back to article Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 4TB Nas box

Iomega has introduced its second-generation StorCenter ix2-200, aimed at the 'prosumer' home user and which offers a wealth of features ranging from a BitTorrent client and remote access to surveillance camera support. Iomega StorCenter ix2 Iomega's StorCenter ix2-200 While most other Network Attached Storage (Nas) …

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  1. Anton Ivanov
    Flame

    What a waste of money

    Let me see my bill of materials:

    AMD 3200+ Elite ECS GS 7600 - £30

    Maplin iCute case (6 3" slots) - £30

    Memory - £26

    Extra cooling for the disks, quiet fan, extra SATA card (fan mounting already on MB) - £20

    PS - $50 (80+ Akasa super quiet)

    Debian - free.

    Grand total: 156

    That is roughly the same as the Synology and this iOmega box prior to disks. Total capacity - 6 disks, expandable to a max of 14 subject to using additional 5-3 enclosures for the 5" slots (17£ per 4 disk from Scan and 10£ per 4 port SATA card from LinItx). Chassis cost per disk - 3 times lower, dropping to more than 4 times lower as number of disks goes up. It looks as good if not better and it is not telling me which dynDNS client I am to use. It also supports JBOD, RAID0,1,5,6 and 10 not just RAID 1.

    As most iOmega boxes this is not a box for the proSumer or powerUser it is for the powerLuser. They should have made it in white so it fits their usual audience.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      That assumes you have the skills and the space.

      That assumes you know how to set all of that up.

      That iCute case is about 10 times the size of this unit (its smaller than a toaster). As to price you need to add on 2x2TB disks and your total comes to £356 while these retail at £400. The 2TB version would set you back 225 while your solution would be 156 + 2x70? = £296

      Add to that these units are whisper quiet and use a fraction of the power and it looks a resonable solution for home backup and/or media storage. Sure if you need massively more storage and other facilities your solution is cheaper but its not the same target market.

      1. Stu
        Megaphone

        Yep, and...

        ...his setup will be a helluva lot more noisy and cost a lot more in electricity usage.

        I specifically bought a now ancient WD MyBookWorld, hacked open for full linux access on it and an unrestricted Samba install, for these very reasons.

        Its been spinning now for about two years without issue, and its claiming, oh, about 10 or so watts when spinning. About 2 watts when in sleep mode.

        .

        Not that I'm a greenie, its just saving me cash!

  2. petur
    FAIL

    I don't think so

    They can write what they want in their warranty doc, but I don't think you can claim the warranty is void if you stick other disks in it. At least not in Europe.

    I'll stick with my QNAP TS-239 though. Similar build quality and 4x the features (at a minimum). But the Iomega brand is better known, so people will probably settle for less. Their loss...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Sounds good, but ...

    ... what make are the drives inside? If they're Seagate then no sale.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Works for me.

    I bought the 2TB version from Dabs a couple of weeks ago, cost me £220 which seemed like good value to me. I'm very happy with it, it feels faster and wakes up quicker than my DLink dns-323. It also supports iscsi which works quite nicely with Windows 7.

  5. Steven Jones

    Tin foil hat?

    Why is it considered tin foil hat territory to want RAID-1 protection?

    It would also be useful to know if the I/O throughput tests are single or multi-threaded. A well implemented RAID-1 setup can make use of both devices for read which only shows up on multi-threaded tests (there are two targets for reads which can work in parallel). Not all RAID-1 devices will act that way.

    1. Code Monkey

      Tin foil hat

      As I read it, the CCTV link was the area for tin foil hattery.

  6. Andy 115
    Thumb Down

    You Must Insert a Title

    Bought one a few months ago for a couiple of reasons,

    1) Time machine compatiblle

    2) Claimed DNLA certification

    Sent it back as 2) was, well, a bit Number 2 (would only serve thumbnails of images)

    Apart from that it was okay but alas, not fit for purpose.

    Replaced with a Netgear

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Iomega don't have a good record as far as I'm conceerned

    I've got an older storecenter (320GB) and it's the biggest waste of money of all IT stuff I've bought.

    The firmware is awfull. It has very low transfers rates, takes a long time to respond, drops of the network for no reason and most annoying at all, there is no backup battery for things like the date, so if the power goes off it resets to 1 jan 2036, and the USB printer server is unusable. After that I'd never buy another iomega product again.

  8. Mike Holden

    network

    Plus, doesn't that build yourself PC only have 10/100 networking? Could be an issue for NAS?

  9. poc

    Reasonable hardware, pathetic software, disastrous support

    I bought one of these about 3 months ago, to use as a backup server for 1 Linux desktop (Fedora), I iMac and 1 Windows Vista laptop. It took several weeks to get it all configured because the included plug-and-pray management software simply doesn't work on *any* of the above platforms. I had to sniff the net for the box's IP address and then configure using a browser in each case. Getting TimeMachine working was head-bangingly difficult though I eventually managed it.

    The Iomega support forums are far and away the worst I have ever seen for any commercial product and an order of magnitude worse than those I use for free software. You register to ask a question, send the question, and then wait several days to be told that YOUR QUESTION HAS BEEN ACCEPTED. WTF? And this is for a *user* support forum, not to get direct support from Iomega. To get that you have to make a phone-call, which in my case would mean an international call. No thanks. Have these people never heard of email?

    The upside is that the box so far hasn't failed. It just sits there and makes grumbling noises from time to time when copying stuff. A huge disadvantage from my point of view is that even though it's a Linux system you can't ssh into it, so you're stuck with what the (limited and clunky) web interface gives you.

    I won't be buying another one of these.

    BTW, nearly every tech review of the thing seems just to spout the manufacturer's brochure. Once again, WTF?

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