Nas

[confus-ed]

:sigh: Sometimes I wonder why I bother to post anything to these forums anymore when it's just going to be 'corrected' no matter how correct the answer is

.. yikes !! take a chill pill dude .. this is opinion - not me calling your mother rude names !

[kpataska]

I've built several of them. You can take a PII and a Promise ATA/SATA card and drives and load the OS and AV and VNC and bingo! Instant headless NAS. Granted, as stated you must tweak the registry to get more connections, but that's simple. You can use as much or as little of the "potential" as you wish. I've added functionality like email, printing, etc. to some of them.

Don't use NetBEUI or NetBIOS, IP is just fine. And the Macs connect quite simply. This is, of course, assuming you're behind a proper NAT/Firewall.

I used to build them for the university I worked for. A cheaper alternative to a whole server when you just need file storage space.

And it is Network Attached Storage BTW...

Hope this helps!

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s

[emr]

Hi everyone,

I am going to go for the Maxtor 300 Gb drive. Maxtor Shared Storage

Now XP supports FAT32 and although it can only format up to 32 Gb natively it can read up to 8 Tb theoretically so ok to read a 300 Gb partition.

Mac OS9 & X supports FAT32 also however I am a bit unclear on the total partition size it can support. I Googled and found reference to OSX being able to support up to 127 Gb but can't find anything about OS9.

There is also the issue of the 4 Gb file size limitation on FAT32 but short of buying a W2k3 Server and setting up Mac services I can't see any other way to go. I don't want to have to purchase third-party apps to allow Mac to read & write to NTFS or whatever.

Anyone got any comments? Feel free to point out any glaring mistakes I have made!

TIA,

emr

[confus-ed]

..And it is Network Attached Storage BTW...

If you read Emr's question, you'll now see why I was 'banging on' about network AWARE

..Feel free to point out any glaring mistakes I have made!..

You've bought something that someone describes as a 'nas' when I'd say its just a glorified external disk, else you wouldn't have to worry about file systems at all

What is a NAS Device?
Network Attached Storage (NAS) device
Dedicated file server
Storage is network-attached via TCP/IP
Also known as
NAS appliance
NAS filer
Provides support for file-access protocols such as
Network File System (NFS)
Common Internet File System (CIFS)
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

[emr]

If you read Emr's question, you'll now see why I was 'banging on' about network AWARE



You've bought something that someone describes as a 'nas' when I'd say its just a glorified external disk, else you wouldn't have to worry about file systems at all

The problem being I can't justify that they shell out upwards of € 800 for a "true" NAS when they can be up and running for € 325 with all the storage space they need.

emr

[confus-ed]

The problem being I can't justify that they shell out upwards of € 800 for a "true" NAS when they can be up and running for € 325 with all the storage space they need...

Sorry dude, still busy making my point from earlier (but I thought it important, we get this straight ! ) ..

Soooo-oo the only pertinent observation I have to make is that € 325 is a lot when you could get 'nearly' the same (minus some plug through USB ports) for about € 50 (for a usb enclosure or whatever) plus the cost of any disk..

Given what you've just said about file system translations & the potenial issues & oddities it might create, I might revert to 'plan a' at this point, & be thinking linux server , if I were kato ! .. but I ain't .. I'm confus-ed (though not about this) & my suggestion would be to use windoze to create an internal ftp server.
(nothing 'against' kato's suggestion other than its another o/s to have to support ! )

[emr]

Sorry dude, still busy making my point from earlier (but I thought it important, we get this straight ! ) ..

Soooo-oo the only pertinent observation I have to make is that € 325 is a lot when you could get 'nearly' the same (minus some plug through USB ports) for about € 50 (for a usb enclosure or whatever) plus the cost of any disk..

Given what you've just said about file system translations & the potenial issues & oddities it might create, I might revert to 'plan a' at this point, & be thinking linux server , if I were kato ! .. but I ain't .. I'm confus-ed (though not about this) & my suggestion would be to use windoze to create an internal ftp server.
(nothing 'against' kato's suggestion other than its another o/s to have to support ! )

It needs to be an ethernet external drive though. They don't have any "spare" old pc's as it were so even going for a linux option I would still be looking at a few hundred €uros in hardware.

This is assuming that the € 50 you are quoting is only a USB drive?

emr

[confus-ed]

It needs to be an ethernet external drive though...

This is assuming that the € 50 you are quoting is only a USB drive?

Aye .. 'tis ! ..

What about one of these ? Freecom Classic SL 400GB USB2.0 & LAN - £325 ish ..

Try some googles for 'network drive' & you may find some more ! ..

[emr]

Aye .. 'tis ! ..

What about one of these ? Freecom Classic SL 400GB USB2.0 & LAN - £325 ish ..

Try some googles for 'network drive' & you may find some more ! ..

I have Googled myself to death on this one. I'm going to stick with the Maxtor, not that it is necessarily "better" than anything else comparable but that price range they all do pretty much the same and the Maxtor is available for delivery next week by the time I arrive in Paris to do the job.

I'll let you know when all is done & dusted.

Cheers,

emr

[confus-ed]

I have Googled myself to death on this one. I'm going to stick with the Maxtor ..

I can relate to that ! .. but I will say "they all do pretty much the same" isn't necessarily true, try reading this pdf about what I just linked to Freecom Classic SL Network Drive

..Can also be used in a mixed (PC/Mac) network environment..The Freecom Network Drive provides ease in installing, operating and maintaining a storage system without professional networking knowledge. As a result, Freecom dramatically reduces your costs...

Btw the 80gb version is about £100.

[kato2274]

if I were kato ! .. but I ain't .. I'm confus-ed (though not about this) & my suggestion would be to use windoze to create an internal ftp server.
(nothing 'against' kato's suggestion other than its another o/s to have to support ! )

with something like smeserver from www.contribs.org, you're not at all supporting an OS. it's no different than a retail snap server in that once it's setup you navigate to a webpage change the workgroup and security settings, add remove users, create shares and set permissions etc. you don't have to know ANYTHING bout linux for it to work.....the only downside is that the currently release doesn't have support for winbind joining an existing domain.

[InTheWayBoy]

Firstly the whole idea of NAS is the N...Network...doesn't matter what file system the drive is formatted in, as long as the networking protocol is compatible. And since 99.99% of all computers operating systems can handle TCP/IP then you are pretty much ready to rock.

Secondly, you can buy the brains of a NAS for much less, and then add your own HD. The best one I've seen is the Kuro Box , which can do NAS among other things. It's essentially a small computer that runs linux, which means you can hack the everloving hell out of it. I hear that out of the box it's pretty sweet, and the company that makes it has a nice user forum to help flesh out new ideas for the unit.

And lastly, you'll want to keep in mind that most NAS devices, home-made or not, are still reliant on standard HD tech. Meaning, it's still prone to mechanical failures and what not. So if you are using this to store your personal data, you might want to think about a backup theory for the unit. If you were to do a home-made system, you could obviously go with RAID mirroring. The Kuro Box and other units don't offer this, at least as far as I know.

If you want to go home-made, I can suggest ClarkConnect as an OS. It's very nice, and can do a bunch of things. Hell, you can even configure it to act as a windows domain controller and setup profiles and such so your files follow your user accounts. They offer a free version as well as a pro version, but I see no reason to pay for the pro when the free one is so robust. It is linux, but they have designed it so it's not so console driven. Most of the administration is done via webadmin.

Good luck!

[cyberhh]

A NAS server solution was designed to be a simple inexpensive way to add disk space to an existing network. Security was supposed to be set from a seperate server containing the security resources (users / groups) - ie - authenticate to an external LDAP or AD server. So the OS was designed to pair with an existing network infrastructure and simply add storage.

I would advise a linus based server solution (clark connect is a simple solution) - what I have done in the past is use a shuttle box with 2 drives and an external backup solution (DVD-R is a cheap solution - though limited in size). Keeping in mind that as this is not a server class box you will start to see slowdown at +/- 5 syncronious connections (5 users connected at the same time all xfering data).

A caching RAID controller will be faster. SCSI RAID will also be faster.