It is supposed to act as a long-term centralized storage solution for small businesses

Feb 1, 2012 13:46 GMT  ·  By

Since everyday people aren't the only ones that need some means to store lots of data, LaCie decided it was time for yet another NAS storage device, one dubbed 5big Office Series.

Right to the point, this thing is a network-attached storage device with five drive bays, leading to a storage capacity maximum of 10 terabytes.

This means that people can't actually shove in several 4TB beasts and get all the way to 20 TB, but 10TB is still a lot.

That said, only the five-bay version of the 5big Office Series can actually near that limit.

The “standard” NAS from this line is a single-drive device with 2TB capacity, good enough for backing up one or two PCs but not much else.

Of course, one can still go ahead and hook up 10 PCs to it, but they would be better off buying the full 10 TB 5-drive NAS instead.

After all, even if the price is higher, businesses that can afford 10 systems can probably afford something like this as well.

Fortunately, the single-drive product allows for the other four to be added as needed.

Moving on, the LaCie NAS is based on a 64-bit Intel Atom processor and comes with 2GB of RAM (random access memory) to boot.

Furthermore, the software side is covered by the Windows Home Server 2011 operating system, enabling employees to instantly and simultaneously access whatever data they need.

As for security and extra conveniences, LaCie has outfitted the newcomer with certain technologies that could come in handy.

Files and even complete workstation operating systems can easily be restored from backups (that are automatic), but also protected. That goes for Mac and Linux operating systems, not just Windows.

Finally, users can check RAID and backup status at any time and, should the capacity on the drive still not be enough, use 100 GB of Wualam Secure Cloud Storage (trial version).

The single-drive LaCie 5big Office NAS costs $599 / 456 Euro, while the 10TB is 1,499 / 1,140 Euro.