LaCie's Ethernet Disk mini hits 500GB, finally

Announced in January 2005, the 7200rpm 500GB LaCie Ethernet Disk mini is finally prepped to ship. In the UK anyway, where it can be pre-ordered for £245 inclusive of VAT. While the link to the US site is hot, the link to order for $299 remains dead as AIBO. The Ethernet Disk mini functions as a NAS for Windows, Mac and Linux boxes with support for UPnP A/V, Apple Bonjour, SMB, AFP, and more. It's better than that though, since it can also be plugged directly into your Mac or PC via the USB 2.0 interface for some external disk action when the network is unavailable. Hell, it even features an additional USB host port allowing you to expand capacity even further or pull photos directly from your USB equipped digital camera. Let's just hope they've boosted the transfer speeds as well. Shipping "late October 2006" which, in case you didn't know, means today LaCie.

[Thanks, Adam]

Read -- LaCie Ethernet Disk mini 500GB (US)
Read -- LaCie Ethernet Disk mini 500GB (UK)

Update: We just got an email from LaCie pointing out that the difference with this new model is that it includes gigabit Ethernet, and that it will be released only in Europe for the time being.

Read - LaCie

[GSP @ Oct 31st 2006 9:51AM]

Just checked the US link ... and it works!

[Tom Simpson @ Oct 31st 2006 10:06AM]

Stay away from Lacie drives... my office bought 3 of the 500GB drives, 2 failed within 3 months!

[Alex @ Oct 31st 2006 10:07AM]

Google tells me that $299 is roughly �158... So where do they get �245 from? Why do we always get ripped off in britain?

[jtg @ Oct 31st 2006 10:15AM]

I scond what Tom Simpson said: STAY AWAY FROM LACIE. Every product of thiers I've ever interacted with has failed in spectacular fashion. In fact just yesterday a driver I downloaded from their website magically disabled all USB support in windows. Thanks Lacie!

[Hammo @ Oct 31st 2006 10:26AM]

"One interesting option I noticed was the disk format menu (Figure 4). By default, the mini's internal disk is formatted in a least-common-denominator format of FAT32 so it can be directly accessed when USB-plugged into a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system. But one downside to FAT32 is a file size limitation of 2GB."

Hmm. So, if you need files over 2GB, you have to format away from FAT32 to ext3 no doubt. Mmm - tricky for using the USB then on Windows (and possibly Macs)...

[Olivier @ Oct 31st 2006 10:20AM]

Just to add some dirt on LaCie's back, my year old external hard-drive sounds like a Jet Turbine when in operation.

It has to live in a drawer now waiting for its doosmday.

[andy @ Oct 31st 2006 10:51AM]

U.S.B......U.S.B dont think id use anything less than firewire 800 myself

[WorldWideWeeb @ Oct 31st 2006 11:17AM]

Hey Thomas,

Think you need to edit your article as this is the 1000Gb/s ethernet version of the Etherdisk mini. It is only on the UK site for pre-order at present, whereas the model on the US site is only the 100Mb/s version.

1000Gb/s 500Gb NAS??!! yes, please!! :)

[THEY @ Oct 31st 2006 11:41AM]

I've had nothing but specatcular experiences with LaCie.
But I'm curious.
Could I pull from this drive with the Apple 'iTv' without requiring a computer to interface with it?
That would me most excellent.
And we all know what Bill & Ted said, "Be Excellent To Each Other"

[umijin @ Oct 31st 2006 11:53AM]

Well, I've had the 250GB EtherDisk mini for about a year, and I'm not thrilled with it. Transfers by both USB and via network have been unreliable, and often failed. Software upgrade from LaCie have helped a bit. And aAfter reformatting the drive from FAT32 to HFS+, transfers from all my Macs have become more reliable, but not entirely. Some files just won't copy to the drive. And transfer rates via network are abysmal - by USB 2.0 are not so fast either.

Unless LaCie can miraculously solve the software issues with the larger EtherDiskMini, I wouldn't recommend this drive.

[David Hitlin @ Oct 31st 2006 12:09PM]

Neither the technical spec nor the manual (both available on the US site as pdf files) mention anything about uPnP.

[Daniel Whittred @ Oct 31st 2006 12:10PM]

As with WorldWideWeeb, i noticed that the UK version was a 16MB buffered disk compared to the 8MB US version - maybe that and the Ethernet speed differences account for the big price difference... I'm in Australia, so I don't really know what one would get to me the easiest.

Another thing, I have owned an old Lacie external floppy drive and have not had any problems with it - tho, i have heard of a mates Lacie external hard drive cracking up on him.

Cheers,

[Brandon @ Oct 31st 2006 12:20PM]

Good experience with me and Lacie's...I have 5 250gb Firewire drives all running...oldest is about 2 years old, newest about 8 months. My Maxtor's all failed after about 2 years.

[Carnaval13 @ Oct 31st 2006 12:39PM]

I have LaCie drives and never had any problem with them. This NAS drive is really doing a good job when it comes to simple file sharing. If you move 10GB files all day then you should probably look at a different product but for some backup and document sharing, it's good. Price is really close to regular HD.

[umijin @ Nov 1st 2006 11:21AM]

But do you have an Ethernet disk?

I don't have a problem with the drive mechanism itself, just the file transfer part. It hasn't been reliable for me.

[DirtHerder @ Oct 31st 2006 1:26PM]

I concur with the "stay away from LaCie" sentiment.

I've got six of them, and two of them just died on me.

One with some important personal stuff on it.

Anyone have any suggestions for a more dependable alternative to LaCie? I think I'm done with them.

[oj @ Oct 31st 2006 5:29PM]

it also appears that in addition to the slave-B-usb port, the UK version has a host-usb port to add an additional external to the chain.

[pieter @ Oct 31st 2006 5:41PM]

Beware that also the current 250GB 100MB/s version doesn't com even close to 100MB/s via the ethernet connection. Gigabit will only deliver the bytes faster to the hopelessly slow disk i/o processor inside ...

[IanP. @ Oct 31st 2006 6:54PM]

I too had a LaCie hard drive fail on me. I really like the case though, and I was at least able to salvage that. I took the dead 160GB drive out and replaced it with a 300GB internal IDE drive I picked up and it works great.

[rodney sharples @ Feb 19th 2007 8:13AM]

This is an sad and sorry subject for me.

LaCie discs are junk.

I havehad two of three die in the last year.
They are not fit for daily use.

DIRTHERDER => After the two failures of my LaCie discs I rang around resellers of high end video and audio equipment -a high majority recommended drives from G-Technology
www.g-technology.com

Also recommended were drives from
www.avastor.com

I have since moved all storage to G-Technology"G-Drive/ G-Raid drives
they are around 2x expensive, but are stable, reliable and use decent chipsets.
(I have no connection with G-Tech I'm justa
asatisfied customer).

regards