I have a self powered LaCie 160gb 2.5" mobile drive. I've had it for a couple of years now, i use it to backup my systems, its performance is good and it runs quiet.
Hey thunderz; LaCie make good products: you pay a premium for "design" features, and some extras ie EMC utilities and connection options: nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Internal HD hw was toshiba last time I looked. ( mine anyway) I have 2 of the older smaller 40 g units and never had an issue. Nice little 'mini racks' Not sure if you can raid them but might work well with Free NAS. The only other issue is the enclosed boxes: ie if it breaks it cannot easily be rejigged = disposable. If you want desktop: There are some great (external power) NAS options. I have one of these: http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus/RND4425.aspx Other options available re HD Bay numbers and HD sizes. Very nice indeed. If you want enclosed portability: LaCie are nice.
Thanks all. Seems I had heard of them before but could not remember what it was I had heard. @ Longboard. Funny you should mention FreeNAS. Just discovered it the other night in my quest for NAS. Through my Friends at the local Tech. shop I have access to almost any number of "older" PCs`. They take them\have them brought in for proper disposal. I have first request after they wipe the hdds. They are generally sub-GHz processors with 256 MB of RAM or less and comparatively small hdds. But from what I have read about FreeNAS they should be perfect as a headless unit to serve as storage on our LAN instead of the current shared drive on my tower. A question, does\can FreeNAS support printer server duties? My tower carries that duty as well.
Lacie mounts toshiba and samsung hard disks in their enclosures. I own 2 of them (160gb and 250gb) and they work great. Western digital and Toshiba are also good choices for mobile 2.5' drives. Panagiotis
External Lacie's are known for going faulty sooner rather than later. The IDE to USB converters in them were regularly known to go faulty but not the hard drive. I found this out after my own Lacie 4 months from new packed up but the hard drive was gone. The drive was a Seagate inside which was a good drive. I don't have much confidence in Lacie after that and further research suggested a widespread problem with brand new Lacie's going down more than any other brands. I will pick another brand next time. If you look up any product you will find bad but the net is full of Lacie haters and there questionable reliability shortly after buying. Sometimes it hard to buy anything else as stockists just have Lacie in the size you want.
Think not That was a bit of a teaser re Free NAS sorry. It (Free NAS) is still a work in progress There is this if you want to go on with it: http://www.howtoforge.com/network_attached_storage_with_freenas
Thank you for the link Longboard. Have some time on my hands so I will press forward.......as soon as my friends come up with an old tower for me.
I have had the Lacie Brick 500GB for over two years with no problems, I paid a little more than a normal external HD but I am very satisfied with its perfomance and design, I think in Lacie you pay a bit extra for the design, which is usually cool and makes the HD stand out from the crowd.
