Seagate Business Storage NAS 2-Bay 8TB Network Attached Storage STBN8000100

Different from all other ones, I loved the product! I am a IT systems analyst at a great datacenter from Brazil. Of course nothing is perfet....the product have some points you have to deal, as everything. Goods and bads. But it is being just as expected for me.Let's put clearly some statements first:0. It is a product focused in Power Users and you have to have network and server administrations skills. If not, it will be quite diffiicult to understant the usage of this and it's implemmentation.1. RAID BUILD - Large Drives have long Build/rebuild times. I installed two 4TB Hard Drives and took almost 24h to complete. IT IS NORMAL.We have at HP and DELL SERVERS 146GB and 300GB disks that take 4 to 6 hours in this process. Interestingly, I decided to shut down the NAS while building the raid. It shutted down. And right after I powered it up, it resumed just right there where it got stopped! Fine! Make sure you put it on a UPS system for a hassle free build and use.Good Points- Interface is quite self explained - easy to use and setup.- Good speed transfer (impressed me even in a fast ethernet network. Will migrate to giga and place an update)- You dont need to install nothing from the DVD provided. Just use the detection application just right from the disc and set it up the address you wanted. And everything aftwerwards goes by web admin console.- Quite Small- Really Silent! I hear nothing even the FAN (tested tree times to see if it aint stopped and was running slowly. fine!).Bad Points- This is the worst part of this NAS -> The HD TRAY - is the worstest in the world! I spent 3 hours trying to setup the HD's and no solution at all. THere is no instructions in how to install the HDs.... Had to replace the 4 holders (they are not screws! but mettalic inserts built into rubber fasteners). I kept the fasteners but using traditional flat head screws.- When saving new configuration like user creation, permissions, etc the system is a bit slow but I dont care too much.- BEWARE!!! There is no option in importing HDs populated with data already inside to be JBOD/SPAN. Your disk will appear as FOREING and as soon as you use the CLAIM option, your previous partitions will be lost and all your data too. BACKUP it up everything first. assemble de disk in the NAS, build it up as JBOD and so return the data to the disk. I expected have no losses, but I had.- If you want to power it down, do it by admin console. The power button is ineffective for shutting it down.As seen before,Suggestions to Seagate:1. The display informs you quite lot information regarding the NAS, but it could be customizable....Updates will come in more few days..... also photos.

01/10/2017 - we had to move to a new home and it was switched off for 2 weeks, the Unit is dead and cant be started. all my raid data has to be sent to a special disk restore company to restore (costs). i have to do a similar restore before 3 months as the segate raid would see the disks as foreign (just when i moved from one floor to another after shutting down properly). what a waste of time and money over 2 years. This will go into "for Parts" sale this week. feel very bad about the purchase and spending so much money and get us in heart attack mode when we first see that it does not work. (had to reduce the 5 start to Zero Stars) Seagate , i trusted you. but not anymore. these 2 years i have to replace all the disks twice and since they were in warranty i escaped. but the foreign disk issue is unbeleivable (you guys should have better tools to examine and put them back into the raid groups they were before), such a waste that i have to spend money to put them into the same raid levels on to a hanging ubuntu desktop then transfer data back when the disks are formatted. Please dont sell products like these when the netgear products are lasting for the past 2 plus years and no issues even once.i just ordered the QNAP 4 bay 4K storage unit this week to replace this12/30/2014: in a nutshell, works awesome. but needs lot of skills to set this up. once if raid group were created, the groups are not accessable in windows, until you check this box NFS (network file share) which does not make much sence because it is one single option for all the raid groups you have. I wish you have one for each. but that is ok for now atleast i was able to get rid of other issues.the main issue i saw when regrouping the raid levels (like remove everything and start), the partitions that were created by seagate were not removeed even when i removed the disk and claieed them. so i have to take every individual disk out of the system and put into a cirago docking station (disk reader) and connect each of the disk one at a time to the computer using usb 3. then it shows up as 15 partitions, started removing every partition using disk management in windows and once there were no more allcations, put them back into the seagate NAS now shows up with all the space. Seriously seagate, you dont have an option to claim the entire disk when you say the disk will be claimed ?copy is faster and encryption raid 1 setup was slow. did not yet try copying files.simply to say the array is very good and gives good performance, but scratch everything (including the certs) and rebuit it from scratch, it works like a charm. also remeber the NFS check box under sharing menu. this is very important. while initially setting up the nas, (once you put no partition disks, the software will kick in, if you visit the ip address on a web page). please remember to give it a nice name that you remenber and followed by a static ip (just change the last 3 of the IP to 100 or 200) so it wont be hit by your local network range. if you leave it at dynamic, everytime you restart the router, the ip changes and it is horrable to setup any automated jobs).wometimes wont reboot if you press the hard reset, always try the hard reset on the box and wait for sometime, if it does not work then unplug. dont unplug immediately.i was able to put 2 tb times 3 plus a 3 tb to mix and match the 1 raid 5 and 3 raid 1 and a raid0 setting. no issues works awesome.seagate person said that we could call the helpdesk to have to give a live support from mon to fri upto 6 pm central time, but never used italso when a device is such challenging, it gives an opportunity to learn every aspect of it, which i like it. so i am going to keep this for a long time. also i am using rich copy to initially copy files from each of the windows to this for now. once the first copy is done, i will be using a batch file to copy through windows task schedular. will update on how that goes,also i tried removing a disk and putting it back, works well. had to give it some time to recogonize the disk. user name and permissions are waste. i guess we cant have a setup with tight security on few raid disks but liberal on some. either or is the case.for now wish you all a Happy new Year 2015 and buy this Seagate device with confidence to learn the ins and outs of NAS setup etc. initially it was frustrating, but now it has become fun and i love it.12/15/2014: it does not support windows 8.1. software licenses is not part of the package? so the customer support tried to see by running arp -a on the command line and wants to speak with their customer rep from 8 to 6 central time mon thru fri. my problem is the software loads fine but i cannot map a drive letter on my windows 8.1 (No kidding). the shares have been created with user name and password in the seagate web tool, but the share does not show up even with \\10.... \sharename . i am waiting to get the customer support in line and will update this site. for now it is just a star (on the device), software gets the remaining 4 zeros. worst than i ever thought.12/6/2014: Update after a day: I dont know how everything got fixed. but the web page for the NAS Now loads with a handsome application. Lot of custom options. i guess when the lights were blinking, they automatically updated the firmware on the system. I have a 2 x2 tb + 1 x 3 tb on a RAID 5 remaining 1 tb on the third disk plus a 4th disk of 650 gb together on a RAID1 drive. building the raid volumes now. i am the most happiest person ever. (will plan to upgrade the disk capacity in future). so people connect your NAS to the internet, it does the magic.12/5/2014: Initial Comments: Brought one this Thanksgiving. ditto on all issues, also the 4 bay link from seagate does not work on my windows 8.1 system. while installing the discovery it works. but while installing the managament piece, it fails (the second one in the installer). i have to cancel myself at that point and when i run the discovery tool, it shows up and a link to a NAS Manager button, (it only shows all the disk and you could check and erase them) there is no way to setup Raid or disk partitions in this web tool.very sad, but trying to get a way to fix.also if you initialize the disk using the NAS Manager web page, then the system does not come online until we go and hard reboot the NAS. also the lights are blinking from Disk 1 to 2 to 3 very fast doing nothing. Seagate.. please help.i brought your product after ignoring all the comments and my collegues advice to buy synergy. i hope i wont go bad will wait for couple of days to see if i could resolve all the issues.

Part of the reason I decided on this unit was the Black Armor backup (10 licenses) that were included. Now, several months later, I still cannot use the Black Armor backup software on Windows 8.1. It works Windows 8 and prior, just not 8.1.After contacting Seagate about this, their solution is simply, use the built in Windows Backup software and they have no idea if / when a solution will be coming.The other reason that I purchased was the DLNA capability to share my media files. So far, this has been a flop as well. Limited documentation. I've set it up per the instructions in the admin console, but it does not seem to index anything for sharing. My old Go Flex works perfectly. Shame on you Seagate - you should be better than this.I rated it as a three, simply on the ease of setup on the network, the RAID protection and the general satisfaction of the physical box serving its function. So if you are just looking for shared network storage, it does fine.