Jun 142013
Seagate STAK100 FreeAgent GoFlex Net Media Sharing Device
- Share your photos, music, and movies over the Internet without uploading
- Access your digital files from any computer on your home network–PC or Mac–and from anywhere in the world
- Listen to your music, watch your movies and access your content from iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android mobile devices
- Works seamlessly with GoFlex ultra-portable drives and any USB storage device
The Seagate GoFlex Net Media Sharing Device allows you to securely share data over your network and connect to your drive over the internet.
List Price: $ 99.99
Price: $ 57.17
It works, but this isn’t for everyone…,
This is one of those products that is probably the reverse of most tech products. In this case, the average non-techie will probably love it – but people who know their way around computers are going to be baffled.
As with most products like this, I planned on just bypassing the Pogoplug service altogether and treating this like a networked docking station. That would have been something I could really use. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a major hassle to access this device without using either the Pogoplug website or their desktop access software – and I’m not interested in using either of those methods.
According to the full manual, which is downloadable from the Seagate website, the GoFlex Net CAN be accessed as a networked device. The network name is supposed to be the letters ‘FADS’ followed by part of the MAC address. In my case, that name never showed up – so I went to my DHCP server to verify that the name hadn’t been registered, and it hadn’t. I did find the IP address in use by the GoFlex Net through some experimentation, but couldn’t use it to access the device through either Win7 Explorer or Internet Explorer (I figured http was a long-shot, but tried it anyway).
It is possible that other people will have better luck accessing this directly, but I couldn’t get it to work in my environment.
After giving up on direct access, I gave in and activated the GoFlex Net using the Pogoplug service. The activation was easy; and, after playing with the interface for a bit, I can see that there probably is a specific class of users that will appreciate this device. It is easy to access data on the docked drives through the Pogoplug web interface, so you could have your data available from anywhere you have an Internet connection.
Overall, if you’re looking for a dock that will work as a type of NAS device, you should steer clear of this. If you simply want some storage that is available from anywhere you are, then this is probably a reasonable solution.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Useless Device,
First, you must understand that this is not a network storage device as it is marketed. IT is a media storage device. It is not designed well for doing backups of your own personal storage and your own personal data.
The product uses Pogoplug to manage the device. All configuration is done through the internet through the pogoplug website, not directly with the device. Therefore Pogoplug in some respect – owns the access to your data.
It is hard getting technical support because Pogoplug manages the software while Seagate manages the hardware support. To make matters worse, documentation, as mentioned by other posts, is absolutely terrible. Very little information online or through the software itself.
On to the review…
In order to use this device with windows or Mac, or even Linux, you need to install the pogoplug software – this will create a “pogoplug share” on drive “P” for your computer. This share is password protected. The problem comes if you have other computers or devices on which you cannot install this software on – for instance other media devices designed to connect to your network. Furthermore, software packages do not recognize this “pogoplug share” including Window’s own Windows backup software that comes with Vista and Windows 7. Therefore it is impossible to backup to this device with Windows 7 backup software.
There is, however, another way to access the data. You can create a WFS share through the pogoplug website. You must know, however that this method does not have ANY security whatsoever. There is no username, and there is no password. You basically let all the data on the pogoplug completely open on your network. Anyone who gets access to your network, even with a network cable, can see, modify, and destroy any of your data simply because there is no password whatsoever. For a more practical example, any of your children can accidentally delete everything on the device from their computer because EVERYONE with access to your network has 100% access to the data. This method does, however, allow all windows software to get access to the data.
Interestingly enough in the “security” tab has an option to use secure connections for all access to your data. This however, does not apply to the WFS share (which they don’t tell you). The whole experience leaves me feeling a little bit duped.
Technical support specialists told me that if I really want secuirty I need to make sure I have a good internet router. This is a huge change from industry best practices.
So basically device security and interoperability with software and other devices is mutually exclusive. Simply put, you must decide whether you want security or access.
The device, does, however work well as a media device, like a media server on your network, and has methods of allowing you to access the data securely from anywhere in the world. This is it’s one redeeming quality.
Yet, for a network Accessable storage device, look elsewhere. I bought two 1 tb drives along with the device – spending well over $400 – hoping to get a network accessable storage device, and today I am VERY sorry that I spent the money.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Does work as NAS with simple setup if you know how.,
I read the reviews, as well as performed searches online, before buying the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Net STAK100. Specifically, looking for a way to use it as a NAS and not fiddling around with Pogo.
A simple search on the net gave me this link:
[...]
Though titled for dockstar, this works for the Go Flex Net as well. The instructions are posted on the site in one comment, with some modifications I added. I’m on Windows 7.
1) Take a Seagate Go Flex harddrive and plug it into your computer.
2) Open Notepad and paste the following into a new document:
servicename=yoursharename
xcode.metadata=never
xcode.thumbnail=never
xcode.stream=never
cifs.mode=rw
“yoursharename” for example can be “dockusb1″ for one hard drive #1, “dockusb2″ for hard drive #2, etc.
3) In Notepad, go to “save as” and save to your Seagate drive root as .ceid
(make sure to pick “all files” as the save as type from the drop down in the save dialog box)
4) Plug the Net STAK 100 into the router using the ethernet cable.
5) Take your Go Flex harddrive, plug it into the unit and power it up.
6) In Windows 7, Click Start/Windows icon -> Click Computer.
7) In the window that opens, click Map Network Drive.
8) Choose a Drive letter, then Browse, and navigate your network. You should see something like FADSXXXXXX, where XXXXXX are the last 6 numbers/letters of the MAC address on the back of the Net STAK 100.
9) Click to expand. You should see a folder with the same name you assigned as “yoursharename” in the .cied file, followed by an underscore (e.g. backup_).
10) Select that folder, click OK. Click Finish in the Map Network Drive window.
11) You should not see it in Windows Explorer. If you want to name it something nice, right click on it and select “Rename.”
As of right now, I’m doing a differential back up to my portable Seagate drive with a transfer rate of 450Mb/s.
So yes, it does work as a NAS. I did not want all the fancy web stuff or internet access. Simply a drive I can plug/unplug, and take with me when I need to travel. All backups are now going to be done automatically over my wireless network when I’m home.
Good luck.
Was this review helpful to you?
|