NASLite Network Attached Storage

I have NLM2 box with 3 hard drives. Can I take a small hard drive say an old 30 gig drive and transfer the nas install to that drive?

drive 0 has the nas install - 500 gb hdd
drive 1 has files - 500 gb hdd
drive 2 is a mirror of drive 1 - 500 gb hdd

yes is the simple answer - BUT - you will have to delete or at least de-commission the install on the 500gig drive - theres an option in the install to do that

am not sure what that will do to the data on that drive if anything - to be sure it is safe i would back it up first - may not be nessessery but better safe than sorry

Would it not be better to check if your motherboard will boot from USB and if so use a USB Pen Drive (it only needs 32Mb of space) and save yourself the HDD slot on the Mb.

Just a thought.

And a previous thread this type of problem was raised in that I believe you can destroy just the Config data on that drive See

http://www.serverelements.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3292

Hope this helps

Doug

I do have a few spare flash drives laying around.

If I can boot from USB it would need to be selectable in the BIOS boot priority correct? I'm not at home to check in the BIOS and the only thing I can find in the manual is " Legacy USB support - ...allows the system to detect the presence of USB devices at startup."

Motherboard is an ASUS P5AD2 Deluxe

yes it would need to be selectable - that can be a problem - you will still have to turn off the config data on the drive even if you can boot from usb

for me the best option is a cf card in a cf/ide adaptor - easy to upgrade and universal from a boot point of view - its just another hard drive - the only down side is it takes one ide line - which may be needed

Actually I am not using any IDE ports as the board has like 8 SATA ports plus the IDE's so that may be a good option. Can you suggest a particular CF / IDE adapter?

What about something like PLoP boot manager. "USB boot without BIOS support (UHCI, OHCI and EHCI) "

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#features
Anyone ever tried anything like that? If it could engage a USB boot and I could still put NL on the USB then it might work.

for a cf/ide adaptor look at ebay - there are plenty on there - i use the ones attached to a pci backplate - makes upgrading simple if you have to do it on another machine as i do [i dont have cd drives in my naslite boxes]

just remove the cf card and reprogram - no need to open the case

they can be bought from hong kong for a pound or so

I have and use one of these for booting. I have a run of the mill sandisk 64MB card in it and it works great.

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-LEDS-Compact-Flash-CF-SSD-To-3-5-ATA-IDE-Adapter_W0QQitemZ270558828550QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_2?hash=item3efe901806

Mike

Well it appears my motherboard supports booting from a USB. I set the USB as a 1st priority during boot with my current hdd as 2nd priority. I booted up and the light came on on the USB drive then it found the NL install on the hdd because the USB is currently blank.

So when I figure out the network connectivity problem that just cropped up I think I might try it on the USB. I couldn't connect to the NAS yesterday and our Mac didn't have network connectivity and then when I went to shut it off I pressed the wrong button and just shut it off.. oops.. Now when I try to start it the nic doesn't register at all and it shuts back down. So I restarted the router and that took care of the Mac but still no NAS. I tested the network connection at the NAS using my laptop and it worked fine. Bad thing I might need a new nic...good thing I can upgrade to a gigabit. I'm going to swap the nic to a new PCI port and see if that helps or not. Once i get it running again I will try out the usb which I am hoping works.

Thanks for suggested cf/IDE mike. I don't shop at EBay but that looks just like the one I was looking at here. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Well maybe not exactly like it but pretty close.

It is, just that you get the honor of paying 5 times as much as for the one on Ebay. I bought mine from a vendor on Ebay that was selling 5 of them for $7.99 with free shipping. Figured that it was a good deal and that way I have extras for another box or helping out a friend.

Mike