NASLite Network Attached Storage

Yahoo! what a great new setup.... just a couple of questions

1. If I have an existing UBS installation with formatted HDD's is there any way that I can get the HDD partition on to them without formatting (and erasing all the data) the disk to create the nas HDD partition? eg using gparted or another tool

2. One of the things that I really like is the relative "portability" of the nas lite setup eg machine dies, move disks, move usb and reboot. It it possible / feasible to format ALL the HDD's to have the 16 mb partition on them and then if the boot disk fails you can just plug in the remaining disks into a new machine and get the data (minus the failed disk) back quickly and simply (possibly with a re unlock). I am happy to sacrifice 16 mb per disk for this but is it an option?

Keep up the GREAT work!

Well, technically, you can do what you are thinking of, but I think a better solution is to not populate each drive with the boot partition due to potential configuration issues. For example, if you have 2 drives that can boot NASLite-2 HDD, which one should be the config device? The installation utility accounts for that, but management will be a pain and probably not worth the trouble.

A better approach will be to have a copy of CDD or USB to handle emergency "transplants", but other than that you should have no great need to have boot capability on each storage drive.

Now, installing NASLite-2 HDD on an existing drive is not recommended, and for a host of reasons is not supported by the installer. If you absolutely need to do that, then yes, you can create a 6M partition (Part-2) at the beginning of the drive, move the beginning of the existing data partition (Part-1) up starting at say 17M and when done dd the first 16M from another, properly installed NASLite-2 HDD drive.

Alternately, and the recommended approach will be to install on an empty drive, configure, format and move the data onto it. I know it takes longer but it's safe and will produce stable results.

Hope that helps...

not the install answer that I was hoping for (just and installed bought a 500gb disk about a month agot) but I do understand the recomendation to produce stable results....

As for the repair... I have a copy of the UBS version (and would have to purchase the HDD version) so no too much of a prob.....

thanks

I have the CD version with a single 250 GB drive and have had a Compact Flash card and IDE adapter sitting waiting for months for the HDD version. Is it simply now a matter of installing the flash card as the boot drive and running the HDD install programme? This will not affect the existing drive with my data, will it?

Yes, install the CF with the IDE adapter, boot the NASLite-2 HDD CD, Select the CF as the target and install. For safety reasons, and to avoid any confusion, you can disconnect the data drive while installing. That's not necessary, but that way you can be sure not to overwrite data by mistake.

Once installed, reconnect everything, configure, unlock and you're done.

Thanks, Tony, great service as usual. I'll aim to do this when I return from my current business trip next week.

OK, I installed my CF card in the IDE adapter and hooked it up to a spare cable and power supply inside the case but the machine wouldn't boot from the HDD CD - I got the error message 'boot failed'. If I disconnect the CF adapter it will boot OK but no matter how I configured the adapter, nor which cable I attached it to, every time it was hooked up the system wouldn't boot. I even tried to use it as a regular HDD with the CD and floppy installation but it wouldn't boot either.

Is there something I am overlooking or is it more likely that the CF `adapter itself is the problem?

Some progress! By setting the IDE CF adapter as slave rather than master the system recognised it and installed NASLite successfully on it, at least the install process said that. But when I try to boot from the CF nothing happens. I've set the BIOS to boot first from the CD then from the removable media (which is where the CF card is listed) but nothing happens. I just get a flashing cursor on the screen. I tried setting the CF as master rather than slave but that produced the message 'no operating system'. So that would suggest that the system sees the CF (when it's set as slave) and NASLite but won't start it.

Any ideas, anyone?