Bobby's World

Recently i bought a NAS ( Network Attached Storage ) drive from +Currys PC World . This one was in the bargain bin for £89.99, At the time i thought this was a decent price for a 2TB drive. This device allows you to access it via USB or Ethernet.

Once i got it home i plugged it into my network and installed the software that came with the drive. but to my surprise the software said no drives attached. Some what puzzled i decided to look on the internet for answers. It came apparent to me that this was an issue that a lot of users was having. The term plug and play does not seem to apply to this drive.

I decided to try and access it via the USB option instead. Maybe there is a setting that needs to be applied. So i plugged it into my Windows 7 machine. Again i'm faced with the same issue. Nothing happens when it was plugged in.

after a further hour of searching the internet i came across a site that explained what you needed to do. However i was not able to follow this as the options this site was advising me to do seemed to no exist on the software that came with the drive.

So like any user would do i headed over to the Lacie website to see if there's a new version. After a few mins searching on their site i found a new version of the software. I would recommend installing this rather than using the original. click on the link below to download.

LaCie Network Assistant (LNA 1.5.14 Win, LNA 1.5.14 Mac, LNA 1.1.0 Linux) · December 17, 2012.

The above software will not work for the USB mode, I will explain about this a bit later on.

After installing this latest software instead of the original the options this other website was advising suddenly became available. One of the options that it suggested was to 'Wake Up A Device'

Clicking on this option should show you the following display

Where it says Device to wake up you will need to enter the MAC ( Media Access Control ) address. Every device that connects to a network or internet will have one of these. In my case i found this MAC address on the back of the original CD that came with the device. However if you don't have this you should be able to find it on the bottom of the device itself.

within a couple of seconds of doing this my windows 7 machine popped up advising a new network hard drive has been found. Once this happened i was able to access the dashboard that comes with the device through my web browser. You remember when i mentioned that this software will not work for when in USB mode. The reason i believe is because as a default setting the NAS Drive is set to provide 0GB of storage through USB. This can be changed in the settings menu on your dash board. (I.P Address of the new hard drive)

As you can see above this is the reason as to why when i was using the USB it did nothing. Now that the drive is installed and is accessible i don't have any complaints with it. Decent speed from it, doesn't appear to be any lagging. I tested this by watching a video through my XBox 360 from the HD while adding new files on my PC.

we did not experience any lagging or quality loss. A perfect addition to the home network allowing all forms of media to be accessed.

I do have to say tho if a simply user was to buy this device i would fear there lack of knowledge would mean they would be taking this device back to the shop. It is not Plug & Play as its described to be. This advice may not work for all users. but i hope it is of some use to you,