5 reviews

LaCie 5big Network

$800.00 Released October, 2008

The Pros:Extremely affordable raid6 product with 5 drive bays. Supports 1.5tb and 2tb SATA drives. Can read from FAT, FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, EXT2, EXT3, REISERFS and XFS formatted drives. Unclear if it is REISERFS3 or REISERS4 that is supported. Unclear if EXT4 will be supported in the future.

The Cons:Not available as a shell, you need to buy the unit with hard drives. The drives LaCie puts in here are definitely not what a knowledgeable person would use. (cheap hitachi's provided at premium cost). Does not support the (extremely excellent for network storage) ZFS file system :(. Customer service/support from LaCie is usually regarded as terrible.

The LaCie 5big Network is a five-bay networked storage device, designed for small to medium offices with large storage space requirements. Available in capacities ranging from 2.5 to 10 TB, the 5big Network represents the most networked storage space offered by LaCie.

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Ethernet technology enables all users on a network to back up data and share files. The unit supports seven RAID modes, up to RAID 6, most of which enable hot-swapping for uninterrupted data access. A USB port and 3 eSATA ports allow expanded storage and additional backup. For home use, movies and music stored on the device can be streamed to UPnP devices, including game consoles, and large downloads can continue while a computer is turned off thanks to an integrated torrent server. Other features include Active Directory Support and Wake-on-LAN, which enables remote power-on and power-off. The 5big Network is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux, and works with Time Machine on Mac OS X Leopard.

Features

RAID NAS
Five disks
Ethernet 10/100/1000
2.5, 5, 7.5, or 10 TB
7 RAID modes
Hot-swapping
Active Directory Support
Wake-on-LAN
Media streaming
Integrated torrent server
USB port
3 eSATA ports
Windows, Mac, and Linux compatibility
Time Machine compatibility

User Reviews (8)

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ProScore

Pros

2

extremely affordable raid6 product with 5 drive bays.
2

supports 1.5tb and 2tb SATA drives
2

can read from FAT, FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, EXT2, EXT3, REISERFS and XFS formatted drives. Unclear if it is REISERFS3 or REISERS4 that is supported. Unclear if EXT4 will be supported in the future.
2

Most user forums agree that when a drive fails in RAID5, RAID5+, and/or RAID6 that the unit is able to seamlessly recover data and rebuild if a replacement drive is inserted.
1

Has three eSATA posts and one USB expansion port for plugging in additional drives.

Cons

1

not available as a shell, you need to buy the unit with hard drives. The drives LaCie puts in here are definitely not what a knowledgeable person would use. (cheap hitachi's provided at premium cost)
1

does not support the (extremely excellent for network storage) ZFS file system :(
1

Customer service/support from LaCie is usually regarded as terrible.
1

No visible online 'hacking' community to develop and share applications or plugins to enhance this hardware. [as opposed to the very rich hack community with other NAS products such as the D-Link DNS-323]
0

spare drives / drive trays are available, at an exorbitant price, and only as a drive/tray combo, not tray alone.
0

insufficient ram: only 128mb ram with 4mb flash memory. way way low for for a product in this price category; especially with as cheap as ram is these days.
0

CPU is a Marvell 88F5182 "Orion" processor (@ 500 MHz). a 900-1.1ghz processor would have been more suitable; 500mhz is easily bogged down when making parity calculations (RAID5 and RAID6) leading to this product sometimes crashing if it 'is driven too hard.'
0

Huge negative: no support for UPS connection via USB -- if the power fails, you NAS crashes. Not sure how anyone could have missed such a glaring oversight.
0

No clear instructions on how you would go about upgrading hard drives to larger capacity units. No mention if volume expansion is supported.
0

No media player extensibility; which is especially odd when considering that this product is marketed toward *home* and small business. Should work fine with a Popcorn Hour media server nonetheless.
0

VERY SLOW transfer rates of only 10-12MB/sec.