Interesting NAS/Cloud device

[Captain O Hair]

I have just come across this device and am wondering if anyone is familiar with it and could tell me more about it. From what it is capable of doing, it seems very impressive for the price. I can backup over my gigabit network and then remotely access those files over the internet? YES PLEASE!

I am mainly concerned about the security behind such a thing and how reliable the remote connections and security logins, etc would be. And all of this for 180?? wow...

[sttubs]

This is an interesting find. I'll have to keep an eye out for the reviews, maybe the great guys at PCPer will do a review.

[mmettin]

seems to me to be similar to a pogoplug

http://www.pogoplug.com/home-en.html

[Captain O Hair]

seems to me to be similar to a pogoplug

http://www.pogoplug.com/home-en.html

I looked at that, and yes, the cloud functionality does seem to be quite similar, but the Iomega one has a 2 TB hard drive built into it and will share printers to boot!

[Captain O Hair]

My mother who had been worried about everyone in our family loosing their data was interested in this as a potential cloud back up solution for everyone. Looking through what I can find on this thing, it seems like it will fit the bill and she has gone ahead and ordered it for our family for Christmas. I'll have it in my possession in 7-10 business days to start getting it setup and the kinks worked out and see how it does. I'll post my findings with it here.

[Captain O Hair]

So, I've had this NAS for some time now and I can say that I would recommend it for anyone looking for a network/internet backup device. Some thoughts on it.

As a network backup device it works flawlessly. It is a bit weird to figure out how to set up users and such and get their folders with the right access permissions and all, but if you have dealt with windows permissions for security, this will be a breeze. This drive has you install an "Iomega Storage Manager" to be able to access the network shares, but it just is a fancy interface that enables a network share driver and then maps the folders on the device as network locations for you under windows 7. Once that software is installed and the folders are mapped and your user account is setup windows backup was able to make the backup to the NAS quickly and easily. The gigabit networking makes it seem like the hard drive is on the computer. My wife was editing photos from the NAS share over a 100 mbit connection and she didn't seem to notice that it wasn't on her computer.

The interface is really quite simple and easy to work with and yet has some wide functionality to it. I haven't found myself wanting more options in there really. Reboots on the device do take a long time. I have a couple of times sat there waiting for a long time and then to see that the dialog seems to never finish. I recently tried just closing that window and re-logging onto it's web interface and that seemed to bypass it. It apparently just didn't update when it actually had finished. It allows you to change it's network address and have it be either static or dynamic for an address.

When accessing the device for the first time it creates a user on the NAS with the currently logged in account name. I found that if you have a space in your log in name on your windows machine that the space in the name causes problems on the NAS. The NAS does not handle spaces in user names. Something to be aware of.

The Iomega Storage Manager Software is nice because if you already have a username on the NAS and you create another folder on the NAS that you allow that user access to, the program automatically maps that new folder for you. This also explains why you might use the software as opposed to just manually mapping them all anyways.

The cloud functionality is nice. I am in Idaho and my parents in Washington are able to back up to it. The NAS has cloud functionality. The client at the remote location would have to have the iomega storage software to connect to the NAS and use the cloud portion though. This software also requires certain ports to be open in order to establish a connection to the NAS over the internet. So don't be expecting to go everywhere with your laptop and have access to your files in this manner unless you have set up a VPN, which I suppose would be an option. This cloud functionality, like any other internet storage solution is sadly bandwith based. So if the NAS is on a connection with a slow upload speed, people will only be able to download from the NAS at that speed. I can max upload at 80 KB/s, so that is the max anyone could download from it at. If you are moving mass amounts of data this becomes a problem. However, sending things to me is different as I have a 7 mbit connection so it becomes limited by how fast you can upload to it.

Overall it has been a solid unit. Once I had it set up it has been maintenance free. I never have to reboot it or log into it unless I am making changes to it. And even then, rebooting was only for a firmware update. My desktop and my wifes laptops do backups to it once a week with the built in windows 7 backup program. That only keeps one copy of everything when backing up to a network location, so it works great for our needs. It is a smart little device and it runs quite cool as well. No real noise comes from it either unless it is writing data.

If anyone has any questions about the Iomega Home Network storage cloud edition NAS, please ask! I am happy to answer questions about it. I was just pointing out some things that stuck out to me about it.

[sttubs]

Thanks for your review, it does sound like nice option.

[TheBradyReport]

Hi Cap,

Old post I know but I thought I'd chime in... I have this unit as well and also the big brother version (Iomega StorCenter ix2-200) and they are great units.

I didn't find the UI to be all that intuitive and I would expect an average home user to get lost pretty easily but once you get it setup, it has some great features.

I mostly use it for media storage/streaming and backups. I backup using TimeMachine from my Macbook and also run CrashPlan on my PC's and it works like a champ. The media streaming from my Sony SMP-N100, Patriot Box Office and WD media streamers works great.

I have a number of other NAS devices in the home already including a Buffalo unit, Maxtor Central Ops and and even a Dell PowerVault and for the money, I'd buy another one of these Iomega units in a heart beat.

[Captain O Hair]

Hi Cap,

Old post I know but I thought I'd chime in... I have this unit as well and also the big brother version (Iomega StorCenter ix2-200) and they are great units.

It's ok that it's an old post

Have you by chance dealt much with the FTP stuff on these devices? I am having issues logging in as anything but the administrator account. Iomega seems to think it is corrupted firmware or something... but I think there might be other issues at play. Just thought I'd pick your brain since you also have this unit.

[TheBradyReport]

I haven't played with the FTP at all since i have a few other solutions I use for that (Pogo Plug, FreeNAS+DynDNS and my Netgear 3500L+Tomato) but I can turn it on and give it a try.

[Captain O Hair]

Thanks much! I appreciate you spending time on this.