I have 3 computers and wanted an external drive to access from all of them. Preferably, storage that would be encrypted so if someone broke into the house and stole it, they couldn't access my data. I have a d-link router, connected to a Netgear 'pro' unmanaged Gigabit switch (or a D-Link GE switch - tried that first), then the computers and this NAS connected to the switch. On my main, multiple OS boot system (ASUS P5n-E SLI, Marvel GE Ethernet), XP SP3 and Vista had problems with the NAS dropping connections (management screens via browser and network shares). Oddly, a PC running Fedora Linux 10 had no problems. A Seagate chat agent (Jeff) suggested that besides re-booting the Seagate NAS I also reboot the d-link router. This is odd, because hardware on the local LAN should be connecting via ARP table entries and not using the router. His suggestion made the NAS reliable for the web browser HTTP interface, but network shares were still unreliable in Windows. The second problem is that the option to select encryption on a volume does not work. You get a popup window with an error message 'no valid key or USB share found.' After I reset my router per the first SG chat agent, I reconnected to SG and asked another chat agent (Taylor)about the encryption error. He sent me a message saying chat agents don't support SG NAS devices - then disconnected. At best, I never got more than 18 MBs from the unit (144 Mbps, just over FE, 100 Mbps, way slower than USB 2 and nowhere near the speed of the built-in GE Ethernet interface). Perhaps it's just a loose connection inside the unit, as Amazon shipped it with a balloon bag on top of the product boxes - allowing everything to slide side to side. But, as an Amazon CS agent sent me a note saying I could send back the SG NAS and switch with no-charge pre-paid shipping, I'm going to try a ThermalTake eSATA enclosure and a SG 1.5 GB SATA drive from Amazon. I also found (and tested)a freeware encryption program, Truecrypt, highly rated, which has close to zero overhead on my 3 GHz core duo. Bottom line: don't use an inexpensive NAS use an external eSATA or USB drive on your main machine and share it out use Truecrypt to get AES encryption
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