HNAS1 Network Attached Storage Centr

I am a PC and network tech and I stay in touch with new technology. When this came out, I got one to try out and possibly start selling to customers.Upon installing a hard drive that matched it's requirements, I went through all the setup screens to get it ready to use - then found it would not let me change the country code to the United States due to some internal program error. (it uses this setting to keep track of the date and time of files written to it). I emailed tech support at Hawking. After a week, I got an email with a file attached with no instructions. The file ended with the extension ".web" which meant nothing to my computer or me. I tried the update bios feature in the unit and it did use the file, updated it's bios - giving me the ability to change the date to U.S. timezone - finally it worked right...for about a month anyway. One day out of the blue, it reset the IP address I assigned it back to it's factory default - and it's default 192.168.1.1 address is the same as my linksys router - so neither would work until I figured out what was going on and turned it off. I wrote to tech support about it to ask about a fix and the only answer I got back was "we have one here that has been running 6 months." (that wasn't an especially helpful answer)I logged in to the unit after moving it to a separate PC not on the network and then found it wouldn't keep any settings I entered. I wrote to tech support again and they told me to reset it by pushing a small recessed button. I did this and it erased all the user names and settings. I started over and set it to 192.168.1.200 where I had it originally and it worked normally again for about 3 weeks. This morning I couldn't access it. It was on - but my computer couldn't connect to it - but this time the internet was still working. I figured it had reset it's IP address again so I took it off the network to connect it directly to a PC so I could change the IP address back again. This time - I couldn't access the setup screens at all using any IP address nor it's install software. I pulled the power cord and put it back - and it woke up and was available again. This time, it had kept it's correct IP address and had just simply locked up. Restarting it got it up and running again - but for how long and what will it do next... I put in a top of the line IBM hard drive in this unit and the hard drive has worked flawlessly - but this network device is buggy and I feel I have to replace it if I want a reliable network attached storage device. Due to my frustration with non speedy tech support, and because I feel so little trust for this device and any replacement I might get that rather than ask for a warrantee repair or replacment, I will instead just throw it out to get rid of the problem. The replacement NAS device will NOT be this same brand.Another comment: A quick look at their website revealed today that they still haven't posted the patch they sent me to correct the timezone problem so if you already have one of these and can't set it to a U.S. timezone - at least you know why and what you need to do.

I loved the idea of this product, but was so sad to discover it must use a "overlay" to work correctly, which means if something goes wrong you will loose all of your data, and good luck recovering it, it also is very intermittent in its operation and not fast enough for streaming video what so ever.I spent well over 100 hours tweaking, and rebooting to no avail, it is now in my "junk box" oh well perhaps the more expensive ones work.

I'm determined after my latest laptop failure to work out a better backup solution for my household. The Hawking HNAS1 Networked Attached Storage Center seemed to be a good solution for this. I had an extra 3.5" disk drive in a drawer, so I bought this unit, inserted the disk drive, set it to Master, attached cables, screwed in 4 screws, and put the case back together. Voila! Network Attached Storage.Configuring this unit was not as much fun. It does not use DHCP to find a good IP address, and its default 192.168.1.1 is the same as the default Linksys router address. If you simply plug this unit into a Linksys or other router which is already configured with this IP address, then the Hawking and the router fight it out over who responds to this address. After several rebootings I got the Hawking unit to win this race, I logged into the web interface from a PC and quickly changed the IP address to one that isn't used by any other device. Operation became more predictable after this.The firmware version shipped in my unit (1.01) has a bug in setting the time zone via the web interface. There is a firmware download (version 1.02) at [...] which will correct this. Download the file (about 3MB), then use the Hawking web browser interface to upload the firmware into the Hawking device. It takes several minutes to upgrade. Unfortunately, I found that the login password was changed after the upgrade and I had to hold the Reset button on the back of the unit for over 5 seconds to reset all accounts and passwords on the unit back to their defaults. Unfortunately, this also reset the IP address back to the same value as the Linksys router. Sigh. Rebooting the Linksys router helped me to somehow log into the unit to change the IP address to a safe value outside the DHCP range again. Phew! Using the 1.02 firmware release the time settings appear to stick, though you have to check "Use Time Server" and supply a good server address - I'd replace the default (a server in Germany) with "pool.ntp.org".You need to format your disk via the web browser interface (it uses EXT3 format for the Linux operating system inside the box). You also need to create one or more shares, and you may want to change the user accounts and passwords. If you give the "guest" account a blank password and supervisor priveleges, then you can connect to the share from "My Network Places" by just double clicking on it. If you want to use accounts and passwords, then users will need to map the share to a Windows drive letter and supply the appropriate login credentials.Now that the HNAS1 is up and running I'm happier. My biggest complaint, aside from the lack of DHCP and need to upgrade the firmware, is that the fan is annoyingly loud. My office currently has 4 computers running, and the Hawking is louder than the rest combined. I can't easily relocate the device to another room, so I end up powering this down when I don't need it. Unfortunately, this defeats my original intent to run this 24x7 with regular automated backups from all machines. On the other hand, given that "real" Network Attached Storage devices used to cost several thousands of dollars, this unit is amazingly cost effective.

I bought the HNAS1 because it was the least expensive SAMBA server I could find and I had plenty of old hard drives laying around to use in it. The only reason I needed a SAMBA server was to provide storage for surveilance video captured by my TrendNet wireless IP camera. Setting up the HNAS1 wasn't difficult but some of the shortcuts that the setup program placed on my desktop don't work. One of those is supposed to take me to the root drive of the server but when I click it, an error occurs suggesting I don't have priviledges to access it. I haven't messed with troubleshooting the problem because I can get to the directory I created using HTTP access to the server and that's where I store the surveilance video. It's been running about a month now with no problems whatsoever. The server is quiet and doesn't require any care and feeding.

Most complaints people ar having have been solved with the latest firware upgrade (exception is the fan is a bit noisy). This unit is extremely easy to use and the cheapest NAS storage you can find. It is well worth the price.