Seagate Business Storage NAS 2-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage Enclosure STBN100

Let me first say that I am a big "bang for the buck" consumer and so far this puppy does not disappoint. Heck it actually over delivers which id unusual these days.I bought this USED here at Amazon for $200.00 and quite frankly, after reading most of the reviews, I thought I was essentially buying it JUST for the drives at worst, or as a big dumb network attached drive to dump back ups into at best. I mean, clearly the last user has likely posted a less than stellar review here and decided to cut his/her losses.When it arrived, I took heed of the comments I read here regarding the less than eloquent set up instructions and took my time reading the sparse documentation (definitely not average consumer friendly). So this, and only this, is why I am not giving it a 5 star rating.First thing I did was update to the latest firmware. Straight forward to the average computer hack like me - but again, I could see how the average consumer could get wrapped around the axle as the TWO file, two step operation is not intuitive.Changing up the Raid from 0 to 1 was surprisingly slow. I had just done the same to a 5 year old 1TB linkstation in a matter of 10 minutes, so imagine my surprise when it took 9 (NINE) hours to complete on this puppy. “Here we go…” I thought. However, after all was said and done, I was ready to put it through a few paces. Setting up the shares, media server, web access function was simple. Again from an average consumer perspective (remember that Seagate advertises this as a NAS you don’t need IT folks to help you set up) there is not enough information to guide you and you have to rely on either your own knowledge of networking/storage terms or good googling skills or both.Anywho…all set up, I threw 4 or five dvd’s at it to transfer from a computer on the network and bam…36mb/sec. Nice….yea, yea, many faster ones out there, but did I mention I got this for $200 bucks? I threw 60 GB of mixed photo, mp3, large and small video files and the speed came down to a VERY respectable 27mb/sec. I then had it stream 3 different movies to 3 different wireless devices and it didn’t miss a beat. This had brought that 5 year old linkstation to its knees just minutes before.Let’s see…web access works just fine…I mean it’s no dropbox in the looks department but works nicely from mobile devices…not a fan of having to d/l a tappin agent for accessing through pc’s … but no real big deal. Web GUI is nice, LOTS of “server like” features – user accounts, permissions, groups, system status and alerts at the raid, HDD, even fan and cpu temp. level. definitely not just a big dumb networked attached drive. Was not clear from the documentation if the drives were or were not hot swappable (one place said yes, another no). So, I yanked one…. Dashboard said I was missing a drive…put it back in …dashboard said it was rebuilding raid…Yup they are hot swappable ….very cool. Did I mention I paid $200 bucks for it? USM drive slot is cool. Transfer rates are VERY COOL. Dual Ethernet plugs you can set to dual networks or fail over one to another for redundancy…are you serious? Have not tested the b/u software but if in fact it does system image backups…WAY cool.So far, I am ecstatic with my purchase, AND all the bells, whistles and the technology packed into this innocuous package. Oh yea, I almost forgot…the fan IS a bit loud during boot up and while under load, but nothing obnoxious…I don’t think. Even the wife said “nice little package” ….oh geez I hope she was still talking about the NAS ; - )In Summary….it’s hard to knock anything about this thing other than documentation and MAYBE the loud-ish fan… So I think Seagate should poach a technical writer from IKEA (here you go Seagate…some free consulting avise) to redo their setup documentation, knock their dev guys around the head for putting out stuff like multi-file/step firmware updates that kind of thing….and whamo…5 star ratings everytime.I reserve the right to repost if it craps out in 2 weeks. :- )

01/10/2017 - we had to move to a new home and it was switched off for 2 weeks, the Unit is dead and cant be started. all my raid data has to be sent to a special disk restore company to restore (costs). i have to do a similar restore before 3 months as the segate raid would see the disks as foreign (just when i moved from one floor to another after shutting down properly). what a waste of time and money over 2 years. This will go into "for Parts" sale this week. feel very bad about the purchase and spending so much money and get us in heart attack mode when we first see that it does not work. (had to reduce the 5 start to Zero Stars) Seagate , i trusted you. but not anymore. these 2 years i have to replace all the disks twice and since they were in warranty i escaped. but the foreign disk issue is unbeleivable (you guys should have better tools to examine and put them back into the raid groups they were before), such a waste that i have to spend money to put them into the same raid levels on to a hanging ubuntu desktop then transfer data back when the disks are formatted. Please dont sell products like these when the netgear products are lasting for the past 2 plus years and no issues even once.i just ordered the QNAP 4 bay 4K storage unit this week to replace this12/30/2014: in a nutshell, works awesome. but needs lot of skills to set this up. once if raid group were created, the groups are not accessable in windows, until you check this box NFS (network file share) which does not make much sence because it is one single option for all the raid groups you have. I wish you have one for each. but that is ok for now atleast i was able to get rid of other issues.the main issue i saw when regrouping the raid levels (like remove everything and start), the partitions that were created by seagate were not removeed even when i removed the disk and claieed them. so i have to take every individual disk out of the system and put into a cirago docking station (disk reader) and connect each of the disk one at a time to the computer using usb 3. then it shows up as 15 partitions, started removing every partition using disk management in windows and once there were no more allcations, put them back into the seagate NAS now shows up with all the space. Seriously seagate, you dont have an option to claim the entire disk when you say the disk will be claimed ?copy is faster and encryption raid 1 setup was slow. did not yet try copying files.simply to say the array is very good and gives good performance, but scratch everything (including the certs) and rebuit it from scratch, it works like a charm. also remeber the NFS check box under sharing menu. this is very important. while initially setting up the nas, (once you put no partition disks, the software will kick in, if you visit the ip address on a web page). please remember to give it a nice name that you remenber and followed by a static ip (just change the last 3 of the IP to 100 or 200) so it wont be hit by your local network range. if you leave it at dynamic, everytime you restart the router, the ip changes and it is horrable to setup any automated jobs).wometimes wont reboot if you press the hard reset, always try the hard reset on the box and wait for sometime, if it does not work then unplug. dont unplug immediately.i was able to put 2 tb times 3 plus a 3 tb to mix and match the 1 raid 5 and 3 raid 1 and a raid0 setting. no issues works awesome.seagate person said that we could call the helpdesk to have to give a live support from mon to fri upto 6 pm central time, but never used italso when a device is such challenging, it gives an opportunity to learn every aspect of it, which i like it. so i am going to keep this for a long time. also i am using rich copy to initially copy files from each of the windows to this for now. once the first copy is done, i will be using a batch file to copy through windows task schedular. will update on how that goes,also i tried removing a disk and putting it back, works well. had to give it some time to recogonize the disk. user name and permissions are waste. i guess we cant have a setup with tight security on few raid disks but liberal on some. either or is the case.for now wish you all a Happy new Year 2015 and buy this Seagate device with confidence to learn the ins and outs of NAS setup etc. initially it was frustrating, but now it has become fun and i love it.12/15/2014: it does not support windows 8.1. software licenses is not part of the package? so the customer support tried to see by running arp -a on the command line and wants to speak with their customer rep from 8 to 6 central time mon thru fri. my problem is the software loads fine but i cannot map a drive letter on my windows 8.1 (No kidding). the shares have been created with user name and password in the seagate web tool, but the share does not show up even with \\10.... \sharename . i am waiting to get the customer support in line and will update this site. for now it is just a star (on the device), software gets the remaining 4 zeros. worst than i ever thought.12/6/2014: Update after a day: I dont know how everything got fixed. but the web page for the NAS Now loads with a handsome application. Lot of custom options. i guess when the lights were blinking, they automatically updated the firmware on the system. I have a 2 x2 tb + 1 x 3 tb on a RAID 5 remaining 1 tb on the third disk plus a 4th disk of 650 gb together on a RAID1 drive. building the raid volumes now. i am the most happiest person ever. (will plan to upgrade the disk capacity in future). so people connect your NAS to the internet, it does the magic.12/5/2014: Initial Comments: Brought one this Thanksgiving. ditto on all issues, also the 4 bay link from seagate does not work on my windows 8.1 system. while installing the discovery it works. but while installing the managament piece, it fails (the second one in the installer). i have to cancel myself at that point and when i run the discovery tool, it shows up and a link to a NAS Manager button, (it only shows all the disk and you could check and erase them) there is no way to setup Raid or disk partitions in this web tool.very sad, but trying to get a way to fix.also if you initialize the disk using the NAS Manager web page, then the system does not come online until we go and hard reboot the NAS. also the lights are blinking from Disk 1 to 2 to 3 very fast doing nothing. Seagate.. please help.i brought your product after ignoring all the comments and my collegues advice to buy synergy. i hope i wont go bad will wait for couple of days to see if i could resolve all the issues.

Purchased to consolidate information contained on various external hard drives because I was concerned they were "at risk". (was using WD My Books and two of those have failed so thought I would go to Seagate. at least WD goes glitchy and gives you warning). Thought this was foolproof, set it up to mirror, and was going to copy for an offsite backup once I got everything on Seagate NAS. Unfortunately, part way thru copying files NAS decided to fail, ie no longer showed up as a storage device, but as a computer on the network, but would not accept the password, nor could it be accessed thru the IP address, then disappeared off network. Talked to nice people at Seagate, who were baffled, did tons of trouble shooting with them, zero results. Told me to recover the data (yup, thats easy and cheap), and return for replacement. Took to local computer joint, there is zero firmware on the device, no idea how that happened. had to purchase two more 4TB harddrives, so we could clone and ship out originals to a data recovery company. Let you know how that goes. and what it costs. Into it for $750+ and don't have data back yet. Curious if there is a product out there that actually works.

Bought this from Amazon.ca, got it and it was easy to set up, added the folders and users. Everything was working great until day 5 when I went to power it down and the power button won't work correctly. So was unable to power it down and or start it up using the power button.Call Seagate and reported the problem, after being on the phone for over an hour (pain full) they finally issued an replacement unit to be shipped to me. Got the e-mail showing that the unit was shipped with tracking number, and was shipped fairly fast.When I got it I unpacked it and it looked great until I noticed these small words at the back of the unit, (RECERTIFIED) (i.e.: another word for REFURBISHED). Needless to say I was very upset. I spent $700.00 for a brand new unit and 5 days later my replacement is a "RECERTIFIED" unit. What the "H" is this. Furthermore I fire up the unit and get an error message on the screen. The screen was very dark hard to read, not a bright as the one I bought. Find out that (2) of the hard drives have failed, not seated correctly. After I pulled out the hard drives and re-seated them and they functioned (4 green lights). Went into the interface to volume/Raid and see a failure, click on the action button and it wants to delete the DataVolume 1.Well isn't this interesting. I get a recertified unit and it doesn't want to function properly. This unit is being return to Seagate, I have issued a replacement through Amazon.ca for a brand new unit. If this one fails I will be looking at another manufacture storage device.

I've been using this now for 2 months. Fairly easy to set up on a Microsoft network. I can now store all my video files in one location. The RAID 10 configuration also gives peace of mind since each file is saved twice. So if one of the hard drives inside this unit dies I don't lose my data. Of course, with RAID 10 the usable disk space is reduced to 5.5TB. I liked this one and need even more space so I bought a second one.UPDATE: DO NOT BUY THIS TRASH! After a year both the units I purchased failed. Despite what I wrote above, the drives did fail and there was no warning to replace a failed drive, thus saving my data. Seagate refused to stand behind their product but, instead, happily charged me over $3000 for data recovery.

Waiting for Seagate support to respond to my support request and its been 2 days no one called or email me yet.i am using latest firmware but it doesnt work well at all.1. The NAS will not reboot, shut down, or turn off with the power switch. The only recourse is to disconnect the power. This behavior does not always occur, but has occurred multiple times, for reasons that are inconclusive.2. Destination files of a NAS to USM transfer may be corrupted or may not get copied. This behavior does not always occur, but has occurred multiple times, for reasons that are inconclusive.3. Deleted few files from NAS, restarted and it start rebuilding the RAID, took 1 day to rebuild the whole thing to work. why it needs to rebuild RAID? it happened to me few times already.WILL NOT RECOMMEND ANY ONE TO BUY THIS!!

Disappointed that the drive gave up the ghost 2 days after the warranty was up. Quoted silly money to retrieve the data. Luckily I had 90% on separate drive. Does not instil confidence in this unit