LG N2B1DD2 2 Bay Blu-ray Network Attached Storage 2TB

This was impressive from the moment I opened the box it was very substantial and heavy for its size. On the top is a flip up section which contains a card reader and USB socket for a USB drive. On the back is a USB socket that can be used for a USB printer to be connected and become a network printer, there is also an eSATA connection so that an additional drive can be connected. The front LED screen provides status information and progress information when using the NAS drive directly without using a PC.
Provided with the NAS drive is the following software:-
NAS Detector (allows easy set up by allowing the PC to identify and set up the NAS)
NAS Monitor (Monitors back up settings etc)
Comnso Backup (Back up programme)
CyberLink (to use the Blu ray drive etc)
Photo DVD Album (searches the PC drives to find photographs and burns to Blu Ray / CD / DVD)
I have not used the BackUp or Photo DVD album software as I have other programmes that I like.
Initial Set Up was easy power up push a button and wait, various messages not listed in the manual contained popped up until the NAS drive was ready this took about 15 minutes. The next stage was to plug in the LAN cable, install and run the NAS Detector software which allowed the NAS drive to be found and connected. The NAS drive now needed to be configured and this needed to be done via a web programme that was installed initially. I configured mine as a mirrored RAID which provides the greatest security but reduces the storage capacity available to 907GB. Other configurations are available which allow two separate drives, the drives configured as one large 2TB drive or partially mirrored. The installation instructions state that setting up a mirror RAID takes between 4 and 5 hours, in my case it took less than 20 minutes. Now everything is ready to use on the PC that enabled the NAS drive. Remember to change the password and user name from "admin" and to set the time to your local time as the LAN is initially set to Korean time.
I have installed a number of networks using various professional versions of windows however in this case on my home network I was using a mixture of XP home and Vista Home edition. As I did not want to put the NAS software on all of my PCs I decided to Map the NAS as a network drive, this works fine although Home versions of Windows will not remember passwords between sessions and you have to enter the user name and password initially every time you turn the PC on and connect to the NAS drive, I found this annoying but not the fault of the NAS drive.
I just wanted secure network storage and the ability to burn Blu Ray discs to store photos this it performs admirably however it will also do many other things for example automatic back up with incremental storage of USB drives or memory cards, act as a print server, a FTP server etc etc.
Unless you are familiar with setting up this type of equipment you do need the manual supplied on the disk which although comprehensive does suffer from a translation into English which is not always the best. I would have preferred to have a printed copy of this manual rather than the many language quick start manual which does not give enough information and printing the pdf manual does take a lot of paper (160 pages)
HOWEVER a very good drive that does everything anyone would wish if only it was easier to find out how to do some of the things it is capable of doing. I would recommend that anyone who is contemplating buying one of these drives have a look at the manual which is available on the LG site and see if you think you are able to install and configure it how you wish.
As this is a complicated product I am happy to answer any comments (If I can)

The good:
In terms of raw specifications there's nothing to fault here. Two 1TB harddrives, a built-in Blu-ray and DVD re-writer, gigabit ethernet and a reasonable number of USB connections for external devices. The fit and finish is also very nice, and the build quality seems good.

The bad:
Unfortunately the great hardware is let down somewhat by the software which manages it. The web management system (the main method of configuring the device) has features all over the place but they're not very well documented and are sometimes confusing. I ran into a couple of things which simply didn't work very well - for example, I tried to upgrade the firmware before I created any volumes on the disks which caused a fairly ambiguous error. I only found out this was the cause after trying again after setting up a volume. There are also some strange limitations. For example, you can copy files from USB devices to the NAS but you can't do the reverse. Again, I can't fault it on features but the build quality (so far as it goes with software) is lacking leading to confusion and frustration.

The ugly:
The main manual supplied with this unit seems to have been translated from Korean to English by someone who wasn't very familiar with either of those languages. It's incredibly confusing at times and there's a lot of guess-work involved as you try to establish what the broken and nonsensical English is trying to tell you. It's usually possible to figure it out with some common sense but this is a £300 product; come on LG, at least hire some professional translators.

The bottom line:
If I was rating this on hardware alone it would be 5 stars. Factor in the slightly eccentric software and it drops to 4 stars. Include the abysmal manual and I'm afraid you're now looking at 3 stars. If you're familiar with the various services it offers and the technologies and protocols in general then you'll figure it out but don't be fooled into thinking this is something you could buy for an average home user, unless you want to spend the next week teaching them how to use it.

This NAS was chosen because of other reviews saying that it was quiet - and because it supported the protocol used by Sonos. It really is very quiet! And it does work well with Sonos. Since some of my other Hi-Fi and TV equipment support DLNA I turned this on in the NAS, and this also works completely without any problems.
I was hoping to be able to use the blu-ray drive for ripping CDs, but only data CDs can be read by it (at least I didn't find a way to read music CDs over network and there is no immediate way of using the NAS itself for ripping). It would have been nice with wireless network, but I have put it next to the internet router so a direct connection by cable could easily be made.
I have set it up to mirror the two harddisks, giving me effectively about 900 GB of storage space, and I expect that through the hot swap facility it will be easy to put larger disks into it, one at a time, but I haven't tried that yet.
All in all I highly recommend this product - it seems to be well thought out and well made, and I have had absolutely no problems with it.