LaCie rolls out 500GB Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition

Apparently, releasing one external hard drive with 500GB of storage isn't enough for one week, as LaCie has now introduced its half terabyte Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition Personal Media Server. As with previous iterations, this drive is meant to "save, show, sync and share" your media, and it boasts the ability to "stream multimedia files through DLNA-compatible UPnP media players and act as an iTunes music server." Additionally, users can setup "free remote access to their personal information via LaCie's media portal," and aside from the gigabit Ethernet port and USB 2.0 socket, you'll also find an additional USB jack for backing up data to another external HDD. This one's slated for an October launch and should carry a $199 pricetag.

[Brian J King @ Sep 27th 2007 3:18AM]

Not that high of a price tag, I'd like to see a terabyte one of these for a little less though. These drives are a BRICK (ladies - keep one in your purse to fend off intruders). HA! :p.

[... @ Sep 27th 2007 3:29AM]

Costly bricks though :)

[dys @ Sep 27th 2007 3:50AM]

I wonder if it will stream divx to the PS3 by converting it to the right format.

[Tech^Cellfish @ Sep 27th 2007 4:07AM]

Wondering the same thing. Does it transcode?

[Fozz @ Sep 27th 2007 4:20AM]

I had the old model of this, without the "media portal" functionality for a week or two but returned it as it wasn't a patch on the Buffalo Linkstation Live. That has had a "media portal" firmware update available for months now, but FTP for remote and SMB for local/XBMC access is preferable IMO.

Pity as the case design on these things is just amazing. Hopefully they'll have sorted out the lousy firmware by now.

[Jorgen @ Sep 27th 2007 4:31AM]

Wonder if this will be any good when my router is an Apple Extreme Basestation - without UPnP. Running through the manual, I couldn’t figure out if it’s possible to access an Itunes library from a remote computer... does anyone have an idea??

[Marc @ Sep 27th 2007 4:34AM]

would be nice if slimserver could be installed on it...so the squeezebox can stream from it directly.

[Furious Styles @ Sep 27th 2007 7:16AM]

Which external drives are slimserver friendly?

[Marc @ Sep 27th 2007 7:31AM]

I know some QNAP, Synology and Thecus are capable. I assume there must be more

[blore40 @ Sep 27th 2007 10:36AM]

Waiting to do the same!

[Furious Styles @ Sep 27th 2007 2:34PM]

Thanks, Marc. I too assume there must be more out there. I wish I could find an up to date listing. If anyone knows of other externals that are slimserver friendly, please, do tell. Sonos rocks (your wallet that is) and squeezebox seems to be the way to go.

[seajseven @ Sep 27th 2007 4:11PM]

It doesn't look like this box supports SMB, AFP or the usual protocols. The manual shows a browser-based file management system.

While the media portion looks beefed up over the ethernet disk mini and ethernet big disk, as well as 256MB ram over 64MB for the above mentioned, it deosnt look like this device is a huge improvement over the current LaCie NAS offerings.

The Ethernet Big disk 1tb does a fine job serving h.264/mpeg video to my playstation 3 and music to itunes, I don't know why someone would need this newer device.

[The Steven @ Sep 28th 2007 12:11AM]

Funny.... I got this from NewEgg almost a month ago.... Just did a search for NAS and this one (as well as a 340Gb) ... Bought it for abt 188.00.... Works great for my needs.