LaCie 5big NAS Pro Review - Part I
by Ganesh T S on January 7, 2013 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Enterprise
- Storage
- NAS
- LaCie
Miscellaneous Factors and Concluding Remarks
Our NAS reviews include RAID expansion and rebuild times as well as an overview of the power consumption of the unit during various operations. At the time of the lift of the NDA, our RAID-5 rebuild is 85% done (Update: Done!). However, we do have the elapsed time and power numbers for some of the other operations.
| LaCie 5big NAS Pro RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Average Power Consumption |
| RAID-0 to RAID-1 (4 TB to 4 TB / 1 to 2 drives) | 11h 50m 45s | 41.14 W |
| RAID-1 to RAID-5 (4 TB to 12 TB / 2 to 4 drives) | 32h 50m 22s | 58.84 W |
| RAID-5 to RAID-5 (12 TB to 16 TB / 4 to 5 drives) | 44h 14m 19s | 67.86 W |
| RAID-5 Rebuild (12 TB to 16 TB / 4 to 5 drives) | 23h 27m 39s | 68.73 W |
Concluding Remarks - Setting the Stage
In terms of concluding remarks, it has to be said that we didn't encounter any show-stopper bugs or disappointing performance figures. LaCie had three main differentiating aspects and the verdict on each of those factors is positive to overwhelmingly positive. The SimplyRAID novice RAID feature is a welcome addition to NAS OS 3. However, it is the minimum LaCie had to implement to lay claims to being user friendly and catch up with the competition. The rescue web admin USB key is innovative and the hybrid cloud technology is a refreshing and praiseworthy approach to secure cloud storage and tying it up in a seamless manner with access to private NAS storage.
We have to wait for a few more firmware versions before features that users take for granted in a SMB NAS are made available. Some of these include drive health check up and scans (or, at the least, SMART status reporting), multiple iSCSI targets and SSH access for advanced users. Readers can look ahead to evaluation of these features as well as NFS performance in the second part of the review.
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klassobanieras - Thursday, January 31, 2013 - link
A personal bugbear I have with NAS reviews (one that is apparently shared by no-one else in the world): How about evaluating the reliability side of things in a bit more depth?What happens when you yank a disk in the middle of a metadata-heavy write?
What happens when you yank the power-cord in the middle of a metadata-heavy write?
What happens when an HDD in a RAID set is silently corrupted? (simulated by, say, mounting it under Linux and flipping some bits)
What happens if the box breaks and you want to get your data off the disks?
What's the underlying file-system?
Does it scrub the disks?
If I just wanted to know how friendly the GUI is, I'd be reading CNET ;)
me_too - Monday, February 18, 2013 - link
I'm very interested in this NAS and I would like to read as many previews as I can before it hits the stores here in The Netherlands. Thanks for Part I :-)me_too - Sunday, February 24, 2013 - link
More questions...Why does Lacies harddrive compatibilitiy list not have Western Digital RED series drives on it? I asked them about these drives and the 5Big NAS Pro and they said they can only guarantee listed harddrives to work properly, they could not tell if they tested these drives at all.
Strangly the WD GREEN drives are listed, but online I keep reading about many problems with these drives in a NAS due to acessive head parking. Will this not be the case when used in a 5Big NAS Pro?
When can we expect Part II of the review? :-)
NVISION - Wednesday, March 6, 2013 - link
Only if there would Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interface connectivity, along with RAID10 - it would be perfect. For my use anyways :)If there would be Thunderbolt connectivity and ability to that interface use most of the systems resources, this product would suite the needs of both high performance users as well as an NAS solution.
RAID10 would be great, also on marketing viewpoint as many users prefer RAID10 over RAID6 or at least would like to have that as an option.
ejunyhu - Monday, March 11, 2013 - link
what is the vga port for? can you connect a monitor and get config&monitoring display?bobasaur - Wednesday, April 10, 2013 - link
I read elsewhere that the VGA port is for seeing boot up sequence & settings, useful during disaster recovery.bobasaur - Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - link
can't wait for part 2!xpro - Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - link
I've been holding my breath, I look like a smurf.bobasaur - Thursday, July 18, 2013 - link
I'm an honorary smurf now tooBob38489 - Monday, July 15, 2013 - link
With regards to the choice of drives, what drives are reliable? It seems many internal drive reviews on amazon report having multiple drives bought in one go fail on their nas. This shows up under the one star ratings for the seagate barracuda, wd red green and black. Why such high failure rates?Is there a good drive to use on a nas, without going for the WD RE Enterprise drive? I don't really need too much performance, just high reliability for moderate cost.