back to article LaCie LaPlug

Networkable drives are widely available and affordable these days, but the LaPlug could come in handy if you have a stack of existing USB hard drives or memory sticks that you want to share with other people on your home or office network. LaCie LaPlug networked storage LaCie's LaPlug delivers network sharing capabilities to …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder if it supports IPv6

    "Unfortunately, the remote access option was even less intuitive."

    Throw carrier NAT into the mix, and it'll get even less intuitive!

  2. Doug 14
    WTF?

    Network Throughput ?

    What network throughput did you get with your tests ?

    Can it actually act as a decent media source ?

    I see from the LaCie product page it claims to act as a DLNA client , is it any good at that for SD or HD video ?

    Some more actual information about it would be good , thanks.

  3. Nick L
    FAIL

    Brand loyalty? Try another brand

    I'll never buy LaCie again, after the saga of them refusing to replace a faulty power supply on one of their external disks. The PSU has a design fault, meaning when the PSU is unloaded the 12v rail floats at 19v, which rather fries the capacitors that are only rated for 16v IIRC. Opening up the PSU shows that the caps have vented and are useless, which is a better option than exploding...

    See http://www.fixya.com/support/t1782491-power_cord_buzzes_macpro_not_recognize and many youtube videos of hissing lacie power supplies.

    LaCie refuse to replace this out of warranty, despite the fact it has been designed incorrectly, and despite the fact I have 2 other LaCie drives and a rather nice LaCie monitor.

    So... Balls to 'em. Fixed it myself and vowed never to give them another penny for their overpriced, beautifully designed but badly engineered and atrociously supported junk.

    My logitech harmony one developed a clump of bad pixels a few days after, and logitech couriered me a replacement after I emailed them a photo of the problem.

    Guess who wins my loyalty?

    Incidentally, you can buy Belkin Home Base wireless USB and print servers from ebay for under 30 quid delivered...

    1. Boothy

      I had a LaCie NAS drive.

      It had various software issues, including a really poorly implemented UPnP media streamer. It was so under powered that you often had to re-encode media to play back without skipping.

      I needed to be rebooted regularly, and worse of all, required an active internet connection to be able to get to the web based GUI, as authentication was done through their site, not locally on the NAS drive!

      LaCie released one software update in the drives life, and that didn't fix most of the issues, then about 1.5 years after getting the drive, them dumped the entire range and said they were no longer going to provide any updates or support.

      Eventually the drive died, with guess what, a PSU issue. I inspected the drive, and as per your experience, very poor design and build quality.

      I decided not to repair, and instead removed the 1TB drive that still worked fine, grabbed all the data from the Linux partitions via some utils, and installed the drive in a dedicated server instead.

      Never ever buy LaCie.

      Logitech on the other hand, they are stars.

  4. Carl Zetie
    Headmaster

    Wrong name

    Surely it should be LePlug? Plugs are male.

    1. Youngdog
      Joke

      Re: Wrong name

      Given the functionality perhaps LaSocket is more , er, adapté?

  5. Simon B

    Nice idea, shame about the price

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's LaCie - you're paying for the name.

      External power brick is a fail, though - once of the nice things about the PogoPlug is that it has an internal PSU, which doesn't add a great deal to the overall size of the device and means that there's one less power convertamajig to lose.

  6. milliganp

    Remote Access Security

    If the screen-shot in the review is anything to go by then the contents of the drive are directly exposed on the internet with little or no security. This seems somewhat from a security standpoint.

  7. minnsey

    What about the other way round?

    Having finally ditched our 1/2 ton CRT telly for a nice new flatscreen with built in USB connectivity what I really want is to find a little device that would act as a USB<->LAN go-between and pretend all my network shares were really USB folders so I could access them from the telly, Seems a good idea but I 've yet to find anything suitable.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stuxnet

    Well at least it should make life easier for Stuxnet and it's ilk...

  9. ED209
    Boffin

    iOmega iConnect

    This is exactly the same as the iConnect, that's been out for a few years and can be picked up for £40.

    iConnect is worth every penny in my opinion for streaming HD to multiple sources, backup scheduling and other gubbins. Although apparently printer sharing is a pain, but never used that (who needs a printer nowadays anyway, it's actually cheaper to distribute iPads instead of using paper, what with the high price of ink and printer running costs*).

    *may be a slight exaggeration. Is cheaper to hand out Kindles though.

  10. Nights_are_Long
    Mushroom

    One of my first IT jobs was working in a computer shop, The owner LOVED LaCie but we hated them, we got about 3 a week come back to us with blown PSU's or other fault's we only ever saw on other brands every few months.

    And the RMA procedure was a joke, fill in form X with the shipping invoice your drive was included in, send to them, get another form back saying Please provide the serial number from the defective drive send that form off, then finally get a RMA number send it back to them.

    Only have it returned to us for insufficaiant packing, it was packed in the SAME BOX IT CAME IN WITH THE SAME SODDING PACKING MATERIALS!!!!!

    Still winds me up to this day!

  11. dylanh

    laCie: not so very NAS

    Same as other posters. Slow, frequent reboots required, poor DLNA server, no updates, but lovely black slab looking thing. Oh and did I say it was slow? After a year, I prised the device open and donated the drive to a Synology NAS.

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