NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hello,

I'm trying to get an understanding of how the NASLite-M2 will work or maybe the logistics of day to day usage.

I've got a PC and a MAC along with a HP network printer all connected to a router. The same router also has wireless capability and I use a laptop to connect to it as well.

I think I have a fair understanding of how this will work with a PC it will simply show up as another computer or drive on the network such as J: drive or maybe I will have to map a network drive or at least set it to the same workgroup. Then I will simply be able to click on it in windows explorer and move and copy files as needed.

My first question really pertains to the MAC side of things. I'm rather MAC illiterate. Will a MAC communicate in the same way? I mean will I be able to just open FINDER and browse to the drive and copy files without any type of password or typing in an IP address or configuring some connection each time? Will the NAS just show up in FINDER?

I was planning on settting up a few hard drives in the NAS in a RAID array and then I wanted to attach another hard drive to the NAS either by USB or SATA to do a backup of the NAS. It looks like from reading some of the documentation it can do this. My only question is will I need some other software to perform the backup or does NASLite-M2 contain the ability to perform a backup to a seperate hard drive?

With SMB enabled, you will see your NAS box appear as any other network share (It will appear as the name of your NAS box). You have to set your NAS box to the same work group, yes. You can also map the drive if you wish. With SMB you can map the "Shares" folder to a drive (contains links to all of your disks on the NAS), or you can map individual drives. I have my "Shares" folder mapped to drive N:.

With AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) enabled, Selecting "Go" -> "Network" (command-shift-K) in Finder will show up as "nameOfNASBox AFP". Inside that folder will be any disks you have configured on your NASBox. If you choose to use DAAP as well, any supported media files you copy to the MEDIA folder (created by NASLite-M2 setup) will show up in iTunes as "nameOfNASBox DAAP" in iTunes "SHARED" section.

Oh, and no password required.

Hope this answers your questions.

Cheers!

All of what Scott said is correct, one thing to be aware of is that if you use iTunes with DAAP you will likely not be able to view videos, it will play music for the most part though. Scott and a few of us have been having a rather "interesting" conversation about just that subject.

NASLite 2.0 and M2 both support a scheduled Mirror of one drive to another using Rsync.

One thing you may not know is that you MUST use a hardware RAID card if you plan to do a RAID array. There is no facility in NL to allow you to load the drivers for a software implemented RAID like most RAID0 and RAID1 solutions are. It must have a processor on the card, memory, and a RAID BIOS/Firmware on card. See the hardware reference manual in the documentation section of the site. There is actually a fair number of these cards supported and allot of them are on Ebay for reasonable prices.

I have accessed various NL servers from many machines and OS's so you basically have no worries. Welcome to NASLite and the forums.

Mike

Thanks for adding to that, Mike. I avoided mentioning video for obvious reasons And since I do not use RAID I left that question for more qualified NASLite users to answer. Sorry I didn't mention that. All in all, keeping in mind the exceptions that Mike has mentioned, I think you'll find NL-M2 to be a very stable and system conservative solution for a NAS. Even with the exceptions for video streaming, I have found that Quicktime does a great job of playing videos stored on my NL box without stuttering.

If I am understanding you correctly it won't play videos if I have Itunes installed. For example if I have ITunes installed and wanted to play a video using Quicktime it would not play it?
I have Itunes on my PC and on the MAC. I don't really use it because I prefer using WMP for media files. My wife uses ITunes exclusively on her MAC but only to play music.



Yes I was aware of that, I've read the hardware compatibility guide. Actually I just realized I don't have the RAID capability I thought I had because I realized I was reading the wrong section before. So that leaves me with buying a controller card. Probably a little pricier than I was wanting to go so I am not sure if I want to use a RAID or not. My original plan was to setup either a RAID 5 or RAID 1+0 and then have a backup to seperate hard drive.

I'm wanting to build this in my old P4 box. I've got these components I was planning on using.

P4 3.2ghz Prescott
1GB Corsair PC2-6400
ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe Board
(was going to connect thru the onboard LAN, but not sure I didn't see the chipset listed in the hardware guide, but I have a couple spare ethernet cards)
DVD ROM drive
3 1/2" floppy
ATI X700 Pro Video Card
Spare Samsung 1TB F1 spinpoint HDD
(Was planning on buying 3 or 4 WD RE3 500GB drives)

I was going to put this NAS in a downstairs bedroom. I pulled CAT5E all over my house and dropped in network ports in various rooms. What can I say I don't like wireless, I've just found it doesn't have the same quality as a wired network.

It will stream Quicktime supported videos, but is not fully supported in this version. To stream videos in iTunes, you have to double click the video file, then double click the album art window and the video window will appear. Also, iTunes 8 exibits an odd behavior. When it asks for a user/password user name is "admin" and the password is the name of your NASLite-M2 box. If you try to play full screen, the video window will disappear. The first time I used this login that iTunes asked for, I got an error "some album artwork was not downloaded" and had to stop the video and log in again before the video window appeared. You can resize the window after it appears, but the size is not sticky: you must drag to resize or maximize every time you play a video. However, if you open a video file directly via AFP share in Quicktime, it will play without skipping (I have good frame rates even using 802.11n wireless with QT, but VLC media player pauses and skips). If possible, I am assured that Tony and Ralph will correct the shortcomings with iTunes video streaming in a future release.

NOTE: the aforementioned shortfalls do not affect audio files in iTunes. DAAP works flawlessly with any music file that iTunes natively supports. MIDI files are an exception. Although they may appear as native to iTunes, they are really handled by Quicktime and passed back to iTunes for playback.

Again, I defer to Scott and others on all things Mac and iTunes, they seem to have it down. I don't like iTunes and so don't use it.

As far as wired VS. Wireless networks, I am with you and much prefer to run CAT5e or CAT6.

RAID cards are cheap on Ebay if you know what to look for.

Steer clear of the Samsung spin whatever drives, they have issues.

Mike

I forgot to mention that iTunes for Windows will not play video files at all. They won't even start. In iTunes/Mac the files will stream audio only until you perform the aforementioned procedure.

Wish I could say I did. I know what to look for from the compatibility list but I can hardly say I know one RAID card from another other than knowing the difference between RAID 5 or 1+0 or 0+1 etc..



Good to know. Thanks for the tip. I already have two samsung 1TB F1 spinpoint. I was just going to use one of them as a backup drive. I have another 750GB spare drive I use though if needed. I tend to prefer Western Digital but when I saw these Samsung 1TB for $99 it was hard to pass up for that amount of space, and they seem rather fast as well.

Dare I ask what kind of issues? Do they just sometimes not show up or something?

That is good to know.

I assume no issues with Windows Media Player on XP or Vista for that matter?

You know I just realized I don't even have ITunes on my PC anymore. The only reason I was even keeping it was that I downloaded some songs with Itunes back when pepsi had those bottlecaps. I had never found a way to covert them to an MP3 (Actually I never looked). Recently I had a HDD crash so the songs are gone now so I guess I won't have Itunes anymore on my PC either.

Scott, can you tell more how you exactly do when mapping the "Shares" to contain all your disks?

In the same way that you can map a drive letter to "\\<insert server name here>\Disk-1" the Shares folder can be mapped using "\\<insert server name here>\Shares".

This will contain Disk-0 to Disk-<n>, where <n> is the number of drives you have installed, rendered as folders and a Status folder.

Nick,
Perhaps I am stupid but I am using Mac can it be different? I have no share folder what I can see using AFP.... and trying to connect to SMB (Connect to Server) gives me Username and Password and you can never log on to this as I don't know what kind of password and username it wants (tried several) and for what I know there is no password or username for NL and log on as a Guest is not allowed!!! So I have two servers in Finder window "naslite-2" (PC server) and "NASLite-2 AFP" (Mac server) and I can only use the "AFP" one. So to map to the folder Share seems far away for me.

Thanks
Soren

Known issue with the Mac OS

http://serverelements.com/forums/viewto ... c+password

Should be the fix you are looking for.

Mike