Setting Up

Hooking up the StorCenter is as easy as plugging in a network cable and a power cable, and then turning it on. When I first powered the unit up it ran fairly quietly, but I found that when the fan does fire up, it's very noisy. (My wife compared it to the sound of a distant hair dryer.)

For Windows users, installation software is provided that will find the unit on the network, perform basic configuration and assign it a drive letter. If that is all you need, then you're done - it will be mounted when you log onto your computer and you can use it like any other drive. For Macintosh users, a similar utility is provided for finding and mounting the drive.

It was nice to see that even Linux users weren't left out - a Linux utility was also provided to locate and mount the drive. I think this is the first time I've seen a home NAS vendor provide Linux installation software. Kudos to Iomega!

In all cases, for advanced configuration, a web interface was available for complete control and configuration. Whether or not you intend to use the advanced features, it's still a good idea to at least log in and set the administrative password because there isn't one by default (see Figure 2). Without a password, anyone on your network would be able to re-configure or even erase the drive.

Figure 2: Login screen

As I installed the software on my Windows system, I saw an option to install a backup software package. This package was not an option when I installed on my OSX or Linux boxes, however. The backup software was full-featured with the ability to do manual, scheduled, compressed and encrypted backups.

Exploring the configuration pages, I found options for standard network settings like fixed network address vs. DHCP assignment, computer name, workgroup name, and so on. There was an option for setting the date and time (see Figure 3), but I noticed that there was no way to set up an NTP server to keep the time in sync.

Figure 3: Setting the time

Tags: Iomega, NAS, StorCenter 250,

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