Hands On

The two USB 2.0 ports are used to expand the capacity of the 2big. To test this feature, I plugged in a 1GB flash drive into one port, and an external USB hard disk with two partitions in to the second port. Each of the partitions on the external hard drive mounted as separate shares, as did the flash drive. All of the shares mounted as public shares—i.e., full read/write privileges for anyone. 

The 2big lets you easily copy the contents of the attached USB storage devices by merely pressing the large, backlit front panel switch. By default, the mounted shares appear with their volume names. When you copy the contents using the USB copy function, additional shares for each volume, also with public access, are created. The name for the share with the USB data that resides on the NAS is the original volume name but with "_snap" (snapshot) appended to the end.

Figure 11: LaCie 2big share page showing attached USB drives as well as LaCie USB snapshot shares

I always like to test how well a NAS recovers from a hard disk failure. That is, after all, one of the main reasons you purchase a two-drive system. Since the 2big NAS arrived with the drives concatenated, I first had to change the RAID setting from "BIG" to "SAFE 100." Using a jeweler’s screwdriver, I moved the switch to the SAFE 100 position. I then logged into the 2big. When I navigated to the System, Disk menu, I was warned that the switch and the current configuration were out of sync.

Figure 12: Changing RAID type

I clicked on "Apply modifications." The system restarted and re-initialized, wiping out the existing data. It took just over 2 minutes for the NAS to come back online. Once it was "up," I could create shares and write data to the device even though the RAID 1 synchronization took several hours to complete. While the synchronization was in progress, the two LEDs on the rear, which are normally a solid blue, blinked red. 

In addition, the large blue indicator on the front panel glowed red. Perhaps it’s a dated reference, but the big red indicator eerily reminded me of the HAL9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I should also note that the front panel light was a bit inconsistent in its operation. During the first conversion from "BIG" to "SAFE100" mode, the light never turned red. I also did a USB-copy operation while the array was rebuilding. The front panel light turned from red to blinking blue, as it should. However, when I ejected the key, the light stayed blue instead of turning back to red.

Figure 13: 2big network NAS during RAID synchronization

While the RAID was re-synchronizing, I copied about 25 GB of music files to the 2big NAS. After the synchronization completed, the red front panel status light, as well as both drive LEDs, returned to their normal blue status.

Next, I decided to fail a drive by pulling it out while the unit was still under power (LaCie specs the 2big as hot-swappable). The front panel indicator switched to red as did the drive indicator on the rear panel. Even when running in a degraded mode, I still had access to all shares. I wrote an additional 4 GB to the NAS while it was degraded, and moved my entire music tree down one level to completely change the directory structure on one of the shares.

Figure 14: RAID status page showing RAID running degraded and one drive removed

Next, I re-inserted the original drive. The 2big NAS immediately recognized the drive and started re-mirroring. No other user intervention was required. After several hours, the NAS was back to its fault-tolerant state and all indicator lights went back to blue status.

Since LaCie is well known in the Mac community, I wanted to test the AFP capabilities. While it’s true that AFP is only necessary for legacy Macs (prior to OS X), there are probably still some of them around. To test AFP, I created a volume and disabled SMB access. I enabled AppleTalk in my Mac’s network preferences and browsed for available shares. In the screenshot below, you can see that only two shares appeared under "SMB LaCie-2big," but that an additional share named "MAC," the one I created without SMB access, also appeared under AFP LaCie-2big.

Figure 15: Mac network showing 2big shares on both AFP and SMB

Tags: LaCie, NAS, RAID,

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