Verbatim MediaShare Mini Home Network Storage, Silver 97329

This device is a Dilbert cartoon all by itself. It was clearly rushed out the door before development was completed; it is so unpolished that for most users it simply will not work. Unless you're a technology expert, don't bother.If you are a technology expert or are brave enough to give this thing a try, here's what you need to know:(1) The user guide doesn't include setup and install instructions, so don't bother searching through it.(2) The seemingly promising "install tools" option on the setup CD either installs tons of stuff you don't need and that simply doesn't work (on Windows) or crashes outright (on Mac OS). Don't bother to open the container on Mac OS and unzip and run the binary by hand; you'll simply install the same tools that don't work and aren't needed anyway on Windows.(3) The reason the tools don't work on Windows (or on Mac OS if you are knowledgable enough to bypass the icon and manually install them) is that they require an administrator login and password for the device... that you don't have yet because you haven't set it up. When you do finally have them (I'll explain how to set them in a moment), all these rather heavy (hundreds of megabytes) programs do is... redirect you to the device's web interface in your default browser. Seriously.(4) There is a "setup" option on the Windows half of the CD (they forgot to include any kind of setup for Mac), and presumably it's meant to let you do things like choose a default username and password and name the device, but as you'll find, it simply doesn't work--it tells you that the device has already been configured by someone else and can't be setup, even when it's at factory default settings. So don't bother with the "setup" icon/application.(5) Instead, on a Windows computer, with the device powered on and on the network, use the "Documents and Tools" option on the CD's autorun, and then in that area the "Reset" option to start the reset-to-factory-defaults procedure. After you issue the reset command, hold down the power button on the back of the device for five seconds to reboot it. You can't do this from Mac OS because the reset tool was also inconveniently omitted from the Mac OS half of the CD. Oops.(6) Once the device has rebooted (solid light is back) after a reset, just open your web browser and point it at the device's IP address obtained via DHCP from your router. If you don't know this, log into your router and look at the current list of DHCP leases to obtain it. Visiting the IP of the device in your browser will take you to the web administration interface (the one that that should be mentioned in the user guide along with the setup CD in a section called "configuring the device" or something--but of course isn't).(7) When you visit the web interface immediately following a reset, you'll see a special instance of the interface that asks you to give the default administrator account a password. The default administrator account matches the default device name, both of which are randomized because the device uses this name as your account at Verbatim's online sharing service, which is a proxy interface on the Web, through Verbatim, to your device. Just use the defaults for now; once you log in as administrator, you can create the account name you'd like and change the device name as you wish (which will also change your account name at Verbatim's online service).(8) After setting the password, re-visit the IP of the device and log into the web interface. Add a user and mark them as administrator to get the administrator username you want. Then, to change the device name, go to the "Remote Sharing" section and edit the name in the box there.CONGRATULATIONS, YOUR DEVICE IS NOW CONFIGURED. Thank god I spent many years as an IT professional or this would have been over my head, since:- The printed guide included just tells you to insert the CD- The CD includes only a single Mac application which crashes immediately- The CD's Windows setup application refuses to talk to factory-fresh devices and is thus worthless- The tools, if you manage to install them, require an already setup up username, password, and device name to work, but of course you don't have these because the setup didn't work- The full user manual icons on the CD just go to broken links at Verbatim.com- The full user manual PDF that you can find by searching Google for "mediashare mini user guide" doesn't give any information about setup, much less explaining that the device is configured to use DHCP by default and has a web interfaceetc. etc. etc.I do now have the device set up (took me about two hours to work through this) and while it does seem to work (it just mounts NTFS/FAT/HFS volumes and shares them via SMB), the quality does not impress. I had planned to use this for my online backups, but now I'm not so sure I want to trust it with my data.Apart from the foibles above, here are some other things indicative of quality.- They didn't bother to have it calculate free space correctly. It does show used space for files/folders correctly, but free space for any volume is always 9.2 exabytes (yes, exabytes).- The web interface is entirely done in flash (yes, flash) so it's not what you'd call the most "futureproof" of devices- The much heralded iPhone app actually sucks; you can open exactly one file per session--if you navigate 10 folders deep, open a file, and it's not the one you were looking for, you can't go back to the folder and look again, but must rather close the connection and then start all over again with a new connection in the root folder once again- As mentioned, but it bears a more clear mentioning, there is absolutely no reason or purpose for or use for the software tools; all they do is remember the device name, username, and password that you enter and then redirect you to the web interface in your browser--and occupy several hundred megabytes in the process- The device gets HOT, much hotter than I'd expect or feel comfortable with and there is no internal fan- It takes quite a while to boot/reboot the device- It's just rebranded technology (Verbatim MediaShare = rebadged Axentra HipServ technology in the same way that LiveScribe Pulse Pen = rebadged Anoto pen products), albeit with Verbatim-specific tools/applications on the CD; I'm not sure I feel comfortable as a result with Verbatim's level of commitment to the device in the future- Trying to call Verbatim customer service to complain about all of this and recount my experiences led to the interesting result that they don't seem to be aware of this device or know what it is; see previous pointIn short, unless you very much know what you are doing and are in search of a cheap, SMB-based, small-footprint, no-drive-included NAS for immediate rather than long-term use, do not buy this product. You will not be happy with it (there are a number of other reviews here that make this clear--I just assumed, correctly, that as a technology person I'd be able to make it go despite most obstacles).On the whole, very, very poor--which is a shame, because the physical object is nice in appearance and the price is right, and it ultimately does seem to work. But this was clearly rushed out the door long before ready, hence my reference to Dilbert cartoons: the two or three engineering people developing this thing came into the meeting munching on sandwiches and said "Here's our prototype of the HipServe device," and the boss made four or five clicks, said "Wow, this is great, ship it now!" over the engineers' objections, and marketing had it listed on Amazon a day later. At least that's how it looks to this former industry insider.

We were looking for a solution to centralize our important data files (mostly photos & other information we want to share across multiple computers), have access to these files over the internet (without any local PC running), and have a centralized backup solution for our multiple computers. Given we already owned USB drives, . . . this item caught our eyes, especially when it was $59.Set up - a breeze. Connect to your router (Cat-5 cable), connect power, insert the setup disk on any computer on the LAN, . . . set up was very quick. You are required to create an 'account' with verbatim to get setup completed and that does require the device name to be unique among all the MediaShare devices sold. We thought this a bit odd, . . . but our first choice was available - so no big deal.Central storage (LAN): Excellent! There is a application loaded on your computer, . . . when you are connected to your LAN you are (or can be) logged in and then the drive(s) becomes a mapped drive(s). You can drag & drop files as you would with any hard drive connected to your computer. One concern before we bought this would be if you could have multiple computers logged in as the same user at the same time. Yes you can. This was a concern in that you are limited to the number of 'user accounts' for the free service (through the web connect). There is a premium service that allows for unlimited accounts, . . . but who wants to pay for that. Additionally, we wanted all our computers to be able to log in as the admin so we could control the box if needed from any computer. No problem.Remote Access (WAN): Good! Initial access is through the myVerbatim.com web-connect service (eg: through your web browser). Here, you can log in, view media (eg: photos), change device settings (eg: turn external FTP on/off), etc. The initial web connection is slow. But once you are in, it seems to be just OK - usable, but not great). The user interface is also not entirely intuitive. For instance - downloading a file is not straight forward (there is an upload function, . . . but download took some time to find (you select the folder/file, then need to click the 'play' type radio button to get more options). You would think common needs would either be a right click, or have a button right on the page. Oh well, once you find this, it is OK. So, . . . onto the real remote connection solution for access other than simply browsing for our needs.Remote Access (WAN/FTP Client): Very good! If you know your LAN's IP Address presented to the outside world, you can connect to the MediaShare device directly through an FTP client application (like FileZilla). You must enable external FTP connections (can do so via the web connect), and have pre-configured your router to port forward FTP requests to this device (and this port is fixed [the common FTP service port # is used] - not configurable). I would have liked to be able to configure this - oh well. However, once connected, you have full FTP access for uploads/downloads of any file via FTP. Used in combination with the web connect service above for file browsing, this works very well. In our case, we view the files (eg: photos) through the web connection, and then download the desired files via the FTP client. For us, this was a critical requirement - remote access to our centralized files easily and as quick as the internet allows.BackUps (LAN): We haven't configured this yet, . . . but there is no reason to expect this not to work out well for us. We use to connect our USB drive to each computer (when we remembered), . . . and then do the backup. Expect to be able to easily configure our computers to use a mapped drive, . . . and do this autonomously from now on when we are connected to our LAN.Overall, . . . this is working quite nicely indeed. It will also allow us to add storage as we grow with the multiple USB ports available. This was a nice low cost solution for our needs.