Friday, July 7 2006, 00:37
TEAC HD35-NAS customer review
By fake - Permalink
Hi, it's been some time, but here i am again, with a customer review of the TEAC HD35-NAS, a network hard drive minus the blinky-shinynes of most other vendors. The casing is made of aluminium, and is a little bigger than you are used to from usb-only drives - i guess because it doubles as heat absorber, the cooling fins suggest this. Despite of those, there still is a small, yet pretty loud fan in the rear of the casing...
It offers SMB and FTP Access to the disk, and doubles as a USB drive, though you can't use both methods at the same time. As soon as you connect the USB cable, the network is disabled. It can be configured to do DHCP requests, and user managemenet for FTP and SMB is possible on a per-directory basis. This, of course, is not enforced if used as USB disk, so you still need to block physical access on LAN parties and the like if you store sensitive data nex to your pr0n. This is especially true because the passwords of configured users are stored in PLAIN TEXT in a file called nasuser.cfg in the root of the drive!
Another odd thing, the 'public' directory is re-created in the root of the disc on every boot-up. It's not shared automatically again, it's just created. Helloo~oo, this needs to be called 'pub', not 'public'! ;-)
Network access speed is lame. I never got more than 2.5 MB/s out of it. So i ended up attaching it to my router via USB, and sharing it via the router's samba. Not quite what i wanted... i don't get why most of these devices don't have Gigabit ethernet, anyways - if i really need Gigabit ethernet for anything, it's network disks! The device was so slow, I couldn't play back movies using the Freecom Network MediaPlayer without stuttering, they would play for a few minutes without any problems, but then I needed to pause and resume constantly. The 2.5 MB/s was measured with FTP and SAMBA, both under Linux and Windows.
The Firmware is updatable either via the Web-Frontend or via TFTP. I wouldn't really suggest you try updating to the latest firmware, NAS-BASIC41, though. It screwed my device. And with screwed i mean, it's now a usb-only casing with a much too loud fan. No, there don't seem to be any rescue bootstrap tftp requests. Even the power-light behind that big blue button doesn't light up anymore. And yes, i had the prerequisites they mention on their firmware upgrade page. So i tried posting a support request on their web page, which didn't yield a reply. Still searching for a solution, i wrote a mail to support@teac.com which bounced with "599 Mailbox access for support@teac.com refused", so i tried support@teac.de, which was delivered on the 4th of July (which is not a holiday here :) at 14:10. Here is the Mail:
From: Thomas Jakobi <thomas dot jakobi at hpc dot at>
To: support at freecom dot de
Subject: HD35-NAS BASIC41 firmware upgrade
hello,
a few months ago i bought a HD35-NAS, and despite the relatively slow network performance i was satisfied and the device fit my needs.
last week i noticed the firmware update to NAS-BASIC41, published on the 2nd of June 2006. As i already did the firmware updates to NAS-BASIC32
and NAS-BASIC34 without any problems, i immediately fetched the image. i had the required LOADER 067 (i double-checked) and tried to
upgrade.
The upgrade didn't seem to do any good though - my device does not do DHCP requests anymore, and a (pretty time-consuming) scan in the default
IP range (192.168.x.x) showed it hadn't allocated any of those, either.
It still works as a USB drive, but the blue led behind the 'power' switch doesn't even light up anymore!
I'm used to some kind of rescue TFTP GET built into embedded devices like these, but i couldn't see any using tcpdump.
HELP! Please don't tell me my disk has degraded to an oversized usb-disk! What are the magic buttons i have to touch so i can bootstrap the
firmware again?
The serial number of the device is: 50XXXX
Thomas
P.S.: i already wrote a message on the support sheet on your web page, but i didn't get a reply. please, don't make me feel sorry for my decision
to buy teac!
P.P.S.: i build embedded hardware myself, so you may just skip the marketing and redirect this to a technician, i will understand him/her.
No reply as of now. I'll let you know if they do. I don't think they will, i waited 2 weeks after posting a simliar text on their web page.
In summary, as you can guess, i do NOT recommend the drive.
10 comments
That thing is really a mess. I was thinking about getting a similar device myself. But now I know that it will not be Teac.
Have you tried any other home NAS device?
yes, please take a look at https://blog.f4k3.net/page/fake?entry=linksys_nslu2_the_answer_to
This hardware is driving me crazy
i took out the hard disk, installed the IDE hard drive in some CHEAP YET EFFECTIVE casing, something that costs $10.... got my data out
Problem is with firmware AND loader... DO NOT UPGRADE IF YOU HAVE IT, DO NOT BUY IF YOU DON'T.
i am now looking for a copy of the old firmware....
The HDD can run NTFS in USB mode (windows is in charge), in LAN mode you are stuck with a single partition FAT32 (320MB is 2 much for FAT32).
When i took the casing appart, the coolng aluminum is fake-inefficient, how come, it simply does not get in contact with the hard disk, it only touches the upper lid of the thing, and as you may know, exposing the disk to air directly is much better than this....
There is a reset switch inside, but that don't solve the problem, simply coz the problem is with the firmware and loader !
i have seen floppy disks better than this junk.
Take care for now, computer shop safely
I am having exactly the same problem and there is no help from TEAC. One should publically renounce this box.
Gentlemen,
I just got an email from TEAC (Mr. Martin Rinck). Th ey either will mail me a new controller, which I have to exchange myself or a new box, if I send mine in.
Excellent, i will also ask them for a controller, what did you say in the email to have them reply, no one ever replied to me from TEAC!
Hi, sorry I am answering only now. Your reply ended up in spam. I just stated the problem, but pointed to this url and asked to be treated better then they have previously treated others - as it was reported on the net. I mail you my filed request form (German), if you drop me a mail.
...having the same problem: contacted the german support and received a reply as described by Mr Halbach --> did you already receive your controller?
Received a controller with the latest firmware on it and it solved the problem. Thanks for your hint on this blog!
just to let you know, i never, ever got a reply from teac support. ever. it's been almost a year.... ah well. teac - say goodbye to another customer.