NASLite Network Attached Storage

I just downloaded the Naslite+ for USB Flash and it works like a charm. I just happened to think wouldn't it be slick if it could recoginize Fat32 or NTFS drives. Then I could pop my USB stick into and Windows machine and have an instant file server.

Would be great if you support computers and a users screws up their operating system and you need to get some file off the machine before you attempt a reinstall.

It would be kind of cool, but it is very simple to just take a drive and put it into another pc an recover files that way. or just use an external hard drive case that connects to any computer via usb. SO either one would be very simple.

AS for the poll I would really only want ntfs support. My understanding is that it is much better than fat32 and much easier to recover data. But I think if you made a server that had different file system possiblities the software would get much bulkier and less elegant.

RIght now the floppy versions it is a 1.68 mb opertating system and it performs very well. Even the cd verison at around 4mb works wonders. I have not tired the usb version but may in the future, just the support of different file systems would make operating system larger and in turn need much more resources.

I am running a 1tb server on a free pII 333mhz computer I recieved. I just love it.

If the software would go into a direction of making a little bigger and making a little faster machines needed I would hope first that a pci driver for an additional ide controller would top priority. I much rather deal witha little setup time and have final results of being able to run 8 ide drive. That would be one awesome machine.

Also one other feature would be really nice although I am not sure how easy or difficult it would be to make happen. I believe it would be very easy actually but not sure. It would be a clone function.
Basically something in the admin functions area of the server. All it would do is ask for a target and a source drive. IT would then compare source drive and target drive sizes. IF the target drive was larger it would then proceed to making a copy of all data that was on the smaller drive. This would save tons of time. Right now I am doing it manually. I am moving about 200 gigs from one to a larger 250gig drive.

All the information needs to get pulled to the client computer then sent back to the server machine. THis effectively halves the lan speeds.

So enough of my rambling already, I just feel atleast for me there are better directions for the software.

My vote would be for NTFS only, but and only but if it does not interfere with three of the most valuable aspects of NAS Lite:

- the ability to support drive larger than the BIOS supports on older computers.

- the ability to support (in an upcoming release) of files larger than 4Gb over SMB.

- the ability (in the future ) to support PCI IDE expansion. I would really like to see my old PIII based server handle 6, 8, ... hard drives using NAS Lite.

NTFS support would be great, but there are more important things IMHO.

My two cents.