NASLite Network Attached Storage

I brought, fiddled and got this thing to work! Great so far.

I boot from the kicker floppy, then to a USB key device thingy.

I started with 1 hard disk, then added another. All great. But then the 3rd hard disk I'm trying to add causes the whole thing to fail to boot.

I've tried the HDD in different locations 0 or 1 master or slave and with different cables. It's something about this disk I'm sure.

The floppy boots and seems to start the USB device, screens of stuff and then the messages:
LINLD v0.97
Kernal command line
--- more stuff ----
Can't open kernal file
A:\>


If I don't power up that particular HDD, then all is ok and it boots fine.

What's up please ?

TIA

- Chris

Chris

Glad you got NASlite+ working.
It does sound like a dodgy HDD is it a new one? If not and it hasn't anything important on it try downloading and running the disk manufacturers diagnostic utilities and maybe do a low level format on it before re-formatting it in NASlite. Also have you changed out your cables and checked any bios settings? Do you get anything showing as Disk 4? If not maybe there is a setting for the secondary ide channel that needs sorting in the bios.

I have mine set as follows Disk 1 is Primary Master Disk 2 is Primary Slave Disk 3 is Secondary Master and Disk 4 is Secondary Slave. I know some users set the drives as cable select. So it might pay to do a bit of fiddling to see which works.

Post back your m/board and hdd maybe someone has a similar board etc and will post up the settings required to get your hdd mounted.
Good luck
Dave

Just had this happen when I installed a 3rd drive. I had the HD cable inserted backward on the drive.

I appreciate the help ...

It's not the cables - I've tried every which way around and 2 different ribbon cables. Maybe the disk itself .... well maybe I guess. It's a Maxtor drive about 6 months old. Worked just fine in an USB external drive enclosure a few days ago.

Here's a clue ... I'm no techie, but the drive is formatted and partitioned in a non standard way. It is usable under Windows just fine but shows up in Windows as 3 drives, one of them named "Host for X". I was assuming that NAsLite would allow me to just splat whatever was there and start again with this drive. But not if it doesn't boot up!

Here my question: What conditions of one connected drive would stop the kernal command? I don't even want to understand how NASLite works its magic but I find it odd that a hardware problem (?) stops the whole thing from booting up without any kind of clue to the cause.

TIA.

- Chris

Chris:

I suggest reformatting the drive to get rid of whatever is on there now. Several ways to do this, depending on what tools you have available.

A] If the Maxtor came with a CD and installation utilities (MAXBlast), do a low-level format ("Zero Fill Drive" under the Utilities Menu -- you don't need to do a FULL version, the QUICK version is sufficient to wipe out the partition table (the three drives you're seeing in Windows). (Boot any PC with the MAXBlast CD. MAKE SURE TO SELECT THE CORRECT DISK DRIVE.)

-- OR --

B] Attach the drive to a Windows PC (external is ok) and use Start/ControlPanel/AdministrativeTools/ComputerManagement/DiskManagement. RightClick on each of the three partitions and choose "Delete Partition" (MAKE SURE YOU DON'T ACCIDENTALLY SELECT partitions from the wrong disk drive.)

There are other methods ... write back with your progress or if you need more help. But after doing above you should be able to have NASLite+ configure the drive properly.

Georg

Thanks Georg. I deleted the partitions (it was formatted as FAT32) and re-formatted with 1 FAT partition. And it works. Only 6Gb (remember when disks were that small .... but then again, my very first computer with a hard disk had only 40Mb capacity!).

It still confuses me that the product failed in the way that it did when presented with a hard it didn't like. But I'm not going to worry any more.

Thanks all.

- Chris