Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Iomega Storcenter IX4-200D NAS 12TB (4 x 3TB) 4-bay Cloud Edition 34791


Price : Too low to display
BUY NOW
Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d Network Storage Server 34791 Network Attached Storage

This review is from : Iomega Storcenter IX4-200D NAS 12TB (4 x 3TB) 4-bay Cloud Edition 34791
A very full featured NAS solution . First of all, note that this is not your run of the mill network attached hard drive. This is a small business grade Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution. As a result, its configuration options can be overwhelming at first glance, but it is undoubtedly an extremely rewarding device to get to know.

First the awesome:
#############

1. Lots of RAID options:

# JBOD (Just a Bunch/Box of Disks) - i.e., the entire array is treated as a set of 4 independent disks. The bad thing - if a drive crashes you lose the data on that disk. The good - you get your full 4TB of storage. This shows up as the option "None".

# RAID 0 - Data Striping : i.e., some bytes of your data go to one disk and other bytes to another. This writing occurs in parallel, so it is faster than JBOD, and you get your full 4TB - but still no data recovery. This shows up as the option "None (RAID 0)".

# RAID 1 - Mirror/Stripe: i.e., the same data is written to two sets of disks - and striping is used to increase speed. The bad thing - you get half your storage capacity (2 TB). The good - you have full live data redundancy. This shows up as the option "RAID 10"

# RAID 5 - This is the best option with the IX4. One drive's worth of data is reserved for parity data. The good - even if one of your disks crashes, the IX4 can rebuild your data without loss. The bad - one drive's worth of space is lost, so you get only 3 TB of storage. This shows up as "RAID 5".

I left my IX4 at RAID 5, and also decided to disable writing to the cache. This makes writes slower, but does ensure that even on a power failure, all data has been written to the disk.

2. Security is top notch.
There are options to enable HTTPS-based security. You can also create authentication/authorization rules using users as well as groups, and you can specify access to shares for these users/groups. Do note that the certificate presented by the IX4 is signed by itself. What this means is that you will be presented with a scary warning about an invalid certificate.

3. Remote Access and the Personal Cloud
Enabling remote access to this drive is simplicity itself. The device itself can do much of the heavy lifting of configuring port forwarding on your router. The nice thing is that it uses port 443 (the well known https port) so you can access your drive easily from any location - incl. through corporate firewalls. It also comes with 12 months of basic access at TZO DNS, which lets you avoid having to memorize your IP address.

While the concept is rather intriguing, I have not enabled my personal cloud yet - for the simple reason that I don't really need others to access my NAS. The remote access for myself (and family) is more than sufficient for my needs.

With remote access enabled, it even works great as a personal version of the popular Dropbox file hosting service.

4. Automatic backups - actually more like synchronization
There are a few options here, including synchronization with Mozy and Amazon S3. Unfortunately, I use neither. (I prefer iDrive by far.)

Instead, I rely on the ix4's simple XCOPY-like "Copy Jobs" backup solution. This feature automatically copies files from any external drive/share folder to another location, on a configurable schedule. This is not true backup - so there are no full/incremental/differential backup options. It functions more like Microsoft's SyncToy, on a scheduled basis.

5. QuikTransfer is simply awesome. If you are like me you have a number of disks of varying capacity strewn around your network. With QuikTransfer, you connect one of those hard drives to one of its three USB ports using an USB cable, and you can immediately transfer content on to the IX4 - with no computer necessary! (This feature leverages the "Copy Jobs" function described above.

6. Works as a media server.

7. Active shares are a crazy good idea. Can you imagine dropping photos into a folder and having them automatically uploaded to Flickr or Facebook? How about dropping videos into a folder for automatic uploads to YouTube? Or even automatically kicking off a Torrent download, just by copying a .torrent file to a share? Well - the IX4 does just this using its active folders idea.

8. Firmware update was as painless as it can get. I downloaded the file from the Iomega site, uploaded it to the IX4, and then applied the update. After a long while digesting the update, the device was back up and running - all shiny and new.

9. Supports a zillion protocols. Incl. FTP, rsync, WebDAV, Bluetooth (with optional adapter), etc. I haven't enabled these - except for trying out FTP, which worked great with my FTP client (FileZilla).

10. The LCD on the front of the window is a nice touch. It shows useful information such as the IP address and also provides a rudimentary user interface to interact with the unit.

11. It is fairly easy to remove/replace drives in their bays. You open two thumbscrews, and each drive has a little plastic handle that you can tug at gently to release it from its bay. Inserting it is also just as easy.

12. A very generous 3-year warranty for the device.

Now the not so awesome:
#################

1. Right out of the box, the ix4 required warranty support. Yes, Iomega's tech support is awesome. However, I've needed to resort to it twice for Iomega products (incl. the iConnect device) - which is a not-so-positive statement on their Quality Control. Turned out that one of the hard drives had failed. Again, their stellar customer support analyst had a replacement dispatched quickly, without needlessly wasting my time.

2. A major security issue with enabling remote access is that everyone who stumbles on to your IP address will be able to access your shares - without logging in! Fortunately, the solution is to simply turn off the Home Page. I can't imagine what the firmware developers were thinking!

3. Functional user interface. This is not a UI to emulate or rave about. It does its job. That's it. It takes a long while for pages to refresh, the categories are not quite intuitive, and everything requires a popup dialog. With the latest firmware, all the applets have been consolidated into a single page - "All Features". This helps quite a bit in having to hunt for features. There is a tab for commonly used features - but its entries are not customizable.

4. Error messages for an internal fan failed error keep showing up. The fan seems to be running just fine (according to the System Status display as well as physical inspection) - so I'm ignoring this for now.

5. QuikTransfer has bugs. On one run, the copy process halted at 99% complete for over 3 hours. Turns out it was creating a temporary "lifeline" file that was over 300GB in size, before I killed the process. Not sure if the new firmware fixed this problem. Fortunately, it's a simple copy so you can recover without too much effort.

Conclusion:
#######
This is definitely one of the most featured NAS device that I've had the pleasure to use. Even the problems I've documented above can be classified more as annoyances rather than show stoppers - all of them can either be fixed or tolerated.

This is the perfect device for enthusiasts - the features are almost overwhelming, which makes it fertile ground for configuration and customization. If you have the time to spend, there doesn't seem to be much that the IX4 doesn't do.

Despite my initial negative experience, I've slowly grown ever more reliant on it. As a result, while the quality issue made me want to consider reducing the rating, I have decided not to - particularly given the quality of Iomega's tech support. Stuff Happens. And, its how a company reacts that matters more than the occasional failure. Iomega's support team deserves a 5 star rating for the way in which they assist their customers. The analyst I spoke to was reasonable, personable, and helpful. Given that he was based in the Midwest, I'd have expected nothing less :)

Updated 08/24:
The IX4 is smart enough to automatically log you out of the remote web interface after a period of inactivity. That's an awesome security feature. Unfortunately, the timeout only works on the admin page. It does not work on any window that is open for browsing the content of your shares. This is definitely a bit annoying to me.

Updated 09/09:
I have been streaming high def video off of this device to other media players, and the ix4 is able to keep up with hardly a stutter. I wasn't able to do this with an external drive connected to my Netgear router's USB port, so I have to credit this enhanced performance to the ix4. Network bandwidth depends on many factors, so your mileage might vary.

Happy Backups!
~Damodar
Iomega Storcenter IX4-200D NAS 12TB (4 x 3TB) 4-bay Cloud Edition 34791 Reviews
Awesome support . I had difficulty setting up--this may not be the fault of the product--it is most likely user error. I called the support number--and happily found a great person who spoke English well on the other end. I felt like I was talking to apple support--it was awesome. He walked me through everything he could. Unfortunately, he is not trained on apple computers so although this is apple compatible, there was a lot he couldn't tell me how to do--which will necessitate a call to apple. He was able to at least get me up and running getting time machine backups, showing me how to get documents onto the drive. He could not help me set it up so that i could access it from another computer because i have an apple modem and some settings on that need changed. He also couldn't tell me how to put a copy of my pictures or itunes on the drive--again directing me to apple support.--but i will be able to get that support from apple I am sure. If I had a pc, he would have been able to help me with all of this himself.

The drive is a 4TB drive--however, only a little less than 3 TB are available for use. The support guy said it was because they use one of the drives as a back up to the other in case of drive failure--which is good as long as you know you are only going to have 3 TB available to use. This is fine with me as i don't need more than that.

in the next month or two, he told me that there will be a program called ilink for the ipad and iphone so that you can access the documents from those devices very easily.

The warranty is for 3 years and they provide phone support the entire 3 Years!!!!! I like that--I am not a computer geek, or even all that smart with computers, so to have someone be willing to walk me through things is essential. If you buy a device but can't use it, it doesn't matter how good the device is.

I'm giving this a review of 4 starts right now. I will update after I have used it some.

1. It runs cool. I've had it on 24/7, it is connected by ethernet to my router. But it is never hot to the touch.
2. It is attractive (i know, it sounds silly--but i really like for things to be simple and tidy looking
3. It has been a great machine for my time machine back ups as well as storing documents
4. 10 stars for costumer support
5. The promise of ipad and iphone apps that work with simplicity (if they were out right now and i could test them, it could be 5 stars--but they aren't)


Things i would like to see it do but it doesn't--i would love it to have backup software that automatically backs up and updates files/folders, etc, that i have on my computer. Time machine in apple does this some--but it doesn't duplicate a working environment and it isn't very easy to get to something you need--it works as a back up if you need to restore something--but i would like to have duplication. Apparently this might be available with software (by another company--presumably at a cost) (the guy said it was with a PC but wasn't sure if it was on MAC).


Iomega Storcenter IX4-200D NAS 12TB (4 x 3TB) 4-bay Cloud Edition 34791 Opinions
A Huge Amount of Storage. Best for Experienced Techies . I got the Iomega StorCenter primarily as a home back up for extensive photo and video files and it is working as advertised. However, while I'm not a complete Tech Idiot, I did need some help from our IT person to install and configure this device. After several weeks, I haven't had any significant problems and I've been happy with the device.
Multiple features an advantage . StoreCenter ix4-200d NAS is an expanded version of ix2 and is a suitable small office equipment. It sits neatly on my work table without disturbing my other machines. File sharing on this device is amazing. The cloud helps remote access to my files which is something I was longing for quite some time now especially with travel schedules becoming hectic. Streaming into iTunes is a charm. There are three USB ports that help me to connect to my printer, scanner and my external drive which I use as a secondary storage device. Files can be copied directly onto my external drive from the NAS device without connecting to a computer using the QuickTransfer button. This NAS device supports Bluetooth uploads. I added photos and contacts from the cellphone to the NAS device and it doubles as my backup device for my phone as well.
Work has become a pleasure . I thought Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d 4TB Network Storage Cloud Edition is another plug and play NAS device. But I was totally wrong, it was far more than that. The NAS features are simply amazing and you can select from a choice of 4,8 and 12TB models. I picked the 4TB model because it was more than sufficient for my small office anyway it includes four SATA II hard drives also. The RAIDS 5 configuration eats up almost one-fourth of the capacity to store data that can be recovered during a crash, so I did not mind that, despite this the storage capacity is enormous for my office use. I instantly installed the cloud and there were no issues. Without any monthly subscription I can now access my data sitting in any corner of the globe. Now my work has become pleasure with Iomega personal cloud as my presence in the office is not required.
A better option . I already own a DAS array but was looking for a change since it gobbles up lot of power. After reading reviews on Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d Network Storage Cloud Edition I decided that this is the one. I also read reviews on the StorCenter px4 as well but found suitable for advanced users. I am no entrepreneur and wanted to just throw some photos, movies and music onto the drive and also connect to other desktops and laptops at home. I was just looking for common NAS file serving protocols like Apple File Protocol (AFP) and the ix4 fit perfectly fine as it satisfied all my network needs. The ix4 facilitates Time Machine backup and acts as iTunes server which has made it all the catchier. It is also compact and noiseless.
Must for small business enterprises . Buy this NAS device only if you need it. This is for small business environment as it is loaded with features to make your data not just safe and secure but also easily accessible. The Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d is a new range of NAS machine that is meant for small office or distributed office. You can run this device without the need for an IT administrator. This device is in my office for about three months now and it has transformed the way you look at storage. It is meant to meet the business challenges of today's world. The 4TB capacity helps store all the data. The EMC lifeline software is platform flexible and can be used on PC, Mac and Linux. Files can be accessed from anywhere in the world once the remote access is setup. Email alerts helps learn about the system status wherever you are. Packed with a whole lot of features it is a must for small business enterprises.
Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d 8TB Best of the bunch . Of the 3 major brands of NAS drives out there today:
Western Digital ShareSpace 8 TB 4-bay Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage
Buffalo Technology LinkStation Pro Quad 8 TB (4 x 2 TB) RAID Network Attached Storage LS-QV8.0TL/R5 (Black), and
Iomega StorCenter Pro ix4-200d 8 TB (4 X 2 TB) Network Attached Storage Server 34563...The Iomega is the best one. It is not perfect, but it does a nice job.Positives:
Out of the box, easy to setup, the software is extremely user friendly to use and setup. Web interface is really nice. Works with itunes.Negatives:
the iphone app is not ready for prime time. when trying to load connect to browse media, many times you get a sync error.
On 3G it does not even connect. Hopefully an update will fix this. Because with the media feature enabled basically all your photos, video and music is available via streaming.
Also no built in backup software. If would have been great if it had a version of Norton ghost or True image bundled or a good EMC SOHO class backup/imaging software tool.Anyhow, when i am sure most of you will love this is is well built. when the price drops, i might buy a second one!
Big value for small money . Ideal for small office the StorCenter ix4-200d 8TB Network Storage does not require an IT expert to install or administer the device. The NAS device comes with all innovative features like virtualization, RSA security, replication, data protection and video surveillance. True to its words the Iomega StorCenter did not require an IT specialist to install the device. With a few clicks the device was functional. The LCD panel in the front shows the status of the device. It is an efficient and affordable NAS device for small business. The device is right for budget conscious people like me. The productivity of my small business has increased multifold after installing this wonder NAS machine in my office. The cloud technology is helping me access my files remotely. Which means my business is not down even for a minute. The USB 2.0 ports aids in connecting to the printer. This is not all it acts as my media player as well as the device is compatible with UPnP and DLNA certified players. I also upload photos from my cell phone to the NAS device using Bluetooth. For such a small price the benefits are immense.

Product Image



Related Post

Product Details

EAN : 0742709347917
UPC : 742709347917
MPN : 34791
Brand : Iomega
Weight : 15 pounds
Height : 9 inches
Length : 13 inches
Width : 11 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
ESRB Age Rating : Rating Pending
Format : DVD-ROM
Genre : action-games
Hardware Platform : Pc
Manufacturer : Iomega
Model : 34791
Operating System : Windows
Platform : Windows
Publisher : Iomega
Size : 12TB
SKU : AD6-34791
Studio : Iomega

Where To Buy


You can buy Iomega Storcenter IX4-200D NAS 12TB (4 x 3TB) 4-bay Cloud Edition 34791 on Amazon . Click here to Read More