Seagate’s Personal Cloud Home Media Storage is one of the coolest storage devices I have used, but it may not be the most user-friendly device but it works quite well.
Having used Lacie’s Network Space product, in some ways, the Seagate Personal Cloud Home Media Storage and the Lacie Network Space look very similar to each other, with the Seagate being more rectangle (more width) and both are black with the shiny sheen on top.
But that is where the comparison ends.
One of the things that irked me about the Lacie Network Space is everything was wi-Fi based. Want to transfer files or stream, it was wi-fi based. Still, I was able to utilize the device through my Sony Blu-ray player and PS3 at the time. It was also not the most user-friendly device to work with either. But once you used it, you found it to be a useful storage device.
With the Seagate Personal Cloud Home Storage, it offers so much more and it’s quite easy to use.
Hook up one Ethernet cat-5 cable to your router, the other is the power adapter and give it a few minutes and it will automatically be detected (note: I tested this on a Mac and PC).
While my PC detected the device and immediately took it to a URL for setup, the Mac didn’t. You had to connect to smb:\\10.x.x.xx
Nevertheless, once you are in and finish the install and firmware update, you immediately see apps which include:
– Device Manager, Download Manager, Backup Manager and App Manager.
I first selected the App Manager and immediately you are given the following apps to run and install:
– BitTorrent Sync (sync and share unlimited files and folders), ElephantDrive (online backup), Plex Media Server, Sdrive (give secure access to your files), Seagate (connect to your Seagate network devices), WordPress (web publish) and ownCloud (access your files on your own personal cloud).
Once I got those installed, I was able to create my own passworded, secure server and you also get a public folder.
And from there on, you can drop your files in and access it on other computers.
With Media Services, you can stream multimedia files from the Personal Cloud to UPnP and DLNA compatible devices on the network.
You can also enable for streaming of multimedia files from the Personal cloud to compatible devices on the network using iTunes.
With Seagate Media, you can browse your files from anywhere with the free Seagate Media app. This will allow you to access files on the Personal Cloud from your smartphone or tablet and you can download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play, Amazon appstore or Windows Store.
The files must be on the public folder but I was able to stream videos and music and view photos from the Personal Cloud through my tablet and my cell phone with no problems.
You can also stream to Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, LG & Samsung Smart TV’s.
I was also able to get my Blu-ray player and a video game console to recognize the PersonalCloud as well.
Overall, I found Seagate’s Personal Cloud Media Storage to be worth having and worth using, especially if you want to backup files, stream your files to a tablet and cell phone or just want to have access of files and utilize the 3TB of space of the device. I find that very useful.
But the fact that I can also access on other devices was another plus. And I had no lag issues.
Personally, I feel that Seagate’s Personal Cloud was much easier to use over Lacie’s Network Space.
While people not familiar with setting up servers or transferring files may find this device difficult, especially when the instructions are more of the how to turn on the software, those familiar with installation of software, file transfers and typical troubleshoot, should have no problem with this device. It’s not too difficult.
The only thing I do want to emphasize, if you are using a the Personal Cloud for wireless streaming, just remember to keep an eye out on your broadband bandwith limit (if you have one) for your provider or also bandwith on your cell phone/tablet.
I also recommend this device if you have a stable connection to the Internet.
With that being said, I absolutely enjoy this device. But I do have my reservations as I have had recent Seagate harddrives (external) that are no longer working for me. I could only hope the drive that Seagate’s use for their Personal Cloud device is a better drive that is meant to be used as a media server but also file backups.
If anything goes wrong, I will update this review to reflect that.
But from one I have experienced with this device for the last few weeks and comparing it to Lacie’s Network Space, the Seagate Personal Cloud Home Media Storage is highly recommended!
