Hawking Technology HNAS1 Network Attached Storage Centr

Average customer rating: 2.5

Not the best of its kind but it does the work
Cheap alternative to expensive NAS
A little slow but reliable
easy to use, but slow, hot & noisy
Good price and useful functionality, but some flaws

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Hawking Technology HNAS1 Network Attached Storage Centr

Manufacturer: Hawking Technology
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B0007IG23Y

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Product Description

The compact Hawking HNAS1 Net-Stor Network Storage Center is an economical and powerful device, and provides an ideal solution for small business and small office/home office users. The HNAS1 functions as both a file server and FTP server, and can be used to easily share video, music, and data files. The Network Storage Center features managed access via three pre-defined user authorization levels, which allows files to be shared both publicly and privately. The HNAS1 can also be configured to allow the transfer or backup of files directly over the Internet via the web browser or FTP. It supports all standard 3.5" IDE Hard Drives of up to 250GB (hard drive not included). The Smart Setup Wizard makes installation of the Network Storage Center simple and the user-friendly web interface makes it easy to manage. The HNAS1 is a great addition to any network!

Customer Reviews:

Not the best of its kind but it does the work.......2007-06-02

I just set it up yesterday and here are my first impressions.

1: Network setup could be very simple in certain enviroments. Unfortunately it was not the case at my home. The problem is that the device default to an initial IP address of 192.168.1.1. Not a problem if you have a switch/hub, or if you have a twisted ethernet cable which can connect directly a PC and the HNAS1. However, if you want to connect both your PC and the HNAS1 to a router, the problem arises. First of all, your current router's network address may not be 192.168.1.0 and you would interrupte other devices connect to the router if the router's network address is to be changed. Secondly, even if you choose to set the router's network address to 192.168.1.0, some routers may insist to take 192.168.1.1 as its own IP, this produces a conflict with the 192.168.1.1 the HNAS1 default to. What a silly oversight.

Instead of playing with the router, I decided to dig out an old ethernet switch, the remaining network setup was no issue.

2: File system: My HNAS1 supports only ext3. This is not a problem if you are going to use a new HD. In my case, I had to back up and reformat my existing NTFS HD and copy files back to the newly formatted ext3 disk. Luckily, I have two spare HDs so I manage without losing data.

3: Speed is reasonable. I copied an entire 160GB disk to HNAS1 in about 14 hours. Also, I can stream two full DVD quality movies(not the compressed dvi's) from it simultaneously without any problem.

4: Construction is solid. They seem to use quality metal frames and cases. The sanded metal surface is unpleasant to touch though.

5: Fan is very noisy. I am running it with the fan disabled. So far its temperature, which I clolsely monitor, is OK.

6: No comment on reliability as this is only the 2nd day I am using it.

Hope this helps.

Cheap alternative to expensive NAS.......2007-01-01

I had a PC running 24x7 as a dedicated file server that eat up my electricity bill. I was shopping for an NAS and found this Hawking HNAS1. This would be ideal for me as I had several spare IDE HDDs.

My first unit was DOA. I got a replacement, which was good. Setup was easy. First I installed 120GB HDD. I copied 100GB of files from XP to this on a 100mbit LAN. The writing speed is 25mbps. It took 8 hours to copy 100GB files.

Then I upgraded to 200GB IDE HDD. I thought I can diskcopy 120GB to 200GB HDD using a linux machine as HNAS1 uses ext3 file system, which is standard for linux. Boy, I was wrong. The linux machine can read the files but Gparted couldn't copy the entire disk to a new HDD. (Of course, the CD that comes with new HDD won't work as these CDs only work for FAT and NTFS.) So I spent another 8 hours to copy 100GB files to the 200GB HDD on a 100mbit LAN.

For some reason, XP can't remember the password for reconnection. It will always ask for the password, whenever I reboot the PC. Then I found windows command "net use". I made a batch file that runs whenever windows starts. Now I don't have to type the password each time PC reboots. If you are using wireless LAN, then you have to delay "net use" command until you get the wireless connection first. I'm using "sleep 20" command to pause for 20 seconds.

I have 4 PCs at home that shares the file server. Now everything is more organized with this file server. And not to mention, it will save my electricity bill.

As people complained, this unit is noisy. But mine is in the basement so noise is not a problem at all.

A little slow but reliable.......2006-09-18

I have had this unit running on my network for about a year. I Backup 2 computers to it every night. (Total backup sze is about 80gb) It has run flawlessly. I have restored files from it with no problems. It does transfer a bit slow, but for the cost, you can not beat it.

easy to use, but slow, hot & noisy.......2006-06-16

I found this product to be very easy to set up as long as all I wanted was to use it for sharing files to anybody on my network. Setting it up to limit access to users was trickier and I eventually gave up because it was on a protected network anyway and I didn't really need that functionality.

Downside is that transferring files is slow, the max file size is limited, it never spins down the disk, the device runs very hot and the fan whines. The max file size limit is 4GB, and is a result of using FAT32 on the drive. Figure the data transfer will be about 3-5X slower than a simple 100Mbit network file transfer (30+ min to copy ~1.3GB to it).

Running too hot and the fan whine are correctable. Chip out a big hole on the back plate where the fan is, so it can get air (and maybe reversing it to blow in over the disk) fixes both the heat and fan whine problems. Without applying this fix, I would not recommend this device as it otherwise runs so hot it will likely shorten the life of the disk.

Good price and useful functionality, but some flaws.......2006-06-07

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.

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