NASLite Network Attached Storage

I was wondering if anyone has tried this and if they have had any issues. I used a Compact Flash card and pluged it into a USB card reader then pluged that into the USB, I then booted to the NASLITE USB CD and went through the setup for the memory. I set the CF card up as a harddrive which I think was option 2. Once that was complete I powered the system down and removed the usb card reader and the CF memory. I then pluged the CF memory into a CF to IDE adapter I got at Fry's for around 26 bucks and pluged it into IDE0 on my motherboard and set the motherboard bios to boot to IDE0. I rebooted and it boted up fine with no issues, and i didnt have to edit any files. I set up the server and all my drives and rebooted a couple of times to make sure it saved my settings and it did. I have been reading and writing to the server for a couple of days without any issues. I removed all the cd rom's and floppy drives and now just boot to the CF card.

Didn't think of that when I tried to get mine to work, I feel enlightened. I will give it a try.

Thanks,

Mike

Use NASLite-2 USB for this and do the following:

1. Get a CF to USB converter.
2. Use it to install NASLite-2 USB on the CF as you would on a standard USB Drive.
3. Move the CF to the "CF to IDE" adapter
4. Boot the computer via the CF

Not all BIOS will be able to boot this, but most should.

Let us know how it works out

Hi all,

I just purchased NASLite-2 USB because of the following. One question. How big of a CF card is good? The ISO is ~6MB, would a CF card of around 8 or 16MB work?

Thanks!

Just for the record, if you want/need to spare a few bucks, CF cards are pin to pin compatible with ATA/IDE, so you can easily make a DIY "converter", you can get connectors from some broken device:
http://www2.wau.nl/hemeltje/temporary/p ... apter.html

Original SanDisk documents:
http://web.archive.org/web/200306051140 ... Cf_ide.pdf
mirror:
http://www.linux-cae.net/Projects/CF/Cf_ide.pdf

Tech specs:
http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/OEM/ ... hv11.0.pdf

Though of course, with prices as low as US $9.99:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... x=0&Go.y=0

it does not make much sense....

jaclaz

Even cheaper on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Compact-Flash-CF-to ... dZViewItem

Mike

hello,

I tested it with 16 MB san disk cf card and an ISS-102 board with a built in cf slot. works fine.

regards

Out of the 16MB, how much space was used up? I have an 8MB card and a 64MB card that's a possibility to use.

In lieu of an HDD version, I was wondering if this could also work for a hard drive, using a usb enclosure? Could you potentially just...

1. Get an external usb hard drive enclosure.
2. Use it to install NASLite-2 USB on the hard drive as you would on a standard USB Drive.
3. Move the hard drive to the computer.
4. Boot the computer as normal from C:\.

Thanx.

If I understand the bulk of this thread correctly, the answer is yes.

I haven't purchased NASLite-2 yet, and was wondering if I can use NASLite-2 USB for booting from a CompactFlash card installed as a hard disk on a CF<->IDE adapter. But I guess I can, if Tony said so

I've understood that the ISO image is around 6 megs. Now, I have an 8MB CF card, would that suffice, or would it be better to get a bigger one? buschmann59 stated that 16MB is fine, but 8MB sounds kinda small. Can anyone confirm?

Andy72,

I have ran my server with a 8mb CF card and didnt have any problems at all.

Guys, I just purchased NASLite-2 and tried to install it, but I hit a wall - can't use my USB Flash Drive nor either of my CompactFlash cards.

Hardware used:
+ ASUS A7N266-VM microATX motherboard
+ AMD Duron 600 MHz
+ 2 x 128MB DDR RAM
+ USB stick: Kingston 512MB model
+ CF cards: both "Canon" (8MB, 32MB models, came with digital cameras)
+ SiliconPower N-in-1 USB card reader

[offtopic]
The install onto USB stick goes fine, but I cannot boot from it. Tried both NASLite-2 installations (superfloppy and partition), and with all combinations of BIOS settings to boot - USB FDD/ZIP/whatever, no matter what I set, it won't boot. I won't go into much detail with that, as my motherboard officially does not support booting from USB. Just thought I'd give it a try anyway.
[/offtopic]

My main goal is to get NASLite-2 to boot from a CompactFlash card using it as a hard disk (with an CF/IDE adapter) as described in this thread. Now we come to my real problem:

I have the CF card in a USB multimedia card reader, connected to an USB port, but the NASLite-2 USB install onto the CF card fails. Something fishy eludes me.

NASLite-2 USB Flash Utility CD-ROM says:



Then, when I try method 1) to configure the USB Flash Disk as a Bootable SuperFloppy:



OK, I try the Disk Partition method 2) and it says:



Now, to me, this looks like the Flash Utility does not see the CF card at all. But still, on the first screen, it says "USB Flash found".

Tony: what has the NASLite-2 USB Flash Utility found, when it states that "USB Flash found"? Has it found an USB flash device in general (the card reader?), or indeed an USB Flash memory/drive?

I have tried all combinations of:
+ running the NASLite-2 -> CF installation on two different computers
+ on two different CF cards (that work fine in Win XP)
+ both installation methods (SuperFloppy and Partition)
+ even some "legacy USB" options in (both computers') BIOS (which I do not think are needed as both cards work fine without).

Note: both CF cards work fine with Ubuntu 6.10 on the NAS hardware, so the CF reader+card combination definitely should be working fine with the NASLite-2 USB Flash Utility (?)

Some thoughts:
- Maybe the CF cards are "special"? They both came with Canon digital cameras.
- Maybe the SiliconPower USB card reader is not working correctly outside WinXP?
- Maybe I'm missing something that some kind soul would like to point out?

I'm out of ideas, other than getting my hands on some other CF cards to try. I also refuse to use a floppy disk drive to boot my NAS.

Any suggestions?

Just fyi ... I have the identical condition as Andy72. When I try to program a CF card with the NASLite v2.02 USB utility, using 4 different CF card readers/writers, and 6 different CF cards, and 4 different PCs, I too see the flash found and then get: FAIL - Unable to create partition. ERROR: NASLite-2 USB was not transfered to the USB Flash Disk. And I thought it was just me ...

Hi,

I'd say the problem is the Card Reader itself. The reason I say this is Grumpa sent me two CF Cards to test as he was having problems with them, 1.Lexar 128mb and 2.Cannon 32mb cF cards.
Grumpa I will be returning these shortly.

I managed to program both these cards without a fail, and both cards boot my Nas server fine.

I myself have a number of CF cards by Cannon and all work fine. The only other thing has to be the CF Reader.

Some usb card readers are built with a usb hub inside. Those can be trouble.