Tuesday, January 25, 2011
LACIE NETWORK SPACE - NETWORK ATTACHED STORAGE? - NETWORK ATTACHED BRICK, MORE LIKE
AND DEFINITELY NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
I remember back in 1999-2000 knowledgeable techie colleagues were fairly unimpressed with Lacie products, so why oh why didn't I heed their criticisms a few years ago when I was looking for some network attached storage and found the Lacie Network Space?
I wanted an inexpensive but reliable, large-capacity hard drive that any PC connected to my home network could access for data backups etc. I thought 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) would last a good while and hold plenty of stuff.
So the Lacie Network Space seemed ideal for a SOHO worker like me who needs to back up my everyday stuff but also my wife's, visiting stepdaughters' etc etc.
The Lacie looked sleek and shiny when I unpacked it and it seemed simple enough to set up and use, albeit slightly unpredictable as to when my PC could 'see' it. As I only intended to use it for backups it wasn't running continuously, so it's never had to work hard.
After I'd had it a while the drive couldn't be seen by my PC at all via the Windows Explorer and the Ethernet Agent software that came with it couldn't see it either. So as it was still under warranty I opened a support ticket with Lacie and played email tennis with them for a few weeks as they tried to avoid doing anything about it.
I have to say that Lacie's tech support is tantamount to useless and their customer communications are even worse. I ended up having to escalate the problem to their CEO before anything happened.
However, eventually I got them to agree to take the thing back for repair, although they warned me I would lose any data on the drive. So much for the reliable backup drive I had been seeking. I think the geeks at Lacie told me the network interface had failed, but they also said that the external power supply could cause problems - not delivering the right or clean-enough voltage, apparently. I suspect from this that Lacie sources the cheapest possible components for its products, regardless of the fact that they want to play in a market segment where the words 'reliable' and 'mission critical' are quite important to their customers.
Anyway. By and by the drive came back and it seemed to be working ok. A year down the line I have switched it on and used it no more than three or four times (not very good backup strategy, I admit) and usually managed to get it working after restarting it a few times.
One particularly annoying foible of the drive, by the way, is that if you don't ensure its onboard clock is correct after switching on, it returns to a default date and time at some point in 2000. If you save any files to the drive while it's in this state, it time and date-stamps them from its own clock, not from the files' built-in creation date, so they all end up being some time in 2000 and there's no way of knowing which is the most recent.
This is absolutely useless for a backup and pretty unhelpful for any other file. Ok, fair enough if its onboard clock is going to reset to factory default if it's been turned off for months, but you would think it could have been designed to ask you to confirm the date and time at power-up instead. Supposedly it can be configured to go and look for a time server on the internet and get the date and time from that, but that feature doesn't work, or at least not reliably.
One other thing: wireless PCs on the network can't see it at all, only when they're connected by cable. Marvellous.
Today I thought I'd better do a backup so turned the wretched thing on. Powers up, pretty blue light comes on and that's it. Lacie Ethernet Agent can't see it, Windows Explorer can't see it, so I can't connect to it to see what it's doing (actually, I know what it's doing: f*ck-all). Have tried restarting it three or four times but no joy.
This is a machine that's probably been on for eight hours in its miserable, useless life, so in terms of MTBF it's hardly been pushed to the limit. Maybe it's meant to be left running 24/7? Well there's nothing in the manual to say so and in any case it's not very green to leave something running continuously when you only want to use it once every few months.
No, it's just a piece of junk and so, based on my experience and the recommendations of my former colleagues, if you are ever contemplating buying a Lacie product I strongly recommend you don't.
And if you'd like a shiny, black paperweight - 'designed' (not sure how much design there is in a featureless brick) by Neil Poulton, no less - whoever the hell he is - then let me know and for a very small consideration I will bung my Lacie Network Space in the post to you.
Just don't plug it in and expect it to do anything useful.
AND DEFINITELY NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE
I remember back in 1999-2000 knowledgeable techie colleagues were fairly unimpressed with Lacie products, so why oh why didn't I heed their criticisms a few years ago when I was looking for some network attached storage and found the Lacie Network Space?
I wanted an inexpensive but reliable, large-capacity hard drive that any PC connected to my home network could access for data backups etc. I thought 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes) would last a good while and hold plenty of stuff.
So the Lacie Network Space seemed ideal for a SOHO worker like me who needs to back up my everyday stuff but also my wife's, visiting stepdaughters' etc etc.
The Lacie looked sleek and shiny when I unpacked it and it seemed simple enough to set up and use, albeit slightly unpredictable as to when my PC could 'see' it. As I only intended to use it for backups it wasn't running continuously, so it's never had to work hard.
After I'd had it a while the drive couldn't be seen by my PC at all via the Windows Explorer and the Ethernet Agent software that came with it couldn't see it either. So as it was still under warranty I opened a support ticket with Lacie and played email tennis with them for a few weeks as they tried to avoid doing anything about it.
I have to say that Lacie's tech support is tantamount to useless and their customer communications are even worse. I ended up having to escalate the problem to their CEO before anything happened.
However, eventually I got them to agree to take the thing back for repair, although they warned me I would lose any data on the drive. So much for the reliable backup drive I had been seeking. I think the geeks at Lacie told me the network interface had failed, but they also said that the external power supply could cause problems - not delivering the right or clean-enough voltage, apparently. I suspect from this that Lacie sources the cheapest possible components for its products, regardless of the fact that they want to play in a market segment where the words 'reliable' and 'mission critical' are quite important to their customers.
Anyway. By and by the drive came back and it seemed to be working ok. A year down the line I have switched it on and used it no more than three or four times (not very good backup strategy, I admit) and usually managed to get it working after restarting it a few times.
One particularly annoying foible of the drive, by the way, is that if you don't ensure its onboard clock is correct after switching on, it returns to a default date and time at some point in 2000. If you save any files to the drive while it's in this state, it time and date-stamps them from its own clock, not from the files' built-in creation date, so they all end up being some time in 2000 and there's no way of knowing which is the most recent.
This is absolutely useless for a backup and pretty unhelpful for any other file. Ok, fair enough if its onboard clock is going to reset to factory default if it's been turned off for months, but you would think it could have been designed to ask you to confirm the date and time at power-up instead. Supposedly it can be configured to go and look for a time server on the internet and get the date and time from that, but that feature doesn't work, or at least not reliably.
One other thing: wireless PCs on the network can't see it at all, only when they're connected by cable. Marvellous.
Today I thought I'd better do a backup so turned the wretched thing on. Powers up, pretty blue light comes on and that's it. Lacie Ethernet Agent can't see it, Windows Explorer can't see it, so I can't connect to it to see what it's doing (actually, I know what it's doing: f*ck-all). Have tried restarting it three or four times but no joy.
This is a machine that's probably been on for eight hours in its miserable, useless life, so in terms of MTBF it's hardly been pushed to the limit. Maybe it's meant to be left running 24/7? Well there's nothing in the manual to say so and in any case it's not very green to leave something running continuously when you only want to use it once every few months.
No, it's just a piece of junk and so, based on my experience and the recommendations of my former colleagues, if you are ever contemplating buying a Lacie product I strongly recommend you don't.
And if you'd like a shiny, black paperweight - 'designed' (not sure how much design there is in a featureless brick) by Neil Poulton, no less - whoever the hell he is - then let me know and for a very small consideration I will bung my Lacie Network Space in the post to you.
Just don't plug it in and expect it to do anything useful.
Labels: Lacie, NAS, network attached storage, Network Space
Monday, January 17, 2011
HAVE FARMERS TAKEN OUT A CONTRACT ON OUR COUNTRYSIDE?
Maybe things are changing: consumers are becoming more savvy about the environmental price that has to be paid for cheap food and that is slowly leading to a kinder approach to food production - in some areas at least.
One issue that has no profile, however, is the physical damage caused to the local infrastructure by agriculture. Here in Norfolk the land is in thrall to 'big power farming' - massive machines harvest potatoes and sugar beet and huge articulated lorries hurtle down narrow lanes to collect them. And have you seen the size of today's tractors?
Take a look at this image of a vintage 'little grey Fergie' tractor alongside a typical monster in use on the land and obliterating verges all over the country.
Once upon a time the diminutive machine on the left and others like it were deemed quite large enough to do the donkeywork on the farm. Not any more, now that the land is more or less bare of toiling and expensive human labour. Today one man can do the work of dozens, thanks to mighty machines like that on the right, so many if not most farmers only have one full-time employee and have contracted out practically all the work.
I believe the use of contractors is leading directly to the destruction of verges for two reasons: the aforementioned size of modern tractors which, wheel-to-wheel, are often as wide as the road and the fact that cost-driven contractors are always in a big hurry to get the job done. Sure, they work hard and all hours, but they have no obvious familial or social allegiance to the environment in which they work. They are also not accountable to the farmer for damage to the verges of roads that may well pass through his land: he just wants the work done as quickly and cheaply as possible. So tractor drivers think nothing of driving up onto verges - often towing massive and heavily laden trailers behind them - to let oncoming vehicles pass. The verges simply get mashed and take ages to recover, if they ever do.
Similarly, at least in Norfolk, the endless succession of 38-ton articulated lorries thundering down narrow lanes to collect sugar beet and potatoes and rush them to the refineries and processing plants, is also putting the local infrastructure under a lot of pressure. Once a verge is destroyed and the edge of the tarmac is exposed, the road starts to crumble and potholes appear. And we all know what those do to the tender wheels, tyres and suspensions of our cars. Oh - and those mashed up verges are really, really, ugly, turned from havens for flora and fauna into something more akin to WWI battlefields.
I watched a monster very like the one above, which was also towing a huge trailer with enormous tyres, ride up the foot-high verge outside our parish church to pass an oncoming lorry - instead of doing the sensible thing and pulling over further back where the road was wide enough for both vehicles. Those big tyres just chewed up the verge and scarred the grassy bank outside the church for good. That verge is a lovely spot, in the shadow of a mighty oak that must have been there for hundreds of years. Norfolk isn't blessed with many hills, but this spot is one of the highest locally and on a clear day you can see all around for several miles, hear skylarks singing and see Billy Wix the Barn Owl, who lives in the church tower, gliding silently over the fields and copses.
On another occasion, I was standing on the verge of a single track road, close to where a car had pulled over. Up roared a steroidal tractor and instead of waiting for the car to move, or even slowing down noticeably, swerved onto the opposite verge, leaving the deep and lasting tread marks characteristic of tractor tyres in the soft ground. In a kind of rough justice, the tractor driver caught the prominent bracket of his offside mirror on a tree, which ripped the whole thing off. Oblivious even to this in his giant vehicle, he continued on his way. I was still there an hour later when he returned somewhat sheepishly to collect the remains of the mirror - hopefully after he had been given a bollocking by his boss.
To be fair to the agricultural community, they are not wholly to blame for the destruction of verges. In this increasingly discourteous age, fewer car drivers will pull over at a convenient spot to let oncoming traffic pass, so more and more ad hoc passing places are being carved out of the verges in our haste to get to our destinations quickly and through our unwillingness to give way to other road users. It's almost as if there's a loss of face involved in giving way, an assertion that 'I have just as much right to be on this road as you - I pay my road tax!'.
I can't really see a solution to the problem: farmers are unlikely to badger their contractors to drive more considerately, while the behaviour of car drivers reflects the increasing selfishness of modern life. Many people would say: 'What do a few verges out in the countryside matter - it's practically all mud anyway?'. If you look at the erosion of verges as a metaphor for modern life, with the big battalions riding roughshod over the little people, perhaps it's not so easy to dismiss the issue as someone else's worry.
Farmers come in for a lot of stick these days and are a popular whipping boy, for the most part unable to fight back against their critics. On the whole they don't deserve the brickbats that get thrown at them: they have responded to the demand for more and ever-cheaper food by producing it, year after year. But increasingly it seems that this has only been possible by getting into bed with the agro-chem companies and burdening the land with more and more chemicals.
Maybe things are changing: consumers are becoming more savvy about the environmental price that has to be paid for cheap food and that is slowly leading to a kinder approach to food production - in some areas at least.
One issue that has no profile, however, is the physical damage caused to the local infrastructure by agriculture. Here in Norfolk the land is in thrall to 'big power farming' - massive machines harvest potatoes and sugar beet and huge articulated lorries hurtle down narrow lanes to collect them. And have you seen the size of today's tractors?
Take a look at this image of a vintage 'little grey Fergie' tractor alongside a typical monster in use on the land and obliterating verges all over the country.
Once upon a time the diminutive machine on the left and others like it were deemed quite large enough to do the donkeywork on the farm. Not any more, now that the land is more or less bare of toiling and expensive human labour. Today one man can do the work of dozens, thanks to mighty machines like that on the right, so many if not most farmers only have one full-time employee and have contracted out practically all the work.
I believe the use of contractors is leading directly to the destruction of verges for two reasons: the aforementioned size of modern tractors which, wheel-to-wheel, are often as wide as the road and the fact that cost-driven contractors are always in a big hurry to get the job done. Sure, they work hard and all hours, but they have no obvious familial or social allegiance to the environment in which they work. They are also not accountable to the farmer for damage to the verges of roads that may well pass through his land: he just wants the work done as quickly and cheaply as possible. So tractor drivers think nothing of driving up onto verges - often towing massive and heavily laden trailers behind them - to let oncoming vehicles pass. The verges simply get mashed and take ages to recover, if they ever do.
Similarly, at least in Norfolk, the endless succession of 38-ton articulated lorries thundering down narrow lanes to collect sugar beet and potatoes and rush them to the refineries and processing plants, is also putting the local infrastructure under a lot of pressure. Once a verge is destroyed and the edge of the tarmac is exposed, the road starts to crumble and potholes appear. And we all know what those do to the tender wheels, tyres and suspensions of our cars. Oh - and those mashed up verges are really, really, ugly, turned from havens for flora and fauna into something more akin to WWI battlefields.
I watched a monster very like the one above, which was also towing a huge trailer with enormous tyres, ride up the foot-high verge outside our parish church to pass an oncoming lorry - instead of doing the sensible thing and pulling over further back where the road was wide enough for both vehicles. Those big tyres just chewed up the verge and scarred the grassy bank outside the church for good. That verge is a lovely spot, in the shadow of a mighty oak that must have been there for hundreds of years. Norfolk isn't blessed with many hills, but this spot is one of the highest locally and on a clear day you can see all around for several miles, hear skylarks singing and see Billy Wix the Barn Owl, who lives in the church tower, gliding silently over the fields and copses.
On another occasion, I was standing on the verge of a single track road, close to where a car had pulled over. Up roared a steroidal tractor and instead of waiting for the car to move, or even slowing down noticeably, swerved onto the opposite verge, leaving the deep and lasting tread marks characteristic of tractor tyres in the soft ground. In a kind of rough justice, the tractor driver caught the prominent bracket of his offside mirror on a tree, which ripped the whole thing off. Oblivious even to this in his giant vehicle, he continued on his way. I was still there an hour later when he returned somewhat sheepishly to collect the remains of the mirror - hopefully after he had been given a bollocking by his boss.
To be fair to the agricultural community, they are not wholly to blame for the destruction of verges. In this increasingly discourteous age, fewer car drivers will pull over at a convenient spot to let oncoming traffic pass, so more and more ad hoc passing places are being carved out of the verges in our haste to get to our destinations quickly and through our unwillingness to give way to other road users. It's almost as if there's a loss of face involved in giving way, an assertion that 'I have just as much right to be on this road as you - I pay my road tax!'.
I can't really see a solution to the problem: farmers are unlikely to badger their contractors to drive more considerately, while the behaviour of car drivers reflects the increasing selfishness of modern life. Many people would say: 'What do a few verges out in the countryside matter - it's practically all mud anyway?'. If you look at the erosion of verges as a metaphor for modern life, with the big battalions riding roughshod over the little people, perhaps it's not so easy to dismiss the issue as someone else's worry.
Labels: agricultural contractors, potatoes, potholes, roadside verges, sugar beet, tractors
