Pogoplug Series 4 Backup Device

I would give this a 5 star rating for myself, but that is only because I do not use all of the features of the Pogoplug. I use my device only as a backup device. I do not want to lose any of my data if my computer crashes and I am a bit too lazy to plug in my hard drive every month to do a backup. What is nice about the Pogoplug is you can select which folders you want it to backup and it will automatically backup those folders and watch for any new files that show up on them. I tested this by downloading an image to a folder and by the time I could get online to check the backup it was already backed up. Now that I have my device setup, I can just forget about it and let it keep my data safe. This is really nice, that it is basically a set it and forget it device if all you want to do with it is backup your data.Setup was pretty easy. In the box you get the Pogoplug, which is about the size of two decks of cards, a power adapter, and a 2 foot ethernet cord. I didn't know it came with an ethernet cord, so I had ordered one. It is really great that there are a ton of ports for you to connect a lot of storage devices. You can even set rules for where your data gets stored, so you can have separate drives for your documents and music. To set it up you just connect your Pogoplug to the power, then connect it to your router, and then connect it to your storage device. It says to wait till the light is green, but mine was red at first and it says to go to troubleshooting online. That was about the biggest waste of time ever, I could not even find the troubleshooting section online or anywhere that it talked about a red light vs a green light. It looks like there is almost no support aside from calling the company. I ended up unplugging my device and plugging it in again and then it turned green. You then create an account on their website, follow the link in the popup to download the desktop software (don't miss this step, I have no idea how to continue if you skipped the software install), and then just select your folders to backup and off you go. So if you did everything right and it worked for you, then it is a piece of cake. If you made an error somewhere or it just isn't working, it looks like you are utterly screwed.I then tried to figure out how you use the device as a media server. The instructions in the booklet were the worst help ever, they don't tell you where to start, where to go, and even had the wrong names for objects. Worst instructions I have ever seen. The user interface is also horrible. Something you have to do online and something you have to do on your desktop software. The settings are impossible to find, they are amazingly under your username online when you hover over your username, if you don't accidentally find it you are lost. Plus I thought that was the settings for your account, like your email and password and such, but no that is the entire settings section for everything in one place. You set the settings there for your account, for your Pogoplug, and your harddrive. Another idiotic thing is that there are no real settings in desktop software. You can't even how often it does a backup. Another thing this device is missing is that it does not have an option to do a backup image of your machine. This would be truly amazing and what I really want, but no such thing.After you have your backup all done, if you are lucky, you can then look at all your files online. I have to say that it was a lot faster at backing up my data then I had expected. It completed all of my files (about 150 GB) in about 8 total hours. And if your computer goes to sleep or turns off, it just continues where it left off. Once you get online you can look at all your files in the same folder structure as they are on your computer. This is great since I organize my data and don't want it moved around. You can easily share a link to specific files or folders online for anyone to view and download, this is nice. You can later disable the link if you don't people to have access to the file anymore. I am able to look at my pictures almost as fast as if they were on my actual computer. I can even do a slideshow online of all my photos. It does take a bit of time to go from one folder to another, there is a few seconds of lag. Music plays fine also through the online service, I can view it all and play it online or download it. Videos on the other hand I have had trouble with, I have yet to be able to view a video of mine online. I can download it and watch it on my computer, but not online. All of your data is automatically separated into music, videos, and photo tabs. So you can look at your files in the same folder structure as you have on your computer or just go to the music tab and see all your music there. You can go through it by song, album, artist, or genre. This is also a pretty nice feature.What I did not know, is that once you have bought your Pogoplug, that is not the end of the money spending story. If you want more than the basics, you have to pay for a plan. You can't have more than 1 user without a paid plan, you can't archive without a paid plan, you can't chat or call support without a plan, you can't assign a password to your links without a plan. Even to get decent desktop software, you have to pay extra to buy it. The cheapest plan is $30 a year, at least it looks like you get a free device when you sign up.The hardware is all great with this device, but they just need to fix the software, user interface, and pricing model. If they fixed these things this would be a stellar product. In my mind this is a great product if all you want to do is backup your data, and I would recommend it to people looking for that. If you have more than one user or you want to do anything fancier with it, or are not tech savvy then I really highly recommend buying a different product.UPDATE: I recently noticed that all of the sudden the Pogoplug was not recognizing that my drive was connected. No idea why and there was no alert or notice regarding that. It could be down for months and I would never know it unless if I checked. I have no idea what happened, and could not find anything on the site on how to fix it. The light on my hard drive was on and it was spinning. I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in but that didn't help. What did help was unplugging the Pogoplug from its power and plugging it back in. Then it seemed to work fine again after a minute. I wish there was better support for this product.

[Update] 7/16/2013 - I found out that the device has a USB 2.0 port on top of the device and plugging my Hitachi in that port works.I've changed my star rating to 3 stars. There are still some quirks (copying items to the device using the drive letter that shows up on your computer is very very slow). I found it easier to attach a USB stick with a version of Linux on it that is pogoplug compatible and then install FTP server software. Now large file transfers take minutes over wifi instead of hours. 2. Quirk/annoyance is the backup software sucks! Don't think this thing is a backup device for your myriad pcs/laptops. It's not. The backup software works by overwriting every single file, every single time. So every backup is a full backup from scratch. When you have multiple gigs of data, this is a royal pain as backups take hours! 3. When using the mobile apps (apple & android), listing files in a folder can take several minutes. It seems like the app attempts to enumerate and save in a database every file in every folder prior to displaying them. This is an asinine way to do things as the device is based upon Linux and running the ls command is near instantaneous. Heck, even is the app just ran that command and redirected the output to your screen every time you entered and exited a folder, it would be quicker. Everything takes too long. Even over wifi. So, if after reading this, you still want one, as of this posting, Pogoplug is offering them on sale for $29.99 on their website.So I bought this device so I could get rid of Google Drive which I'm paying for. It doesn't work. Let me rephrase that. It works for about 15 minutes then quits. I can't tell if its the drive I purchased (" HGST Touro Desk 4 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Black (0S03396) ) or if its the Pogoplug. I didn't have issues with the setup. I was able to get it to turn green (although I had to manually enter the 25 digit key to register it). This thing lacks documentation which is sorely needed. It doesn't even have a picture which will tell you that the lower port is USB 3.0 while the upper port is USB 2.0. Nor the fact that the top is removable. I found that out on the Amazon description of the device. It's not on the box nor in the flimsy piece of paper that comes with it!Cons (which outweigh the Pros)1. It doesn't tell you what formats are acceptable with your hard disk (it doesn't even say this on the website knowledgebase!). Through trial and error, I found the following works: FAT32 (not exFAT from Windows 7/Mac OS). NTFS. HFS+ with Journaling (but not the case-sensitive version).2. My drive goes to sleep and the Pogoplug loses its connection with the drive. This seems to be an issue with the Hitachi Touro from what complaints I found on the web. I tried manually mounting the drive but then the pogoplug software won't see it unless it's mounted in a particular folder. The lack of any kind of documentation means I don't know how to correct this to permanently mount my drive.3. These issues seem to be a problem in particular with the Series 4 units. YMMV.4. Copying large numbers of files over wifi to the pogoplug fails. You should plug in the drive, copy the files first and then use the pogoplug only for new uploads.Pros:1. The streaming (when my drive is on) works really really well to my android and ipad tablets.2. I love the fact that I can keep my scanned comics on the pogoplug and then download and open them in Sidebooks on my ipad thereby saving me a ton of space both on my Mac and my ipad.3. I found a comment on the web that says you shouldn't plug this thing directly into your Comcast/Fios box. Rather plug it into a switch which is plugged into the router. I'll test it out and update you if that helps.4. Streams well to my Android phone (Galaxy Nexus).Bottom line - Don't pair this device with the " HGST Touro Desk 4 TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive Black (0S03396)  and read the forums before buying the hard disk you want. Don't buy a "green hard disk as these tend to go into sleep mode