Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Having had this device for a long time now, I'll add some more details: - Jumbo frames boost performance from 10MB/s to 25MB/s for writes / uploads to the device - Seagate devices have had some security issues since my original post. I would not deploy these products today in any kind of corporate environment. They may be sufficient for light home use where security is not a priority. Original review: I'm a serious enthusiast and Unix/Linux systems guy. However, I also understand the need for easy, out of the box solutions. This device? It rocks for me and for my proverbial mother. Actually, my mother doesn't yet own one, but she should! It is easy to use and configure, although the manual is quite lacking. You'll want to use a wired connection if you want performance, but enthusiasts might still find the performance lacking compared to a PC or high-end NAS solution. However, for the price, this thing delivers for novices and entusiasts alike. ------------------------ Blow-by-blow review below: ------------------------ Before I get to all the great things about it, lets set expectations: * This device is priced only a few dollars more than a bare drive. * Performance is about 22 MB/s (160mbps) for Windows and Apple file sharing. This is faster than your WiFi, however. Use a wired connection. * Performance jumps to 45 MB/s for insecure FTP! * Included instructions are lacking. The device is EASY to setup, but you need to find the instructions online. The good things (non-technical goodness): * Easy to setup (although the manual is lacking) * Easy to use. * DLNA, iTunes server, etc... all disabled by default, and easy enough to enable if you want them. * Facebook media backup feature * Print-server included (although not advertised!) So the great, geeky things? * Based on Seagate's more expensive BlackArmour NAS product. * Runs Linux with SSH enabled by default * Uses LVM storage by default (snapshots!!!) * Ethernet supports jumbo frames (ssh then 'ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000') * The Linux OS includes a bunch of things in the kernel that might be useful: - EXT4 (also ext2, ext3) - XFS - FUSE (NTFS driver included) - WebDAV mount utilities - Potential iSCSI support (supported in kernel - utilities missing) - Potential NFS support - utilities missing, some scripts remain. Could be made to work. * Two core CPU - although only one is enabled in software. The board that drives this thing is a Cavium Networks CNS3420, an ARMv11 platform (see [...]) Bad things? - The second CPU core is disabled! (but might be made to work) - iSCSI and NFS won't work out of the box (but might be made to work) - Jumbo frames don't seem to improve performance much (but some tweaking might help...) - Enabling SSL for FTP drops the speed to 1.5MB/s.