Compass Rose

I recently purchase a LaCie Ethernet Mini Disk from the local Mac Store.  I had heard that LaCie was the best external Mac hard drive company.  Period.  My experiences were less than stellar with the company and the product although I totally love the drive.

 

The goals for buying this drive were:

1. Provide additional storage for the newly acquired Mac Mini.  It came with an 80 gig drive.  The max I could get OTC was a 120 gig drive (you can have one custom built by apple with a 160 gig drive but it just about doubles the price of the Mac for a mere additional 80 gigs.  Um.. no thank you)  I’ve read articles about opening up the mini and installing a 500 gig drive inside but I just don’t feel like voiding my warranty quite yet. 
2. Provide additional storage for the Linux laptop and desktop computers on the network.
3. Provide additional storage for the Windows desktops and laptop on the network.
4. Provide a single point of storage for items like photos, videos and mp3 files that *all* the computers can get to.
5. Provide a backup solution for the local machines.  Especially the new Mac as I’ve heard that Time Machine just rocks and I wanted to try it.
6. Whatever the solution was, it needed to be the fastest possible solution on the market. 

After looking at the various options for external hard drives for the Mac, I decided that USB 2.0 (480 mbps) and FireWire (400 mbps) were just too slow.  The LaCie has a Gigabit Ethernet port and should be able to run close to 1000 mbps on a gigE switch.

FireWire and USB also have the disadvantage of not being able to be accessed by more than one computer easily.  Yes, I could mount the drives locally and share them on the network through the Mac but that seems like a bottleneck at the Mac.

I looked at the Time Capsule from Apple and it just seemed unnecessary at $300 for for the same amount of storage.

If you don’t have a wireless network set up already, I would definitely suggest the Time Capsule over the LaCie drive just for the fact that you have one company (Apple) to deal with about problems.  The cost will be about $50 over buying a network drive and a wireless 802.11n router separately but that $50 will be paid back in spades by the amount of your life you get back not having to deal with multiple tech support companies.

Before purchasing the drive, I interrogated the local Mac Store for information and read everything I could on the web site for Apple and for LaCie.  THE MAC STORE, APPLE’S WEB SITE AND LaCie LED ME TO BELIEVE THAT THIS DEVICE WOULD DO WHAT I WANTED IT TO.  I was misled.

The LaCie ships with configuration software for both Windows and Mac.  Linux, you have to download off the web site.  Or, you have to know that by default, when you turn the device on, it inherits the DEFAULT IP Address 10.208.75.100.  NOTE: This IP address is mentioned nowhere on the web site or in the manual.  Oh… what’s even better, is that IP address only works if you connect to the LaCie drive over USB.  That’s right, even via USB, it still is a network drive and you have to load the Ethernet over USB drivers from the LaCie configuration disk.  NOTE:  If you’re using Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, than this won’t even work and you better pray that the configuration software finds it.

The configuration software never worked on the PC for me.  It attempts to connect to that IP address without saying anything about it or making sure that the local IP address is on the right subnet.  The Mac software worked but only if you select “advanced” and manually configure the drive.  The “wizard” would tell me it configured the drive but couldn’t then find the drive.

By default, the drive should use DHCP to acquire an IP address.  IF you know how, you can look in your router for the DHCP address given out.  If you don’t know how, or if you’re not using DHCP on your network, you’re screwed.

Try This ->

If you have a PC and are having problems with configuring this drive over the network, unplug your system from the network, install the USB->Ethernet drivers, plug the LaCie drive into the USB port of your computer and point a browser at 10.208.75.100.  Then log in to the drive and configure the TCP/IP for your network and reboot, put the LaCie drive (and your computer) back on the network, etc.

Additional Problems:

Time Machine *DOES NOT* work with this drive.  Nowhere on LaCie’s web site does it state this.  However, they will tell you when you call tech support that they can’t help you with it because it’s an Apple product.  Apple will tell you the exact same thing when you call their tech support.  After pressuring the tech support person, he stated that this drive will not, cannot and is not intended to work with the Mac and Time Machine.  The reason?  Network drives are not mountable on the Mac and time machine requires the drive to be mounted.  Also, the LaCie drive is truly just a shared storage device run by small processor running Linux.  The Linux box controls the drive formatting and the partitions.  Time Machine needs to be able to partition and reformat the drive into it’s own format before it can be used for backups.  DARN! 

Solution for the problem:  After getting off the phone with tech support at LaCie, I found on their web site Mac and Windows versions of their backup utility “LaCie 1-Click Backup Software”.  It’s not Time Machine but it appears to work quite well on the Mac.  I’ll try the PC version sometime later.  Why didn’t the tech support guy tell me about it?  I don’t think he knew.  I didn’t get the feeling that he was overly knowledgeable about computers in general or the general offerings of the company.  NOT GOOD!

Next Problem:  In the PDF version of  the LaCie manual for the drive, (on page 35) it shows that you can enable Bonjour for shares individually on the configuration screens.  My drive doesn’t have this option.  When I asked the tech support person about it, he said that I didn’t need it and I could mount the drives manually on the PC and the Mac.  I said…. B**L-S**T, I want to use this drive as a media server and the box, the web site, all the product info says the drive can be used this way, etc.  He stated that the screen shot in the manual was from an earlier version of the drive.  Hmmm.. I have version 1.0.0 of the firmware.  Was there a Beta version that shipped?  I don’t think so.  I think Bonjour is too new and LaCie has no clue what it is or how to deal with it but decided that it would look good on the retail packaging and in the documentation.  My reasoning for this thinking? read on..

If you go to the “media” configuration page and enable the “media server” then you can get limited control over some minimal Bonjour functionality.  Maybe “minimal” isn’t an accurate description because what it does offer you is very useful, but it by no means is full implementation of the protocol or anywhere near what the manual, the packaging or Apple’s web site states Bonjour can do.

A tip when configuring the unit:  If you have both PCs and Macs that are going to access the drive and are running OS X on the Mac then disable the AFP on the shares on the LaCie.  If you don’t, the Mac will see both the Windows and Mac versions of the share and it will show up multiple times in the finder.  Also, be sure that your username and password for the shares on the LaCie match your Windows username and password otherwise you’ll have to enter it every time you access the drive.  Mac remembers the username and password much better that the PC does.

Also, forget about the “LaCie Ethernet Agent” for Mac or PC.  It’s supposed to go along side Bonjour (It installs Bonjour for the PC before it installs) and give you one click access to your network shares.  It doesn’t.  It installs and never finds any drives….*EVER*.  Again, I brought this up to the tech support person.  He just put me on hold and ignored the question when he came back.  I’m pretty sure he was having a bad day.  Maybe before I got on the phone with him. Definitely after.  I’ve done tech support before.  I have sympathy for tech support personnel.  It’s not his problem really, it’s a fault with LaCie for not properly training their people.

So, I have to mention why I called tech support in the first place.  Well, having compiled a list of questions or issues about the operation of the drive, I contacted tech support via the web site and opened a tech support ticket stating my questions.  Within 24 hours I received this response:

There is a software reset of the update I would like you to try, that should not have any impact on the data contained in the drive.

- From the administrative control panels, go to the configuration page.
- From this page, in the software section, go to the update page (i.e click on the blue button).
- From the update page, click on the blue button that is on the line “Update logs”
- From this last page, click on the link named “Remove all the updates” (bottom right)

Power cycle the device. After it finishes booting, your device should have been configured back to its factory default settings.

If you had shares on the device, you need to recreate the exact same shares once into the Administrative panel. The Ethernet Disk will detect that the created share corresponds to an already existing folder and then will associate the both components.

This procedure typically rolls back the update too. Be sure to obtain the latest one from here, if that’s the case:

http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10105

Per Apple, Time Machine has to have a network drive mounted before it can be used. There is no workaround for this. Generally speaking, our technical support department will not have answers regarding Time Machine, as it is Mac software, I apologize. Information about when it is capable, and how it can be done, would have to come from Apple.

I was impressed that I had gotten a response and that it had definite action items.  I wish I would have thought about it a bit before continuing on.  I performed the requested tasks and responded with:

What is this supposed to do? Is it supposed to fix a specific problem or just reset the NAS?

I did this and now the NAS cannot be found on the network.  I appear to have an expensive brick.

This led me to an hour and a half of messing with the unit trying to get it back on line.  After that I thought… DAMN, the manual was wrong, the packaging is misleading, it doesn’t do what they told me it would do when I bought it and now the tech support person told me to do something that bricked my drive when all I did was ask questions about how to make it function like it’s supposed to.

So, I called them….  I was kinda pissed.  I had 20 minutes of being on hold to calm me down though.  That’s always nice.   It worked too.  Maybe it was the two beers I drank while on hold.  I am positive that tech support calls and alcohol need to go together.

After waiting on hold, I spent another hour and a half on the phone getting the information I needed to make it work back on the network.  As I stated above about the secret IP address, there were numerous items of secretive information that I would have rather read in a support document than having to have someone walk me through it on the phone.

Here’s another tidbit:  Performing a hard reset of the device.  (no, this does not format the unit and all your shares can be recreated intact by creating new shares with the EXACT same names.)  Unplug the power cord from the unit.  When you plug it back in, wait until it boots completely (the blue light stops blinking), then hold and depress the blue button on the front until it powers the unit down (approximately 5 seconds).  Press the blue button again to turn it back on, this time, when the blue light on the front of the unit starts to blink, depress it and hold it until it blinks a different rhythm and then let go of it.  The unit will power cycle itself and when it comes back up, it’s been hard reset.

One more thing, once you do get the Media server configured, copy all your photos, mp3s and videos onto a share on the drive and tell the media server to scan that share. (Once you’ve told it one time, it will continue to do it every few hours or so as you add files to make sure the index is up to date)  Now, go back into iTunes and you’ll see a newly shared iTunes library of all the mp3’s that are on that drive named after whatever the drive is called.  COOL!  The documentation states that network photo albums will see the shared photos as well as the xbox being able to see all the music and videos.  Be sue to upgrade the firmware if you want to use this functionality.  Version 1.0 and 1.1 are a bit buggy.

To summarize, I love the drive for what it does.  It seems to be fast, big enough for my application and accessible from three different operating systems without problems.   I’m torqued that they didn’t train the sales force that was selling the drive adequately or the customer support people how to properly address to issues about the drive.  The documentation they sent with the unit was misleading or wrong and their web site is just down right horrible if you have a support issue. (Links that go round and round but never take you anywhere.  No search functionality.  The classic, I’m looking at the product specs I have, when I click on “downloads”, don’t show me files that are available for a device that I don’t have and was discontinued 3 years ago.)

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 2:16 am and is filed under Apple, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.