admin password)

3. Open a browser from any connected system, and type “[...]. This opens up a login screen. From this point onwards, you can follow the manual for further instructions.

By default, it is set for Raid 1 (backup copy of disk 1 on disk 2) which is ok for most people. Since the average life of hard disks can be one or 2 years some times, it is good to have this data recoverable. If you want RAID0 (so that you get to use 2TB fully, but without backup), you can set this up on the web GUI screens.

4. Create as many shares as you want, though for most users, it is good to have one guest/public share which is used for all the music/video/picture files shared within the house and other accounts for private files that you don’t want to share.

5. Now, from “My computer –> My network places” you will see this NAS (default name: Giganas). You can open this, right click, and map network drive option to permanently make it as a drive on your system (for e.g. as z: drive) you will be prompted for user name and password for accessing this share – when you do that, remember to check the box for “remember this and reconnect at logon” option.

6. “My computer” should show this share as a drive and you can use it normally like a local drive now.

Update: 9/12/2009: If I can go back and reduce the rating, I will only give it a 3 stars (even that because of the good sale price I paid for it in Amazon). The troubles I am facing now are this:

1. Seems to get disconnected after a couple of days, and once it is disconnected, I have no way of shutting it down except pulling the plug out – that scares me since the hard disk light comes on and off.

2. Firmware upgrade – I did one, but to do that, the documentation says, I need to take the hard disk out. Why?? Just take the disks off line and shut the NAS access and it should be able to do firmware upgrade? And the most interesting thing is this: to disconnect hard disks, I have to open the box and there is a sticker on the screw that says,”warranty void if seal is broken”. How am I supposed to do a firmware if I cannot open the box? Looks like Cavalry storage have thought everything nicely and contradicting themselves in every possible way!

3. Some of the files I copied have become read-only for some reason, and I am not able to reset their permissions from any of the Windows systems I am using to connect to it. This is a basic flaw in the system.

2 stars is all I should have given for this!

Rating: 5 / 5

It comes with two Western Digital 1TB drives pre-formatted with RAID 1 set up where one drive mirrors the other. That effectively gives me 1 TB of storage and automatic backup. In the off chance one of the drives fails I should be able to recover my data without too much hassle.

So I have no complaints. It’s nice to purchase a product that does what it’s supposed to do without the usual three hours of cussin’ to get it to work.

My only qualm, though, is the user manual that was obviously written by someone with a poor grasp of the English language. Last time I checked, proper English was still in use in Southern California where Calvary are based. Admittedly it makes you wonder–what would otherwise be a really slick device is somehow marred by the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to proof read their copy.
Rating: 5 / 5

Actually, it’s 500MB usable storage, as the two 500MB drives are mirrored by default – this isn’t mentioned in the product info online, but it’s unfortunately a standard misinformation that most vendors are engaged in. To use the full 1 TB you need to reformat the drive as raid 0.

The drive has a tendency to hold file locks on files that are being updated on the drive when some sort of “event” – such as network or computer shutdowns occurring during file transfers to the device. The locks go away after a time, but it takes awhile. A re-boot is sometimes necessary.

Finally, while testing transfer of large image files, 45 Gigabyte, on my Gigabit Ethernet switch, the device drops network connections. This did not happen on my 10/100 ethernet switch. My guess is the system gets overloaded on the higher gigabit network speeds. The fix for me was to use FTP instead of windows explorer to copy files to the drive. Filezilla (open source FTP tool) will automatically reconnect and resume file transfers.

The web browser admin tool is minimal, but serviceable.

If your setup doesn’t allow for choosing FTP to transfer large files to and from this device, you probably won’t find this a good choice. If you’re looking for high performance, this isn’t a good choice either.

Rating: 2 / 5

Very disappointing.
Rating: 1 / 5

I had my old Disk Mini unit sitting in a cabinet with my cable modem and router and it worked out fine. When I put the 1TB D2 in the same cabinet and did my first backup the unit over heated and shut itself down (I must say it was nice to receive the e-mail from the unit when it over heated — a great feature) Since then I’ve had to move the unit outside of the cabinet and it has not overheated. Another advance in the D2 (over the Mini) is that you can remotely shut it down and start it up. The start-up function is nicely controlled from the desktop icon (in both mac and pc) however to shut it down you have to go to the unit’s web page, click through several pages and then press a button — but hey, they added the feature!

Over all the 1TB D2 seems good I use it to back-up a windows vista laptop as well as a os x leopard laptop. However we will see if this circuit board will fry after 3 years of use.
Rating: 4 / 5