I'm not looking for a war and I appreciate your posting here. I admit my reaction was a reflexive one. I'd like to find out more about Embedded Windows. I guess it's off to google for me.

I guess I'm jumpy about Windows subjects here.

Embedded Windows means it is in firmware, and a virus or such couldn't over-write the firmware. Also, you're probably talking about Windows CE, which has no viruses. CE is the normal thing to use on devices, rather than XP (though there is an XP for devices also). Most of the vulnerabilities that affect Windows use vectors which aren't in embeded devices, such as Outlook and IE.

Thanks for the explanation. I appreciate it. And sometimes it's not a bad idea to be jumpy about Windows around here. :-)

Does the LaCie ethernet disk support file names longer than 31 characters on Mac systems? I know some of the consumer-level NAS systems do not... something to do with which level of AFP they support.

This is a good question for them. I have written a few questions of my own to them and they have not answered yet. Mine are...

Can you use the USB and Ethernet input at the same time?

Will the unit sleep while not being accessed?

What is the power requirements?

The unit has been delayed until March. Must still be working out the bugs. I will resend my questions and include yours--it's a good one, and now that I think about it, my Snap! server does not handle the long filenames either.

Neither does the Buffalo drives support filenames over 31 characters. I suspect this is to maintain compatibility with OS 9 systems. The Buffalo has USB to allow access to an additional USB drive either through the network or as an automatic backup device. It also supports a USB printer for network access. It does sleep when not in use and uses very little power (a small power brick).

I can't answer for them specifically, but in general with these devices:

1. No
2. Yes
3. Depends on the drive mostly, the electronics are low-power. I'd call it "insignificant" when compared to a computer.

Close, here is the answers from LaCie

Thank you for your inquiry.
1. Can you use the USB and Ethernet input at the same time?
No, the USB input is for attachment to a computer for administration rights to format the drive, or to be used as an attached drive.

2. Will the unit sleep while not being accessed and come out of sleep when called for via the ethernet?
The drive is not capable of a "Sleep" mode.

3. What is the power requirements (wattage)?
The power supply that ships with the unit is 100-240V.

4. Does the LaCie ethernet disk support file names longer than 31 characters on Mac systems?
The character limit is depending on how you format the drive.


#3 is a stupid answer and obviously the person giving the answer didn't know what the heck he was talking about. Voltage is not power. I even clarified by putting WATTAGE in my question. Sheesh.

Based on number three, I am wagering #2 might not be a knowledgeable answer.

So you can reformat the drive without messing up the firmware? Or do you use the firmware to do the reformatting? I'd like to get my hands on the manual for this in PDF form. I think that would answer a lot of questions.

Having long filenames is important for the two clients I have that are looking for something like this. Is the 31 character limit typical for these NAS devices?

I downloaded the manual for the big rackmountable NetDisk models from LaCie's site, and it indicated that you have several choices for the disk format (you format through the drive's admin tool, which seems to be Java based - yay, cross-platform). It seems that if the disk will only be used by Windows and OS X systems, you get 255 character filename support. OS8/9 compatibility forces you to choose a different format, and you end up with 31. So answer 4 was correct.

As for sleep mode and power consumption, I'd be really surprised if the disk doesn't spin down when not being accessed, and the rest of the electronics can't draw much power when idle.

I don't get the 31 character limitations on most of these things... I have a Linux box (Debian) at home which happily serves up long file names with netatalk. It's a bleeding-edge build, but surely it's not beyond the capability of the hardware vendors to get it working reliably if I can do it.

I hope he's wrong about #2. Every cheap consumer-grade NAS I've tried out will sleep the drive when it's not being used. If this is true, then there's no reason to buy the LaCie over the others.

And yeah, pretty clueless on #3...

They did write me back when I challenged them on #2...

AC Input
100-240V and 50-60hz@1A
DC Output
5V@2A, 10W
12V@2.2A, 26.4W


I think they have a terminology and just gave me a pat response. By sleep they may be thinking the way a Mac sleeps, which it does not do. However, standby is different. I will try clarifying with them.

Here is what LaCie said...

1. When not in use, does the hard drive spin down? Do the electronics go into some kind of standby mode? Basically, are we looking at a 26watt power drain while it is not being used?

The drive will unfortunately, not go into any standby mode. So long as it is plugged in, it will be "awake"


2. What OS base is being used Java (like some of your other NAS servers) or Windows based?

The Ethernet Mini will be using a bare bones Linux OS internally.

Still doesn't make any sense to me. If true though, then I'd recommend one of the many others that does spin down the drive. "Sleep" is probably not the right terminology, and there may be some confusion there.

On the power side, the usage calculation is not that straightforward. The figures are probably max, not constant, and it takes more to start the drive than keep it running. But on the other hand, the power supply is probably only 50% efficient, maybe 70% tops.

I agree. As far as marketing this product, they are not doing a very good job at showing off the good points.

Ooh, Linux inside! If you can get a shell on it, you can probably do all kinds of neat stuff. Run Apache on it and make it a web server!

I still can't believe they'd not let the drive spin down when idle. That seems stupid, especially for a product targeted at home users with light duty cycles.

I don't think they understood the concern. I'm almost positive that the drive spins down, but the software remains active.

There's been some great research done in this thread; I really appreciate it. One concern that hasn't been mentioned is the ability to have more than one user get write access to a file.

In particular, there is a feature in Entourage 2004 that allows many people to share project data such as calendars, contact and to-do lists, etc. The way this works is that the calendar files get put on a server and everybody points their individual copy of Entourage at the files. There is no Entourage server application, just all the clients accessing one file at the same time.

On one of these devices I noticed that there was a limit of only one user having write access to a file at a time. The second user would be granted read only access to the file. I know that I can put the files on an old Powerbook G3 running OS 9 and the sharing works fine, although it's slow. If the OS in one of these Ethernet HDs can't handle that kind of sharing then I can't use it. I'll make some enquiries and post back if I get any relevant information.

Normally, the file open mode is determined by the application. However, because these are consumer-grade devices, they may lock down open files to prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot. That's a great question you have, I'd really like to know the answer if you find it.

Seems to me that all depends on what kind of sharing level you put on the partition. If it is "everyone" full read and write, I do not see why it would not work.