LaCie Shows Off Massive 7.5TB Network Hard Drive: 5big Network

Storage — 08 October 2008

The Big5 Network drive from Lacie, which mind you looks ‘oh so’ HAL from ’200l’, is a massive network storage hard drive. It’s available in 2.5TB, 5TB and 7.5TB sizes and features RAID 5 and 6 protection. A special added feature is the built-in Torrent client for automatically downloading files. Located at the rear of the device are 5 hard drive slots, 1.5TB each, that can be placed under lock and key for added security. The 1GB Ethernet port should insure zippy transfers over the network and its aluminum casing with cyclops like status light adds a refined touch to any tech geek’s room. According to Lacie it uses 25% less energy than traditional four-disk RAID towers and is 37% quieter thanks to it unique cooling system.

The 5Big Network is available here and starts at $900

More pics after the ‘leap’

[Slipperybrick]

About Author

Christen Costa

Grew up back East, got sick of the cold and headed West. Since I was small I have been pushing buttons - both electronic and human. With an insatiable need for tech I thought "why not start a blog focusing on technology, and use my dislikes and likes to post on gadgets."

Greg

This product is a total nightmare. OS interface looks like it was written by a geek back in the 90′s and the product basically doesn’t work. The RAID 5 takes about 3 days to configure itself. Each time I try to copy my iPhoto library (40GB) to it, after about 2 hours it fails, gives an error message and although you can see the unit online, it is unreachable and requires a hard reboot. After reboot, the RAID thinks it needs to configure itself and takes another 3 days to ‘synchronize’. What a disaster. Did LaCie even bother to test this before they shipped it? Speaking of support … another nightmare. It takes days and weeks to get things solved. I have 7 LaCie products. In the past 2 years, I have had 2 power supplies fail, a big4 Quadra have the entire array ‘disappear’ when I changed the firewire port (LaCie say there is nothing wrong with the box) and now this big5 which doesn’t even work out of the box (and I’ll probably RMA. LaCie support is dismal with only e-mail support available in my region. Storage is critical, you’d think they would provide proper support? You’d think?
Susie Matson

Greg,
You must’ve gotten a bad system. The one I purchased worked perfectly right out of the box and was very easy to configure and sync. However……the drives in this NAS cannot be formated with NTFS so I had to return it.

What the heck is LaCie thinking in this day and age to have a NAS that doesn’t support NTFS???
Brewster Kahle

My experience is closer to Greg’s, but still wrestling with it. I just got a 5Big with 2TB drives in it. It only seemed to accept files from my mac at 8MB/sec (on gigabit switch). It seemed to hang after just a few hours of use, such that I had to unplug it. It has been running for 3 days “synchronizing” and seems to always report 1 day more to go. While it is doing this it only accepts writes at about 4MB/sec.

I tried to upload a harddrive to it with their one-button system, but that failed. I will try again when it has syched.

I would think they would make this writable through USB, but not the case.

For a cool new gadget, the honeymoon has been bumpy.
Anonymous

Looks like it’s the other way around, Susie – looks like YOU got the ONLY one that works…

This product is not reliable. It’s network access is faulty and the operating system hangs. since network access is the only way to access this unit, you end up reloading, reconfiguring, and resyncronizing everytime the system hangs. Resyncronization of drives is now taking 63 hours before use. I’ve had to reconfigure at least 3 times so far and all three times I’ve lost all data and time (luckily this was not original data)… I’ve sent the unit back to LaCie 3 times so far (each time having to pay out of the pocket to send it in – 58$ ea)… to which they’ve sent “refurbished” units… this 3rd unit STILL DOESN’T WORK!… and the comment they sent back was “well, sorry you’re still having trouble, if you would like us to look at it again, please send it in under the previous return/support policies…” I really doubt it if these units are in fact “repaired” now, as they never really told me what they found – only that “the problem was resolved by sending me a ‘new’ unit”….I used to trust LaCie… but only as a personal usb hard drive… I wouldn’t trust them with larger systems, units, large storage, or system backups anymore…