Home : Storage : Reviews

LaCie 5big Network review

By Jim Martin, 27 Apr 2009

Rating:

Price as reviewed:£926

There's no doubt that LaCie makes the coolest looking storage products, but can its boxes measure up for performance, feature and value?

When you initially connect the 5big, it will attempt to obtain an IP address from the DHCP server, but there’s a discovery wizard you can run if it fails. There are two ways to manage the 5big, either using the web interface, or the Network Assistant application. The interface is as clean-looking as the device itself, which makes it easier to navigate the menus and make changes.

The 5big supports up to 25 concurrent users (with a maximum of 100 accounts), and it’s easy to create shares and assign privileges to groups or individuals. Only one user can be administrator. You can set which protocols can be used to access each share, from SMB, Apple, FTP or HTTP. This basic access is fine for small groups of users, but you can attach the 5big to a domain. We tested this under Vista and had no problems logging on to a share.

Unlike Synology’s Disk Station DS508, the 5big isn’t endowed with scores of extra features. Its one ‘frill’ is the inclusion of a BitTorrent client, which enables you to download files without leaving another computer switched on. Aside from this, you can view the device’s status remotely, and there’s a built-in SMTP server, which can email alerts to a designated address. If you want IP camera surveillance, a print server and numerous multimedia features including an iTunes server, the DS508 is a better choice.

The 5big’s power management isn’t as good as we’d hoped for. Despite the USB port, there’s no support for a UPS and auto-shutdown. There’s also no facility to automatically start up after a power cut. You can only reboot the 5big – or shut it down – from the management interface if the power switch is set to auto. The wake-on-LAN support only works via the Network Assistant.

Performance also wasn’t quite up to the standard we were hoping for. Compared to the Disk Station DS508, the 5big was much slower at transferring large files, writing at 12MB/sec and reading at 24MB/sec. It read small files at 11MB/sec and wrote them at 6MB/sec. Switching from RAID 5 to RAID 0 saw these speeds increase between 1 and 5MB/sec.

Email to a friend

Print this page

1 2

< Previous Storage : Reviews Next >

1 comments

You need to Login or Register to comment.

LaCie - Where the customer comes LAST

CONSUMER WARNING: LaCie—Where the Customer Comes Last In December of 2010 our design company purchased (2) LaCie 5big Network 2 drives for over $2,000 to begin setup of our onsite/offsite backup and archiving system. We received the drives and completed the setup, only to find that we had terrible performance (100MB/30 minute transfer rate). We opened a support ticket with LaCie in December 2010 was asked to send our device log which they reviewed and informed us that the device log does not show any abnormal activity. We connected the drive directly to our computer and confirmed that we still had the same performance issues. After several trouble-shooting attempts we were told to reset the Network drive (which can ERASE ALL DATA). Now we have entered February 2011 and still have the performance issue, so again we contacted LaCie who informed us that the only solution would be to ship the drive back to them for a replacement drive at a charge of $50. We received the new REFURBISHED DRIVE and completed the setup only to find that transfer to the drive was fine, but retrieving files had a transfer rate of 300MB/6 hours. After several months of dialogue with LaCie we worked with an outside vendor to resolve the performance issues without any help from LaCie. We completed the transfer and setup of our backup system and the drives worked from May 2011 to August 2011. In August 2011, we received the following message from the other LaCie 5big Network 2 drive, “Message from Server: Something wrong with the volume’s CNIB, using temporary CNID DB instead. Check server messages for details.” Now we have had trouble with both LaCie drives. We again opened a support ticket with LaCie and were given instructions to delete the .AppleDB file from the network drive. After completing the provided instructions access to the Shares were broken and we lost access to all of our data. We again contacted LaCie who told us our only option was to send the drive to them for a Recovery at a cost of $1,500 (almost the entire cost of the drives). We were astounded that the only solution was a complete recovery. We went ahead with sending the drive in again and were informed on August 2 that LaCie would assess the drive and contact us with the next steps. After several weeks of contacts by phone and through the support ticket we finally received a message on August 25 that the recovery was about halfway complete. We never discussed costs or other alternatives, they simply went forward with the recovery without contacting us. After several more attempts for an update on September 1 we were informed that the drive had bad sectors and the recovery was going slow. Finally on September 7 we received a message stating that the recovery was complete and if I could review the attached the attached list to confirm all files were recovered. The document we received contained a 42,000 page document with an unorganized list of all recovered files making it IMPOSSIBLE to confirm an accurate recovery. They charged us for the recovery and returned the drive. To date we have 86 hours of unbillable time spent on getting these both of these drives to work within our office environment. We feel that it is important to inform consumers of the EXTREMELY POOR QUALITY PRODUCT and TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE we have received from LaCie over the past year. We have moved to another backup product and refuse to use any future LaCie products and would suggest all customers reviewing this product investigate other alternatives.

By Reviewer454 on Monday Oct 31