Digital Trends

LaCie Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition 500GB December 26th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Features and Design

LaCie's new 500GB Ethernet Disk mini "Home Edition" is a sweet little external drive. It has a single 500GB hard drive inside, and the external enclosure is made of the same textured aluminum common to LaCie's top-of-the-line drives. The texture is like ultra fine sandpaper - smooth, but just grippy enough to create a compelling tactile sensation. Because the mini has a single drive inside, the overall size of the enclosure is smaller than most external drives. It measures about 44mm x 160mm x 173mm, or about 1.7" x 6.3" x 6.8". It weighs about 3.3 lbs, or 52.95 oz.

The front of the drive has the signature LaCie One-Touch button and status light. The sides have the LaCie logo stamped on them. The back of the drive has a fan grille, a 10/100/1000 (yes, gigabit) Ethernet port, a USB host port for external backups, a power plug and a Kensington-style lock port. It's incredibly simple.

The Ethernet Disk mini can be stacked horizontally (laid on its side and stacked on other minis), kept upright with the included aluminum base, or even rack mounted with LaCie's hard drive rack.

The internal drive is SATA and spins at 7200 RPM. It has 8MB cache in the current model, but this could change to drives with 16MB cache at any time. 

Because the mini relies on software to be located on your LAN (and accessible over the Internet), it will only work with Windows 2000, XP and Vista as well as Mac OS X 10.3 or higher - including Leopard. Browser access is pretty generous - Windows Explorer 6 or higher, Safari 1.3 or higher, Firefox 1.5 or higher. It may work with other browsers as well, but LaCie recommends the aforementioned holy trinity of ultra-compatible web browsers. 

The back of the Ethernet Disk mini

World Wide Access

The Ethernet Disk mini has an incredibly useful feature - external access from anywhere in the world. The mini connects to your network by means of a LAN cable then when your router is properly configured to allow access, you can log in to homelacie.com with your special user name and password and access (and even upload) files on the mini hard drive as if they were local to your computer and/or network. This feature is highly unusual for hard drives and makes the Ethernet Disk mini a hot commodity for computer users who need to maintain access to files but don't want to bring an external drive along with them. 

iTunes Server

The Ethernet Disk mini can be used as a storage place for your iTunes library. Optionally, it can hold more than one iTunes library, giving a family or office a shared entertainment server. Because the Ethernet Disk mini uses 10/100/1000 network connection, the streaming of music and video will never experience a hiccup due to low bandwidth on the LAN.

The mini will act as a media server for your TV when connected to a UPnP media player.

FamilyLibrary, MyLibrary, MyBackup, MyContacts, etc.

The Ethernet Disk mini comes with several pre-configured folders for your file-storing pleasure. These folders are FamilyLibrary, MyLibrary and MyBackup. Under each folder is a sub-set of folders, like FamilyDocuments, FamilyMusic, FamilyPhotos and FamilyVideos, etc. You can log into the administration manager in any web browser and change file names, add or delete folders, etc. The drive, in browser mode, acts very much like an FTP server. The mini also has a MyContacts folder so you can sync your contacts list on the drive - again, for local and external access.

The Ethernet Disk mini comes with optional backup software (called DesktopMirror) for use on both Mac and Windows-based computers. The software is easy to set up and can even run automatically or at the press of a single button. The HipServ Agent software grants access to the drive via LAN or Internet.

Included in the box: LaCie Ethernet Disk mini 500GB drive and stand, ethernet cable, power supply, software CD and setup guide.

Required for use: Ethernet router (one that supports UPnP, ideally), high speed Internet connection (cable, DSL, FIOS, etc.) with port 80 or 443 open, PC or Mac with anything greater than 500MHz, and Windows 2000, XP, Vista or OS X 10.3 and up, a little patience and about 30-40 minutes.