Setting up a home storage server has long been fraught with peril. I’ve in fact had a terabyte and a half of storage space lying in NAS blocks in the past year and never stored more than a few movies on any of these devices. There just wasn’t a good, sane way to keep things updated without going through arcane web interfaces or maintaining a network disk connection that — in the end — would always fail.
That said, meet the Lacie Ethernet Disk Mini. It’s not a brand new device but I’m here to talk more about the on-board software than anything else. This is because the HipServ firmware that resides on this particular drive is probably one of the best examples of a home server that could actually be used and installed by anyone who actually lives in a house and does not have a Master’s in Information Systems.
Set-up is simple: plug in an Ethernet cable and add power. The drive boots up. You insert the included set-up tools disc, name the drive, create an admin password, and the drive begins to show up as Windows share, viewable by almost any device in your home including your XBox 360 and PS3. It also acts as an iTunes server which is an impressive feat and one sure to please those trying to create a centralized media repository for the entire house.
The drive is auto-detected in OS X and iTunes and can be mapped as a Windows drive in XP and Vista. The model I tested had 500 GB of storage and was split into “My” Library and Backup folders and “Family” Library and Backup folders. All of the help documentation is available online and the drive even stores most of the desktop applications you need to interact with it over the network.
The drive includes back-up software for both Windows and OS X. The desktop software is far from perfect but it’s acceptable. Besides — most of the good stuff resides on the web and over UPnP.
When you’re away from your computer, the drive lets you log into it at https://www.homelacie.com/homebase/signin. Once you’re in, you can upload and download media, photos, and files using a standard Browse/Upload screen or a Java-based drag and drop application. Dedicated players for most media let you view pictures and music online.
The OS doesn’t offer many bells and whistles like slideshows or playlists. It’s designed as a repository and to play very nicely with a number of devices. iTunes and gaming console UPnP compatibility alone are worth the price of admission on this system — which is, nicely enough, only $190 online for the 500 GB model.
The drive also interacts with UPnP devices fairly quickly. Dragging a file over to the music library brought it up on iTunes about five minutes later. Not perfect, but not bad either.
The problem with most home network drives is that they tried to recreate the ease-of-use found in services like Flickr and .Mac while using limited processing resources. By creating a simple, easy to navigate web-based service LaCie and HipServ have created one of the better home storage servers I’ve seen.
Could you describe the iTunes server functionality a little? What exactly does that mean? It’s not just a drive that iTunes on another computer can access?
Yeah…what is the itunes server thing all about? Please elaborate on this.
When you put music into the MyMusic folder, it shows up as an iTunes share. I didn’t try video. It’s just as if there was another computer running iTunes on the network and you can listen to the music from that other machine.
http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/photos/thumb_itunes.jpg
that’s what it looks like
whew…if nothing else, at least it’s good to know the editor can’t embed images in comments either…
How about some Zune music servership for both of us Zune owners. I guess this is a better idea since Windows Home Server seems to eat your files faster than you can pirate them.
can I move music on and off my ipod/iphone with this drive? If so, this is EXACTLY what I have been waiting for. John, is this a go for me?
and to be super anal, you said it works for both osx and xp, but what do *you* have at home? Is this for an osx setup?
And i bought this one, lost the setup cd, and i must be much more ignorant than a Master in IT because i am absolutely not able to setup this machine neither to know if i’ll be able to mount the share on SMB or other protocol …
I bought one, it came with 2 copies of the install CD, so if you’re still here and want one, post back.
Not that it’s helped. I’ve got OSX 10.4.
There’s no sign of any preinstalled software on the drive.
Where did you find this backup software, and how?
There are no preinstalled directories on the drive.
I can log into it with Firefox, create ’share’ entries, give myself read-write permission, and so forth.
But I have no clue what it means to ’show up as a Windows share’ — there’s now an alias for it in the Network icon in Itunes for instance, but it’s not recognized, asks me to Authenticate, gives no clue what they want. It doesn’t accept the IP address.
It says the alias doesn’t connect to anything.
Your thumbnail above doesn’t show anything.
Can you put the images on something else like flickr and include links?
Screenshots would be a big help.
okay, now at least I know what I’m missing.
It should look like this.
http://www.mynameiskate.ca/images/2008/07/25/hipserv_family_library_pic_2.jpg
And I’ve nothing of the sort. Missed, or missing, something. I’ll wait on LaCie tech support, left a message about 10 hours ago.
Hi,
I’ve just bought one of these but don’t have a disk, do you still have a spare, would really appreciate it
Kev
kevdotmansfield at gmaildotcom
It actually didn’t work with the software on the CDs in the box, which was quite outdated — you can go to LaCie’s home page and download software for it that will work. Just look it up by model number, I forget what I found. Check their website, there is a place to ask questions about specific hardware that’s how I found out I needed to download files to get it to work.
Please help me, on my Disk Lacie is no 16-letter product key sticker, so i cant install HipServ. I will be very pleased if You send me youre product key. Im not chater, or hacer. Produkt key is only for install aplication HipServ for LAcie disk. Please help me.
Go to LaCie’s home page. http://www.lacie.com
I found out HipServ won’t work with the drive I have at all.
You can’t find this stuff out by looking it up.
Try asking in their online question area — open a ticket.
They will get around to answering you there. Click the box so you get email when they reply to you in their forum.
I did get it working as a network backup drive after I downloaded the new version of the software from the website.
#SECURITY WARNING#
This is not a self contained unit. When you create an account on it, it actually goes out to their web site to create it, and store your login information on their servers. (Block traffic leaving your router, create an account on this POC and watch the error you will receive; “HomeLaCie.com could not be reached to create your account.”) This, in my opinion, is a major security flaw considering if their servers ever suffer from a DoS attack, let alone SQL injection hacks, your device can be rendered un-usable.
I own this product and really like it, but I also have some security concerns. The fear that LaCie maintains your login info on their servers is a reasonable one, but in case of a DoS against LaCie, you can always access the device from within your local network using your internal IP number (won’t help if you need to access it remotely however). If their servers get hacked and they lose your account info then, yes, someone could log in to device remotely and do bad things. Presumably LaCie would notify all it’s customers and we could change pws, etc. but that won’t be much help if your data is already gone. So my plan for the moment is to just store media there (not personal data). And if I do move personal data to the server it will be encrypted.
Aside from LaCie getting hacked, has anyone seen any reliable results from penetration tests, etc. directly against this device and the ports it opens on your firewall?
I have the same problem with Łukasz Wasilkiewicz. The site doesn’t help at all!
Dear Network Engineer,
Thank you for your interest in HipServ home servers. You’ll be pleased to learn that we at Axentra take security seriously.
Regarding your “security warning”: Please be aware that as part of our standard programming practice, we guard against SQL injection attacks. Also, please be aware that HipServ home servers can function well after setup without any connection whatsoever to the Axentra central servers. Naturally, only the HipServ features that rely on the Axentra central servers would be susceptible in the case of a successful DOS attack on them (for example, features such as the Dynamic DNS service). This situation is typical and consistent with best practices security on the Internet today.
We trust that with this information, you can see that your “security warning” about HipServ is unfounded. If you’d like more information about the security of HipServ, please feel free browse the HipServ Security FAQ (http://hipservforums.axentra.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9&p=22&sid=2cc8563c2dfa5fa3bc36182eef3957f1&sid=2cc8563c2dfa5fa3bc36182eef3957f1#p17) or contact us directly with any specific questions.
Sincerely,
The Axentra Team
Dimosthenis, same answer as to Lukasz — HipServ probably won’t ever work. The software packaged with the drive probably won’t work.
Go to LaCie’s home page. http://www.lacie.com
I found out HipServ won’t work with the drive I have at all.
You can’t find this stuff out by looking it up. We can’t help you here.
Try asking in their online question area — open a ticket.
They will get around to answering you there. Click the box so you get email when they reply to you in their forum.
I did get it working as a network backup drive after I downloaded the new version of the software from the website.