Lacie 5big Office+ Nas Review

LaCies’ 5Big Office+ is a great storage tool for a small business environment simply because it easily integrates into any network because of its Microsoft backbone OS.  However we at Techwarelabs set out to build a comparable storage solution to see if how we could compare to LaCies’ price of $1,499.00.

All things considered I have no doubt about the quality or effectiveness of the LaCie 5Big Office+.  The build quality is superior and the collaboration of Hardware is second-to-none.  I do have a couple things to keep in mind if you’re looking at integrating any NAS into a small business environment.

• Redundancy: The best way to avoid down time (in this case inaccessibility to files or backups) is redundancy.  LaCie has the drives and network covered (RAID and Dual Gigabit respectively).  However they have not approached the possibility of a Power Supply Failure.  The external power supply design is a step in the right direction because it is easily replaceable.  Yet still there lies the possibility of down time.  With a storage device at this caliber downtime is often unacceptable.  I recommend purchasing a 2nd adapter in the case of a failure.
• Warranty: LaCie has included a 3 year warranty with the 5big Office+ which is a great safety net.  This means you are guaranteed this device for 3 years (Price ~$1,500.00 comes down to $500/year GUARANTEED).  This is something often overlooked when purchasing or building a NAS.  In our build above the total warranty might be a year or 2 (excluding Hard Drives).  While that build is more modular it can easily become a constant upgrade pit.

With everything we have discussed here I am confident that this device could easily and effectively integrate into any small business environment.  However Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 means that this NAS cannot easily be administered by anyone: you will need someone familiar with the Windows Server family.  Sure creating accounts and monitoring privileges are easily accessed by the Dashboard; Things such as RAID Management need someone familiar in the field.  With all of this in mind I have no reasons not to award the LaCie 5Big Office+ our Awesome Hardware Award.

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