LaCie's 2big NAS Review

We tested RAID-1 rebuild after removing the drive in the first slot. Physically, the unit was able to indicate operation in degraded mode by turning the LED light above the bay from blue to red. Also, the front light turned red. Unfortunately, the NAS webpage offered no indication of operation in degraded mode on the first page. However, the RAID Management page correctly indicated the RAID status and the affected disk bay. The option to set up a SMTP account (which can be used for email alerts) is also available.

The power consumed by the unit at the wall under various NAS operating modes is provided in the table below. 2-bay ARM-based NAS units from other vendors have a similar power consumption profile.

In terms of price, the LaCie 2big NAS slots in between the Netgear Duo v2 and the Synology DS211+. The available features are in line with the pricing. While the Netgear model doesn't have official support for NFS or iSCSI (slated to appear in one of the upcoming firmware releases), the LaCie 2big NAS model supports them at launch. On the other hand, the DS211+ has 256 MB of DRAM extra, and is able to offer more features such as multiple iSCSI targets. These factors lead us to conclude that the LaCie 2big NAS model is not overpriced for its feature set. The performance of the unit is acceptable when the price is taken into account.

Towards the end of the testing process, we tried to check out how the unit would behave when starting in diskless mode. After removing the drives and removing the partitions by connecting them to a PC, we put the drives in the NAS and expected the unit to appear on the network. However, the 2big NAS behaves quite differently. LaCie has a quick install guide, but it just goes to show that the unit is not as user friendly as it can be. Basically, in diskless mode, the unit can't be accessed over the network (unlike other NASes we have evaluated).

LaCie definitely needs to work on augmenting the LaCie NAS OS 2 feature set. Hiding away the capabilities of the system (including the failure to provide SSH / root access for advanced users) under the pretext of maintaining the reliability and performance of the NAS doesn't count as an acceptable excuse. In addition, the hard drive temperatures and S.M.A.R.T. status don't seem to be available to the users.

We haven't touched upon the LaCie MyNAS app available for iOS. LaCie gives more attention to Apple users, which is understandable given their target market. An Android version would definitely help broaden the appeal of the 2big NAS.

In conclusion, the LaCie 2big NAS will keep their existing users happy and may tempt them to upgrade. However, for advanced users who want to extend their NAS's capabilities, the Netgear Duo v2 presents a cheaper option and the Synology DS2xx+ lineup offers more features for a higher price. That said, depending on the usage scenario, the industrial design and the acoustics might give the 2big NAS model an edge under certain circumstances.